An improved diagnostic method for taurodontism and a comparative study on its effectiveness evaluation.

OBJECTIVE: The two commonly used diagnostic methods for taurodontism are susceptible to aging changes, mastication wear and other factors. Therefore, this study proposed an improved diagnostic method for taurodontism, and compared it with the previous two methods as a supplement for taurodontism diagnosis. METHODS: The included patients were aged 10-89 years and admitted to the Department of Stomatology of Hebei Eye Hospital from June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023. Eighty cone-beam computed tomography images were divided equally into 4 groups: 10-29, 30-49, 50-69, and 70-89 years old. The right mandibular first molars were selected as measurement objects. Firstly, |BD| and taurodontism index (TI)-related parameters were measured using Shifman and Chanannel's method and crown-body(CB) and root (R) lengths was measured by Seow and Lai's method. The improved method used the length from the cementoenamel junction(CEJ) to the root bifurcation point(body, B)and the root length(root, R)as the measurement objects. Finally, TI, CB/R ratios, and B/R ratios were calculated according to the formulas given below. One-way ANOVA analysis was mainly used to compare the differences in the values, indices and ratios of taurodontism among different age groups (p<0.05). RESULTS: With the increase of age, |BD| and TI values decreased significantly (p<0.01). The CB/R ratios of 70-89 years group were significantly lower than those of the other three groups (p<0.01). Ratios derived from the improved method were significantly lower in the 70-89 years than in 10-29 years group (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The |BD| and TI parameters proposed by Shifman and channel are significantly influenced by age. The measurements of Seow and Lai (CB/R ratios) were less affected by age compared with those of the former. The improved method(B/R ratios) was least affected by age, which would reduce error and bias in the measurement of taurodontism and obtain more objective results in older patients.

A novel approach for automatic segmentation of prostate and its lesion regions on magnetic resonance imaging.

Objective: To develop an accurate and automatic segmentation model based on convolution neural network to segment the prostate and its lesion regions. Methods: Of all 180 subjects, 122 healthy individuals and 58 patients with prostate cancer were included. For each subject, all slices of the prostate were comprised in the DWIs. A novel DCNN is proposed to automatically segment the prostate and its lesion regions. This model is inspired by the U-Net model with the encoding-decoding path as the backbone, importing dense block, attention mechanism techniques, and group norm-Atrous Spatial Pyramidal Pooling. Data augmentation was used to avoid overfitting in training. In the experimental phase, the data set was randomly divided into a training (70%), testing set (30%). four-fold cross-validation methods were used to obtain results for each metric. Results: The proposed model achieved in terms of Iou, Dice score, accuracy, sensitivity, 95% Hausdorff Distance, 86.82%,93.90%, 94.11%, 93.8%,7.84 for the prostate, 79.2%, 89.51%, 88.43%,89.31%,8.39 for lesion region in segmentation. Compared to the state-of-the-art models, FCN, U-Net, U-Net++, and ResU-Net, the segmentation model achieved more promising results. Conclusion: The proposed model yielded excellent performance in accurate and automatic segmentation of the prostate and lesion regions, revealing that the novel deep convolutional neural network could be used in clinical disease treatment and diagnosis.

Study of the mechanism underlying the role of PINK1/Parkin in the formic acid-induced autophagy of PC12 cells.

This study aimed to explore PINK1/Parkin's role in methanol metabolite formic acid-induced autophagy in PC12 cells and provide a theoretical basis for elucidating methanol-induced neurotoxicity. After treatment with different formic acid concentrations, we observed the morphology and mitochondria of PC12 cells. We used an ultra-micro enzyme kit to detect the mitochondrial Na+ -K+ -ATPase and Ca2+ -Mg2+ -ATPase activities; a JC-1 kit to detect changes in the mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP); MDC staining to detect the autophagy levels; and western blotting to measure the expression levels of the mitochondrial marker protein COX IV and the autophagy-related proteins Beclin1, P62 and LC3II/LC3I, and the mitochondrial and cytoplasmic levels of PINK1, Parkin and P-Parkin. Compared with the control group, the mitochondrial diameters, the mitochondrial Na+ -K+ -ATP and Ca2+ -Mg2+ -ATPase activities, the MMP, and the COX IV expression levels decreased significantly (P < 0.05). The fluorescence signal intensity (indicating autophagy); relative Beclin1 and LC3II/LC3I protein expression levels; and relative mitochondrial PINK1, Parkin and P-Parkin levels increased significantly, and the relative P62 protein expression levels and relative cytoplasmic PINK1, Parkin and P-Parkin levels decreased significantly (P < 0.05) compared with the control group. Thus, formic acid alters mitochondrial morphology, causes mitochondrial dysfunction, affects the PINK/Parkin pathway and, thus, activates the process of mitochondrial autophagy.

Clinical observation and histopathological evaluation of pulp after pulpotomy of primary teeth with formocresol and biodentine.

Pulpotomy is the typical treatment for keeping deciduous teeth until exfoliation. Formocresol is one of the most common materials used in dental pulpotomy. Due to the side effects of this drug, its replacement with other substances seems necessary. Therefore, this study compared clinical and histopathological evaluations of primary pulpotomy molars with formocresol and biodentine. In this clinical trial, 66 second-mandibular deciduous molars of children aged 6 to 9 years who met the criteria for pulpotomy were selected. Pulpotomy of the teeth was performed using formocresol and biodentine. For each patient, one tooth was randomly placed in the pulpotomy group with formocresol. The other tooth was placed in the pulpotomy group with biodentine. Then the crowns of the teeth were restored with stainless steel veneer. We recorded clinical and radiographic results of these teeth over six months and one year. The teeth were then extracted after 12 months, and hematoxylin-eosin staining was performed for histopathological evaluations. The obtained data were analyzed by Fisher test and SPSS software version 22. The results showed that clinical success of 6 and 12 months of pulpotomy in both groups was 100%. The 6-month radiographic evaluation of the formocresol group was 84.8%, and the biodentine group was 93.9% (p = 0.21). The success of 12-month radiographs of the formocresol group and the biodentine group were 81.8 and 93.9, respectively (p = 0.13). Also, the histopathological evaluation showed that in the biodentine group, there was mild inflammation in two teeth, two teeth showed moderate inflammation, and two teeth showed severe inflammation. In the formocresol group, severe inflammation was seen in two cases. Mild inflammation was not seen in any of the teeth. Moderate inflammation was seen in one tooth. It was found that there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of inflammation (P >0.05). No necrosis was seen in any of the biodentine group teeth, and there was necrosis in four teeth of the formocresol group. There was a significant difference between the two groups regarding necrosis (P = 0.032). There was no significant difference between the two groups regarding abscess (P> 0.05). According to the obtained results, biodentine could be a suitable alternative for mandibular second molar pulpotomy.

Flexible and transparent silver nanowires/biopolymer film for high-efficient electromagnetic interference shielding.

Flexible and transparent conductive films are highly desirable in some optoelectronic devices, such as smart windows, touch panels, as well as displays and electromagnetic protection field. Silver nanowire (Ag NW) has been considered as the best material to replace indium tin oxide (ITO) to fabricate flexible transparent electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding films due to its superior comprehensive performance. However, the common substrates supporting Ag NWs require surface modification to enhance the adhesion with Ag NWs. In this work, a flexible and transparent Ag NWs EMI shielding film with sandwich structure through a facile rod-coating method, wherein Ag NWs network were embedded between biodegradable gelatin-based substrate and cover layer. The interfacial adhesion between Ag NWs and gelatin-based layers was enhanced by hydrogen-bonding interaction and swelling effect without any pretreatment. The shielding effectiveness (SE) of the G/Ag NW/G (G represents gelatin-based layer) film reaches 37.74 dB at X band with an optical transmittance of 72.0 %. What's more, the flexible gelatin-based layer and encapsulated structure endow the resultant G/Ag NW/G film integrating excellent mechanical properties, reliable durability, antioxidation, as well as anti-freezing performance. This work paves a new way for fabricating flexible transparent EMI shielding films.

Evaluation of P53 gene expression by immunohistochemistry to diagnosis oral precancerous lesions.

Oral Precancerous lesions include leukoplakia, erythroplakia, and mucosa palate changes due to reverse smoking. Assessing the prevalence of these lesions in a cross-sectional study can be effective in the timely prevention and treatment of lesions, in any community. Hence, in the present study, evaluation of P53 gene expression was done by immunohistochemistry method to diagnosis oral precancerous lesions. For this purpose, 111 Chinese patients (54 women and 57 men) were selected for examination. The age range of these patients was 22 to 69 years, and their average age was 32.6 years. All patients were examined by one physician. Oral mucosa was used for immunohistochemical evaluations. All samples taken from patients' mucosa were evaluated by one pathologist under a light microscope. 80 cases of the 111 patients were smokers and 27 were non-smokers. Among the 80 smokers, 56.25% had leukoplakia, 3.75% had erythroplakia, and 40% had mucosa palate changes. Regarding non-smokers, 74.07% had leukoplakia and 25.93% had erythroplakia. None of the non-smokers had mucosa palate changes. In terms of the lesion location, in patients with leukoplakia 89.23%, and patients with erythroplakia 90% of the lesion was located in the cheek mucosa and buccal vestibule. Also, in patients with leukoplakia 9.23%, and patients with erythroplakia 10% of the lesion was located in the lips vestibular mucosa. Only 1.54% of leukoplakia had a lesion in the vermilion border, and none of the erythroplakia patients had a lesion on the vermilion border. 76 patients (68.46%) showed positive expression of the P53 gene. The expression level of the P53 gene did not show a significant relationship with age, and the genders did not have a statistically significant difference in terms of gene expression. The expression level of the P53 gene was 59.8% in leukoplakia, 70% in erythroplakia, and 40% in Mucosa palate changes. The present study showed that the evaluation of P53 gene expression was well able to detect oral precancerous lesions and their severity by increasing their expression rate.

Mechanisms of Traditional Chinese Medicine Bushenantai granules in promoting angiogenesis at the maternal-fetal interface of recurrent spontaneous abortion mice.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effects of Bushenantai (BSAT) granule() on angiogenesis-related factors [E2, P, and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)] at the maternal-fetal interface of recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA) mice, and to evaluate the role of BSAT in promoting angiogenesis at the maternal-fetal interface by influencing the expression of sex hormones, and VEGF. METHODS: A mouse model with normal pregnancy and another with Clark's classic RSA were established. The RSA mice were randomly assigned to six groups: normal, model, progesterone, high-doseBSAT granule (BSAT-H), medium-dose-BSAT granule (BSAT-M), and low-dose-BSAT granule (BSAT-L) (n = 10 for each group). The embryo loss rate and the histopathological changes in the decidual tissues were measured. Serum levels of estrogen (E2), progesterone (P), and VEGF were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The mRNA and protein expressions of estradiol receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), VEGF, and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2) in the decidual tissues were identified by immunohistochemistry, Western blotting, and quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. RESULTS: The embryo loss rate in all groups that received BSAT treatment was reduced, while the number of blood vessels at decidual tissues was increased. The serum levels of E2, P and VEGF were elevated, and the mRNA and protein expressions of ER, PR, VEGF, and VEGFR2 in the decidual tissues were enhanced. CONCLUSION: BSAT can improve angiogenesis at the maternal-fetal interface and reduce the embryo loss rate, which may be associated with its ability to increase the serum levels of estrogen, progesterone, and VEGF, in addition to up-regulation of mRNA and protein expression of ER, PR, VEGF, and VEGFR2 in the decidual tissue.