Characterization of blood inflammatory markers in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the differences and correlation between blood inflammatory indexes such as monocytes (MONO), lymphocytes (LYM), haemoglobin (HGB), neutrophils (NEU), platelets (PLT), ultrasensitive C-reactive protein, albumin and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (PLR), NEU/LYM ratio (NLR), MONO/LYM ratio (MLR) and clinicopathologic characteristics of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). METHODS: 187 patients with NSCLC who were first diagnosed in 2017-2023 and 102 with healthy check-ups during the same period (control group) were retrospectively selected as study subjects to compare the differences in inflammatory indexes between the two groups and the levels of inflammatory indexes in NSCLC patients with different clinicopathologic characteristics. RESULTS: Correlation analysis between blood inflammatory indexes and clinicopathologic features in NSCLC group showed that C-reactive protein, CAR, and PLR values were different in different pathologic types (P<0.05). The values of NEU, MONO, C-reactive protein, MLR, NLR, CAR and albumin were different among various degrees of differentiation (P<0.05). There were differences in LYM, albumin, MLR, NLR, CAR, and C-reactive protein among M stage subgroups (P<0.05). Analysis of the efficacy of early diagnosis of non-small cell lung cancer has been shown, the AUC of NLR was 0.796, sensitivity of 0.679, specificity of 0.176, 95% CI=0.743-0.849 (P<0.001). The AUC of albumin was 0.977, the sensitivity was 0.941, the specificity was 0.941, and 95% CI was 0.959-0.994 (P<0.001). CONCLUSION: Blood inflammatory indexes are closely associated with NSCLC and vary according to pathologic features. Blood inflammatory indices can predict tumor pathologic staging and guide treatment for patients with NSCLC.

Development Trend of Infectious Disease Hospitals in China 2002-2018: A Longitudinal Analysis of National Survey Data.

BACKGROUND: Infectious disease hospitals (IDHs) play very important roles in the battle against the infectious disease. The present study aims to systematically analyze the development trends and possible problems of IDHs in China. METHODS: Most of the data came from the China Health Statistics Yearbook 2003-2019. Joinpoint Regression Model was used to analyze the development trends of IDHs between 2002 and 2018. RESULTS: From 2002 to 2018, the number of IDHs in China increased from 126 to 167, with an average annual percent change (AAPC) of 1.82%. The ratio of nurses to beds increased from 0.38 to 0.46 with the AAPC of 0.88%, and average business housing area per bed increased with an AAPC of 1.97%. The percentage of liabilities to total assets increased year by year and the percentage of medical business costs to total expenditure decreased. The segmented trend of daily visits per physician from 2014 to 2018 was stable, and the segmented trend of daily inpatients per physician from 2012 to 2018 decreased significantly. In 2017, the rates of surgical inpatients leaving the hospital without the doctor's advice and surgical inpatients mortality were higher than 2016. CONCLUSION: Although the development of IDHs was generally good in China, the scale of IDHs was generally small, the ability to respond to major emergencies was weak, the problem of irrational resource allocation was still prominent, and the operation of IDHs was facing a dilemma.

Three-Dimensional Device-Free Localization for Vehicle.

Device-free localization (DFL) is a promising technique which could provide localization information for a target without requiring an electronic device. With the development of the smart city and smart transportation, DFL could form part of a basic technique that could be used to track and localize roadside vehicles. In this paper, some algorithms for three-dimensional (3D) DFL for vehicle surveillance are developed, including statistical methods for data, a method for communication link selection, a novel method of communication link weight allocation and some other minor approaches to obtain the location and approximate size of a static vehicle, as a basic technique of moving vehicle detection. Then, an experimental system is designed. Through security monitoring wireless sensor networks (WSN), real-time vehicle characteristics (i.e., location and size) are calculated automatically and intuitively displayed through a heat map. Experiments are performed to validate the effect of the proposal and the accuracy of the localization and size estimation.

Evaluation of manual and electronic healthcare-associated infections surveillance: a multi-center study with 21 tertiary general hospitals in China.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are still a major health threats worldwide. Traditional surveillance methods involving manual surveillance by infection control practitioners (ICPs) for data collection processes are laborious, inefficient, and generate data of variable quality. In this study, we sought to evaluate the impact of surveillance and interaction platform system (SIPS) for HAIs surveillance compared to manual survey in tertiary general hospitals. METHODS: A large multi-center study including 21 tertiary general hospitals and 63 wards were performed to evaluate the impact of electronic SIPS for HAIs. RESULTS: We collected 4,098 consecutive patients and found that the hospitals installed with SIPS significantly increased work efficiency of ICPs achieving satisfactory diagnostic performance of HAIs with 0.73 for sensitivity, 0.81 for specificity and 0.81 area under the curve (AUC). However, there were significant heterogeneity own to regions, time of SIPS installation, departments and sample size. CONCLUSIONS: SIPS significantly improved ICPs efficiency and HAIs monitoring effectiveness, but there were shortcomings such as untimely maintenance and high cost.

Drugs and herbs given to prevent hepatotoxicity of tuberculosis therapy: systematic review of ingredients and evaluation studies.

BACKGROUND: Drugs to protect the liver are frequently prescribed in some countries as part of treatment for tuberculosis. The biological rationale is not clear, they are expensive and may do harm. We conducted a systematic review to a) describe the ingredients of "liver protection drugs"; and b) compare the evidence base for the policy against international standards. METHODS: We searched international medical databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS, CINAHL, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and the specialised register of the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group) and Chinese language databases (CNKI, VIP and WanFang) to April 2007. Our inclusion criteria were research papers that reported evaluating any liver protection drug or drugs for preventing liver damage in people taking anti-tuberculosis treatment. Two authors independently categorised and extracted data, and appraised the stated methods of evaluating their effectiveness. RESULTS: Eighty five research articles met our inclusion criteria, carried out in China (77), India (2), Russia (4), Ukraine (2). These articles evaluated 30 distinct types of liver protection compounds categorised as herbal preparations, manufactured herbal products, combinations of vitamins and other non-herbal substances and manufactured pharmaceutical preparations. Critical appraisal of these articles showed that all were small, poorly conducted studies, measuring intermediate outcomes. Four trials that were described as randomised controlled trials were small, had short follow up, and did not meet international standards. CONCLUSION: There is no reliable evidence to support prescription of drugs or herbs to prevent liver damage in people on tuberculosis treatment.

[Correlation between psychological well-being and social support to those settled immigration from Three Gorges Reservoir areas].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the psychological well-being and the correlation between psychological status and social support among the settled immigrations from Three Gorges Reservoir areas. METHODS: A cluster randomized sampling was selected and 646 objects were interviewed with Basic Situation Scale, Symptom Check-list 90 (SCL-90) and Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS). RESULTS: Our findings from the results of SCL-90 revealed that the positive rate of psychological problem was higher in settled immigration than that of local permanent residents (chi(2) = 4.10, P = 0.04). The differences of scores on 6 factors including compulsion (t = 2.644, P = 0.009), interpersonal-sensitivity (t = 3.220, P = 0.001), depression (t = 2.684, P = 0.008), anxiety (t = 3.003, P = 0.003), paranoid-ideation (t = 3.246, P = 0.001), psychoticism (t = 2.088, P = 0.038) and the total score (t = 2.506, P = 0.013) were significantly different in female between the two groups. There were also significant differences of 10 factors score and total score (t = 4.114, P = 0.000) noticed between the two groups in age < or = 50 (P < 0.05) and the differences of 4 factors score including somatization (t = 2.777, P = 0.006), interpersonal-sensitivity (t = 2.384, P = 0.018), hostility (t = 3.174, P = 0.002), paranoid ideation (t = 2.611, P = 0.010). The total scores (t = 2.125, P = 0.034) were significantly different between the two groups in illiteracy and having received primary school education. Other than compulsion factor (t = 1.884, P = 0.061) and phobic anxiety factor (t = 0.979, P = 0.328), there were significant differences on other factors and the total score between the two groups in non-farmers (P < 0.05). Except compulsion (r = -0.103, P > 0.05), hostility (r = -0.084, P > 0.05) and paranoid ideation factor (r = -0.071, P > 0.05), the negative correlations were obvious between the total score, other factors score and social support (P < 0.05). The negative correlation was obvious between somatization (r = -0.128, P < 0.05), depression (r = -0.140, P < 0.05), anxiety (r = -0.137, P < 0.05), phobic anxiety (r = -0.120, P < 0.05), additional factor (r = -0.143, P < 0.05) total score (r = -0.137, P < 0.05) and subjective support. The correlation coefficient was not significant between SCL-90 total score, 10 factors score and that of objective support (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The psychological status of settled immigration was not satisfactory and closely correlated to psychological mental level and social support.