[Value of Baseline Calcitonin for Differential Diagnosis of Medullary Thyroid Cancer].

Objective: To analyze the efficacy of using baseline calcitonin (bCtn) for auxiliary diagnosis of medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) in the hypercalcitoninemic population with thyroid nodules and to explore the relationship between preoperative levels of bCtn and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and MTC staging. Methods: The clinical, pathological, imaging, and lab test data of 58 MTC patients and 84 non-MTC patients were retrospectively reviewed in the study. The patients were hospitalized at West China Hosptal, Sichuan University between 2011 and 2020. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed to calculate the MTC diagnostic efficacy of bCtn and CEA. The differences in the preoperative bCtn and CEA levels of MTC patients with different primary tumor sites and regional lymph node involvement were compared. Results: The bCtn cutoff values were 31.54 pg/mL for men and 22.60 pg/mL for women for diagnosing MTC in the hypercalcitoninemic population with thyroid nodules. There were statistical differences in preoperative bCtn levels ( H=16.166, P=0.001) and in preoperative CEA levels ( H=9.447, P=0.024) in MTC patients of different T stages. There were statistical differences in preoperative bCtn levels ( H=7.919, P=0.019) and in preoperative CEA levels ( H=7.934, P=0.019) in MTC patients of different N stages. Conclusion: The best bCtn cutoff values for the diagnosis of MTC in the hypercalcitoninemic population with thyroid nodules and are 31.54 pg/mL for men and 22.60 pg/mL for women.

Effect of protease and cellulase on the characteristic of activated sludge.

Sludge dewatering is a key part of sludge disposal since it can greatly reduce the volume of sludge and thus improve the treatment effect for handling and disposing. This study investigated the potential benefits of enzymatic pretreatment on activated sludge dewatering with protease and cellulase as a protein and polysaccharide degrading enzyme, respectively. Capillary suction time (CST) and the solid content after centrifugation were used to evaluate sludge dewatering. The particle size distribution, extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) content, infra-red (IR) spectrometry and microscope image were determined in an attempt to explain the observed changes in sludge dewaterability. The results indicated that adding protease and cellulase separately leads to an increase in CST and the increased value is higher with protease. Protease and cellulase both promote the degradation of protein and polysaccharide in the solids of activated sludge, leading to a smaller particle diameter and poorer dewaterability. However, due to the limited effects on the protein and polysaccharide content, the difference in sludge dewaterability is not large. Compared to the control, enzymatic pretreatment had no obvious effect on sludge IR spectrometry, while there was a detectable structure difference at a colloidal scale.