Clinical Values of Whole-Body Blood Pool Scans and SPECT for Evaluation of Congenital Vascular Malformation.

Purpose: This study examines the diagnostic potential of whole-body blood pool scintigraphy (WBBPS) using technetium-99 m-labeled red blood cells to detect congenital vascular malformations (CVMs). It aims to compare its efficacy with traditional imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasonography (USG), emphasizing its potential advantages in terms of characterization of lesions and capacity for whole-body assessment. Methods: The efficacy of WBBPS and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)/computed tomography (CT) imaging in diagnosing CVMs, comparing them with USG and MRI results, was evaluated in this retrospective study. Of the 38 patients, 21 were evaluated using these diagnostic methods, with CVMs classified according to the International Society for the Study of Vascular Anomalies guidelines. Also, this study aimed to elucidate the characteristics between WBBPS, SPECT/CT, USG, or MRI findings and their consistency with the final diagnosis. Results: A total of 21 participants were included in this study, with an average age of 17.7 years old, with female predominance (57.1%). The most common diagnosis was vascular malformations (VMs) (71.4%), followed by combined vascular malformations (14.3%) and lymphatic malformations (9.5%). WBBPS demonstrated positive results in 95.2% of cases. Distinct imaging patterns for each condition were observed, with WBBPS being crucial in locating lesions. Conclusion: The study findings suggested that WBBPS with SPECT/CT could be helpful in detecting occult VM lesions and ruling out a lymphatic malformation diagnosis. Thus, it can be employed in the evaluation of CVMs.

Comparison of Prognostic Value Between Stimulated and Nonstimulated Thyroglobulins in Differentiated Thyroid Cancer: A Retrospective Study.

Purpose: The growing incidence of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) demands dependable prognostic factors to guide follow-up and treatment plans. This study investigated the prognostic value of response to therapy (RTT) assessment using TSH stimulated-thyroglobulin (sti-Tg) and nonstimulated-thyroglobulin (nonsti-Tg) and evaluates whether RTT using nonsti-Tg (nonstiRTT) can replace RTT using sti-Tg (stiRTT) in clinical practice to improve patients' quality of life during assessment. Methods: We enrolled 419 DTC patients who underwent total thyroidectomy, radioactive iodine (RAI) therapy, and Tg assessment. Patients with structural incomplete responses were excluded. Initial RTT assessments based on the 2015 American Thyroid Association guidelines (excellent response; ER, indeterminate response, biochemical incomplete response) were performed 6-24 months after RAI therapy. The second RTT assessments were performed 6-24 months after the first assessment. Statistical analysis for recurrence-free survival (RFS) was done with the log-rank test for stiRTT and nonstiRTT. Results: Although initial stiRTT and nonstiRTT were significant predictors for RFS (p < 0.0001), stiRTT provided better RFS prediction than nonstiRTT. The RFS analysis of the second RTT assessment demonstrated statistical significance only for stiRTT (p < 0.0001). In 116 patients classified as ER on initial stiRTT, there was no RFS difference between patients classified as ER on either second stiRTT or nonstiRTT. Conclusion: The prognostic power of stiRTT surpasses that of nonstiRTT in both the initial and second RTT assessment. Nevertheless, among patients classified as ER on initial stiRTT, a second stiRTT may not be required for those classified as ER on the second nonstiRTT. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13139-023-00811-8.

Second Primary Malignancy After Radioiodine Therapy in Thyroid Cancer Patient: A Nationwide Study.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate the risk of second primary malignancy after radioiodine (RAI) therapy in patients with thyroid cancer, using the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) database. Methods: We extracted data from the NHIS database of South Korea, which covers the entire population of the nation. Risk of second primary malignancy in the thyroid cancer patients who received RAI therapy were compared with the thyroid cancer patients who received surgery only. Results: Between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2018, we identified 363,155 patients who underwent thyroid surgery due to thyroid cancer for analysis. The surgery only cohort was 215,481, and the RAI cohort was 147,674 patients. A total of 19,385 patients developed second primary malignancy (solid cancer, 18,285; hematologic cancer, 1,100). There was no significant increase in the risk of second primary malignancy in patients who received a total cumulative dose of 100 mCi or less (hazard ratio [HR], 1.013; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.979-1.049). However, a statistically significant increase in the risk of second primary malignancy was observed in patients who received 101-200 mCi (HR, 1.214; 95% CI, 1.167-1.264), 201-300 mCi (HR, 1.422; 95% CI, 1.258-1.607), and > 300 mCi (HR, 1.693; 95% CI, 1.545-1.854). Conclusion: Total cumulative doses of 100 mCi or less of RAI can be safely administered without concerns about second primary malignancy. However, the risk of second primary malignancy increases in a dose-dependent manner, and the risk-benefit needs to be considered for doses over 100 mCi of RAI therapy.

Occlusion of Both Vertebral Arteries With Development of Collateral Circulation From the Deep Cervical Artery After Cervical Spine Trauma.

Careful evaluation of vertebral artery injuries is important after cervical translation injuries or transverse foramen fractures. Treatment of trauma can be complicated in cases of concomitant vertebral artery injuries. A 76-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital with left hemiparesis (Motor grade 3) after a motorcycle accident. Cervical spine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) revealed a C3 burst fracture and a left C3 lateral mass and lamina fracture. CT angiography revealed fracture fragments that predisposed the vertebral artery to injury throughout its course in the area. CT angiography confirmed that both vertebral arteries were occluded at the C3 fracture site. Subsequent brain MRI revealed acute infarction in the right occipital area. Although both vertebral arteries were occluded, the infarction site did not correspond to the territory supplied by these vessels; therefore, we performed transfemoral cerebral angiography, which revealed collateralization of the bilateral vertebral arteries by the deep cervical artery.. The deep cervical arteries are located between the posterior muscles; therefore, a fixation operation performed using the posterior approach may have affected the collateral circulation and led to exacerbation of the infarction site. Therefore, surgery was performed using an anterior approach and it was possible to minimize the risk of cerebral infarction through preservation of collateral circulation.

Simple Quantification of Surface Uptake in F-18 Florapronol PET/CT Imaging for the Validation of Alzheimer's Disease.

We developed a novel quantification method named shape feature using F-18 florapronol positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT) and evaluated its sensitivity and specificity for discriminating between patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and patients with mild cognitive impairment or other precursors dementia (non-AD). We calculated the cerebral amyloid smoothing score (CASS) and brain atrophy index (BAI) using the surface area and volume of the region of interest in PET images. We calculated gray and white matter from trained CT data, prepared using U-net. Shape feature was calculated by multiplying CASS with BAI scores. We measured region-based standard uptake values (SUVr) and performed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to compare SUVr, shape feature, CASS, and BAI score. We investigated the relationship between shape feature and neuropsychological tests. Fifty subjects (23 with AD and 27 with non-AD) were evaluated. SUVr, shape feature, CASS, and BAI score were significantly higher in patients with AD than in those with non-AD. There was no statistically significant difference between shape feature and SUVr in ROC analysis. Shape feature correlated well with mini-mental state examination scores. Shape feature can effectively quantify beta-amyloid deposition and atrophic changes in the brain. These results suggest that shape feature is useful in the diagnosis of AD.

Optimizing hospital distribution across districts to reduce tuberculosis fatalities.

The spatial distributions of diverse facilities are often understood in terms of the optimization of the commute distance or the economic profit. Incorporating more general objective functions into such optimization framework may be useful, helping the policy decisions to meet various social and economic demands. As an example, we consider how hospitals should be distributed to minimize the total fatalities of tuberculosis (TB). The empirical data of Korea shows that the fatality rate of TB in a district decreases with the areal density of hospitals, implying their correlation and the possibility of reducing the nationwide fatalities by adjusting the hospital distribution across districts. Approximating the fatality rate by the probability of a patient not to visit a hospital in her/his residential district for the duration period of TB and evaluating the latter probability in the random-walk framework, we obtain the fatality rate as an exponential function of the hospital density with a characteristic constant related to each district's effective lattice constant estimable empirically. This leads us to the optimal hospital distribution which finds the hospital density in a district to be a logarithmic function of the rescaled patient density. The total fatalities is reduced by 13% with this optimum. The current hospital density deviates from the optimized one in different manners from district to district, which is analyzed in the proposed model framework. The assumptions and limitations of our study are also discussed.

Proteomic analyses reveal that ginsenoside Rg3(S) partially reverses cellular senescence in human dermal fibroblasts by inducing peroxiredoxin.

BACKGROUND: The cellular senescence of primary cultured cells is an irreversible process characterized by growth arrest. Restoration of senescence by ginsenosides has not been explored so far. Rg3(S) treatment markedly decreased senescence-associated ß-galactosidase activity and intracellular reactive oxygen species levels in senescent human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs). However, the underlying mechanism of this effect of Rg3(S) on the senescent HDFs remains unknown. METHODS: We performed a label-free quantitative proteomics to identify the altered proteins in Rg3(S)-treated senescent HDFs. Upregulated proteins induced by Rg3(S) were validated by real-time polymerase chain reaction and immunoblot analyses. RESULTS: Finally, 157 human proteins were identified, and variable peroxiredoxin (PRDX) isotypes were highly implicated by network analyses. Among them, the mitochondrial PRDX3 was transcriptionally and translationally increased in response to Rg3(S) treatment in senescent HDFs in a time-dependent manner. CONCLUSION: Our proteomic approach provides insights into the partial reversing effect of Rg3 on senescent HDFs through induction of antioxidant enzymes, particularly PRDX3.

Characteristics of PCDDs/PCDFs in stack gas from medical waste incinerators.

Toxic polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) in 45 stack gas samples were measured from 19 medical waste incinerators in South Korea using high-resolution gas chromatography equipped with a high-resolution mass spectrometer. The average concentrations of the sum of 17 toxic PCDD/PCDF congeners emitted from the medical waste incinerators ranged from 0.153 to 101.9 ng/Sm3. Based on the World Health Organization toxic equivalency factor, they ranged from 0.007 to 5.437 ng-TEQ/Sm3. The congener patterns of PCDDs/PCDFs were described using principal component analysis and presented four patterns. In the evaluation of annual average total TEQ concentrations, outlying stack gas samples were excluded. In this study, the number of chlorine substitutions was evaluated as an important factor in congener patterns. Coefficient of determination values were employed for evaluation of correlation between PCDDs and PCDFs. 1,2,3,4,6,7,8-HpCDF was measured as the most emitted congener, while 2,3,4,7,8-PeCDF was the greatest TEQ contributor.