Efficacy and safety of ultrasound-guided thermal ablation of graves' disease: a retrospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Ultrasound-guided thermal ablation (TA) has emerged as a robust therapeutic approach for treating solid tumors in multiple organs, including the thyroid. Yet, its efficacy and safety profile in the management of Graves' Disease (GD) remains to be definitively established. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted on 50 GD patients treated with TA between October 2017 and December 2021. Key metrics like thyroid volume, volume reduction rate (VRR), thyroid hormones, and basal metabolic rate (BMR) were evaluated using paired Wilcoxon tests. RESULTS: The intervention of ultrasound-guided TA yielded a statistically significant diminution in total thyroid volume across all postoperative follow-up intervals-1, 3, 6, and 12 months-relative to pre-intervention baselines (p < 0.001). The median VRR observed at these time points were 17.5%, 26.5%, 34.4%, and 39.8%, respectively. Euthyroid status was corroborated in 96% of patients at the one-year follow-up milestone. Transient tachycardia and dysphonia were observed in three patients, while a solitary case of skin numbness was noted. Crucially, no instances of enduring injury to the recurrent laryngeal nerve (RLN) were documented. CONCLUSIONS: Our investigation substantiates ultrasound-guided TA as a pragmatic, well-tolerated, and safe therapeutic modality for GD. It effectively improves symptoms of hyperthyroidism, engenders a substantial reduction in thyroid volume, and restores thyroid hormone and BMR to physiological levels. Given its favorable safety profile, enhanced cosmetic outcomes, and minimally invasive nature, ultrasound-guided TA is a compelling alternative to thyroidectomy for GD patients.

Trigger-activated autonomous DNA machine for amplified liver cancer biomarker microRNA21 imaging.

MicroRNA-21 (miRNA-21) is a kind of RNA that exists in biological fluids such as blood, urine and saliva. It has over expression in liver cancer and has different expression in different stages of cancer. However, due to the characteristics of small base number, short length, low abundance and easy degradation of miRNA-21, the detection of miRNA-21 is a challenging subject. Visualization, sensitive, specific and stable detection of tumor suppressor or oncogene microRNAs (miRNAs) remains challenging and is highly significant for clinical diagnostics. To solve this problem, we have developed a target-triggered hybridization assembly DNA machine for intracellular miRNA imaging based on strand displacement amplification (SDA) and branched hybridization chain reaction (B-HCR). In this approach, the target miRNA could hybridize with the template probe to trigger the SDA, resulting in the formation of nicked fragments (NFs) that hybridized with hairpin probe1 (HP1). The opened HP1 could hybridize with hairpin probe2 (HP2), leading to the self-assembly of hyperbranched DNA nanostructures through B-HCR. As expected, the newly developed method exhibits a detection limit down to 11.3 pM miRNA-21 and achieves high selectivity toward miRNA-21 against other interfering miRNAs. Due to its superior sensitivity and selectivity, our method can be further used to detect miRNA-21 in human serum samples. By taking advantage of intelligent design, the proposed method was also used for image miRNA-21 expression levels in different cell lines. This method shows a broad application in clinical diagnosis.

Novel cancerization marker, TP53, and its role in distinguishing normal tissue adjacent to cancerous tissue from normal tissue adjacent to benign tissue.

BACKGROUND: The histopathological and molecular heterogeneity of normal tissue adjacent to cancerous tissue (NTAC) and normal tissue adjacent to benign tissue (NTAB), and the availability of limited specimens make deciphering the mechanisms of carcinogenesis challenging. Our goal was to identify histogenetic biomarkers that could be reliably used to define a transforming fingerprint using RNA in situ hybridization. METHODS: We evaluated 15 tumor-related RNA in situ hybridization biomarkers using tumor microarray and samples of seven tumor-adjacent normal tissues from 314 patients. Biomarkers were determined using comprehensive statistical methods (significance of support vector machine-based artificial intelligence and area under curve scoring of classification distribution). RESULTS: TP53 was found to be a most reliable index (P <10(-7); area under curve >87%) for distinguishing NTAC from NTAB, according to the results of a significance panel (BCL10, BECN1, BRCA2, FITH, PTCH11 and TP53). CONCLUSIONS: The genetic alterations in TP53 between NTAC and NTAB may provide new insight into the field of cancerization and tumor transformation.

Alterations of tumor-related genes do not exactly match the histopathological grade in gastric adenocarcinomas.

AIM: To investigate the diverse characteristics of different pathological gradings of gastric adenocarcinoma (GA) using tumor-related genes. METHODS: GA tissues in different pathological gradings and normal tissues were subjected to tissue arrays. Expressions of 15 major tumor-related genes were detected by RNA in situ hybridization along with 3' terminal digoxin-labeled anti-sense single stranded oligonucleotide and locked nucleic acid modifying probe within the tissue array. The data obtained were processed by support vector machines by four different feature selection methods to discover the respective critical gene/gene subsets contributing to the GA activities of different pathological gradings. RESULTS: In comparison of poorly differentiated GA with normal tissues, tumor-related gene TP53 plays a key role, although other six tumor-related genes could also achieve the Area Under Curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic independently by more than 80%. Comparing the well differentiated GA with normal tissues, we found that 11 tumor-related genes could independently obtain the AUC by more than 80%, but only the gene subsets, TP53, RB and PTEN, play a key role. Only the gene subsets, Bcl10, UVRAG, APC, Beclin1, NM23, PTEN and RB could distinguish between the poorly differentiated and well differentiated GA. None of a single gene could obtain a valid distinction. CONCLUSION: Different from the traditional point of view, the well differentiated cancer tissues have more alterations of important tumor-related genes than the poorly differentiated cancer tissues.