[A multicenter study to test the reliability and validity of the frailty assessment scale for elderly patients with inguinal hernia and to evaluate the value of clinical application].

Objectives: To verify the reliability and validity of the frailty assessment scale for elderly patients with inguinal hernia and to evaluate the value of its clinical application. Methods: A convenience sampling method was used to collect 129 geriatric patients who underwent inguinal hernia surgery from January 2018 to January 2023 in nine hospitals in Liaoning Province. There were 120 males and 9 females, of whom 89 patients were 60 to <75 years old, 33 patients were 75 to <85 years old and 7 patients were ≥85 years old. The 129 patients included 11 elderly patients with inguinal hernia who had recovered from preoperative infection with COVID-19. Statistical methods such as Cronbach's coefficient, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test, Bartlett's test, Pearson's correlation analysis, etc. were calculated to verify the reliability indexes such as feasibility, content validity, structural validity, criterion-related validity, internal consistency reliability, and re-test reliability. Taking the 5-item modified frailty index (5-mFI) as the gold standard, the area under the curve was used to analyze the ability of the two scales to predict the occurrence of postoperative acute urinary retention, postoperative delirium, poor incision healing, operative hematoma seroma, and postoperative complications. Results: The frailty assessment scale for elderly patients with inguinal hernia showed good reliability and validity (valid completion rate of 99.2%; item content validity index of 1.000, and the scale content validity index of 1.000; exploratory factor analysis extracted a total of 1 principal component, and factor loadings of each item of 0.565 to 0.873; the AUC for frailty diagnosis using 5-mFI as the gold standard of 0.795 (P<0.01) Cronbach's coefficient of 0.916, retest reliability coefficient of 0.926), it could effectively predict postoperative acute urinary retention, delirium, hematoma seroma in the operative area and total complications (AUC of 0.746, 0.870, 0.806, and 0.738, respectively; all P<0.05), and prediction efficiency was higher than that of 5-mFI (AUC of 0.694, 0.838, 0.626 and 0.641, P<0.05 for delirium only), but both scales were inaccurate in predicting poor incision healing (AUC of 0.519, P=0.913 for the frailty assessment scale and 0.455, P=0.791 for the 5-mFI). Conclusions: The frailty assessment scale for elderly patients with inguinal hernia is reliable and significantly predicts the occurrence of postoperative adverse events in elderly inguinal hernia patients. The scale can also be used for preoperative frailty assessment in elderly patients with inguinal hernia after rehabilitation from COVID-19 infection.

MiR-20a regulates fibroblast-like synoviocyte proliferation and apoptosis in rheumatoid arthritis.

Since this article has been suspected of research misconduct and the corresponding authors did not respond to our request to prove originality of data and figures, "MiR-20a regulates fibroblast-like synoviocyte proliferation and apoptosis in rheumatoid arthritis, by X.-J. Wei, X.-W. Li, J.-L. Lu, Z.-X. Long, J.-Q. Liang, S.-B. Wei, C.-X. Lu, W.-Z. Lu, published in Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci 2017; 21 (17): 3886-3893-PMID: 28975975" has been withdrawn. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. https://www.europeanreview.org/article/13351.

MiR-20a regulates fibroblast-like synoviocyte proliferation and apoptosis in rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE: STAT3 expression is elevated in the synovial tissue of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). MiR-20a plays a role in mediating synovial inflammation in RA. Bioinformatics analysis has identified a binding site between miR-20 and the 3'-UTR of STAT3 mRNA. This study aimed to investigate the role of miR-20a in the regulation of STAT3 expression and synovial cell proliferation as well as apoptosis. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Synovial tissues were collected from RA patients and osteoarthritis (OA) patients to measure miR-20a, STAT3, p-STAT3, and Ki-67 expressions. Fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS) were treated with IL-17 (10 ng/ml) and then Ki-67 expression and cell cycle were evaluated by flow cytometry. The targeting relationship between miR-20a and STAT3 was assessed by dual luciferase reporter gene assay. FLS cells were divided into five groups: miR-NC, miR-20a mimic, si-NC, si-STAT3, and miR-20a mimic + si-STAT3 groups. RESULTS: In RA patients, significantly lower MiR-20a expression, and substantially higher STAT3, p-STAT3, and Ki-67 expression were found in the synovial tissues compared with those in OA patients. IL-17A treatment markedly promoted FLS cell proliferation, inhibited cell apoptosis, reduced miR-20a expression, as well as upregulated levels of STAT3, p-STAT3, and Bcl-2. MiR-20a played a regulatory function on the expression of STAT3. MiR-20a mimic and/or si-STAT3 transfection apparently downregulated STAT3, p-STAT3, and Bcl-2 expression, attenuated IL-17A-induced cell proliferation promotive and enhanced cell apoptosis in FLS cells. CONCLUSIONS: The expression of miR-20a was reduced in synovial tissue of RA patients with the increased level of STAT3. Downregulation of miR-20a promoted the expression of STAT3, p-STAT3, and Bcl-2, facilitated FLS cell proliferation, reduced apoptosis and, thereby, played a critical role in RA.

Nondiffracting transversally polarized beam.

Generation of a nondiffracting transversally polarized beam by means of transmitting an azimuthally polarized beam through a multibelt spiral phase hologram and then highly focusing by a high-NA lens is presented. A relatively long depth of focus (∼4.84λ) of the electric field with only radial and azimuthal components is achieved. The polarization of the wavefront near the focal plane is analyzed in detail by calculating the Stokes polarization parameters. It is found that the polarization is spatially varying and entirely transversally polarized, and the polarization singularity disappears at the beam center, which makes the central bright channel possible.

Generation of nondiffracting quasi-circular polarization beams using an amplitude modulated phase hologram.

We propose an approach to the generation of nondiffracting quasi-circularly polarized beams by a highly focusing azimuthally polarized beam using an amplitude modulated spiral phase hologram. Numerical verifications are implemented in the calculation of the electromagnetic fields and Poynting vector field near the focus based on the vector diffraction theory, and the polarization of the wavefront near the focal plane is analyzed in detail by calculating the Stokes polarization parameters. It is found that the electric field, magnetic field, and Poynting vector field can simultaneously be uniform and nondiverging over a relatively long axial range of ~7.23λ. In the transverse plane, the ellipticity and azimuthal angle of the local polarization ellipse varies from point to point. No polarization singularity and phase singularity are found at the beam center, which makes the bright spot possible.