Metabolic syndrome, its components, and gastrointestinal cancer risk: a meta-analysis of 31 prospective cohorts and Mendelian randomization study.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Cohort studies have linked metabolic syndrome (MetS) to gastrointestinal (GI) cancer risk. We aimed to evaluate the associations between MetS, its components, and combinations of MetS components with eight GI cancers risk. METHODS: We conducted a systematic search of prospective cohort studies and performed a meta-analysis. Subgroup analyses regarding diagnostic criteria, sex, cancer sites, histological subtypes, ethnic groups, and studies adjusted for alcohol consumption were carried out. Mendelian randomization (MR) was employed to evaluate the causality between 17 MetS-related traits and eight GI cancers among Europeans and Asians separately. RESULTS: Meta-analyses of 31 prospective studies indicated that MetS was significantly associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer (CRC) (RR [95% CI] = 1.13 [1.12-1.15]), esophageal cancer (EC) (RR [95% CI] = 1.17 [1.03-1.32]), gallbladder cancer (GBC) (RR [95% CI] = 1.37[1.10-1.71]), liver cancer (LC) (RR [95% CI] = 1.46 [1.29-1.64]), and pancreatic cancer (PaC) (RR [95% CI] = 1.25 [1.20-1.30]), but not gastric cancer (GC) (RR [95% CI] = 1.11 [0.96-1.28]). Regarding the associations between MetS components and GI cancers risk, the following associations showed statistical significance: obesity-CRC/LC/EC/, hypertriglyceridemia-LC/PaC, reduced high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-CRC/LC/GC/PaC, hyperglycemia-CRC/LC/PaC, and hypertension-CRC/LC/EC/PaC. Sex-specific associations were observed between individual MetS components on GI cancers risk. Among the top three common combinations in both sexes, obesity + HTN + hyperglycemia had the strongest association with CRC risk (RR [95% CI] = 1.54 [1.49-1.61] for males and 1.27 [1.21-1.33] for females). MR analyses revealed causality in 16 exposure-outcome pairs: waist-to-hip ratio/BMI/HbA1c-CRC; BMI/childhood obesity/waist circumference/T2DM/glucose-EC; BMI/waist circumference/cholesterol-LC; cholesterol/childhood obesity/waist circumference/HbA1c-PaC; and HbA1c-GBC. These results were robust against sensitivity analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Since MetS is reversible, lifestyle changes or medical interventions targeting MetS patients might be potential prevention strategies for GI cancers.

Deep Context-Sensitive Facial Landmark Detection With Tree-Structured Modeling.

Facial landmark detection is typically cast as a point-wise regression problem that focuses on how to build an effective image-to-point mapping function. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end deep learning approach for contextually discriminative feature construction together with effective facial structure modeling. The proposed learning approach is able to predict more contextually discriminative facial landmarks by capturing their associated contextual information. Moreover, we present a tree model to characterize human face structure and a structural loss function to measure the deformation cost between the ground-truth and predicted tree model, which are further incorporated into the proposed learning approach and jointly optimized within a unified framework. The presented tree model is able to well characterize the spatial layout patterns of facial landmarks for capturing the facial structure information. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach against the state-of-the-art over the MTFL and AFLW-full data sets.

Microchip electrophoretic separation and fluorescence detection of chelerythrine and sanguinarine in medicinal plants.

A new method has been developed for separation of chelerythrine and sanguinarine in medicinal plants used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The separation is achieved by microchip electrophoresis (CE) using laser-induced fluorescence detection. The CE separation is achieved by using a hydro-organic medium as the electrolyte buffer. The experimental results are consistent with the prediction by theory in terms of resolution and migration speed because of the low Joule heat generated in microchip CE. In addition, formamide was found to have a potential for separation of molecules with similar chemical structures. Based on these findings, a run buffer containing 50% formamide was used to separate chelerythrine (CHE) and sanguinarine (SAN). The influencing factors, such as solvent of run buffer, pH of buffer, separation distance, and separation voltage, were optimized. Baseline separation of chelerythrine and sanguinarine was achieved within 120 s under an electrical voltage of 1.8 kV. Good linearity was observed in the concentration range of 0.15-550 µg mL(-1) (r=0.9993) for CHE and in the range of 0.3-600 µg mL(-1) (r=0.9998) for SAN. A low limit of detection (LOD) was achieved because of the high sensitivity achieved by laser-induced fluorescence detection (i.e. 5.0 ng mL(-1) and 2.0 ng mL(-1) for CHE and SAN, respectively). The contents of CHE are found to be 641.8±7.5 and 134.0±2.3 mg/kg in extracts of Macleaya cordata and Chelidonium majus, respectively, with good recovery of above 99%. The corresponding values for SAN found in these Chinese herbal extracts are 681.8±7.9 mg/kg and 890.5±8.9 mg/kg, respectively.