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Background: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is commonly utilized in preoperative treatment for local breast cancer, and it gives high clinical response rates and can result in pathologic complete response (pCR) in 6-25% of patients. In recent years, dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) has been increasingly used to assess the pathological response of breast cancer to NAC. In present analysis, we assess the diagnostic performance of DCE-MRI in evaluating the pathological response of breast cancer to NAC. Materials and Methods:A systematic search in PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and Web of Science for original studies was performed. The Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2 tool was used to assess the methodological quality of the included studies. Patient, study, and imaging characteristics were extracted, and sufficient data to reconstruct 2 × 2 tables were obtained. Data pooling, heterogeneity testing, forest plot construction, meta-regression analysis and sensitivity analysis were performed using Stata version 12.0 (StataCorp LP, College Station, TX).Results: Eighteen studies (969 patients with breast cancer) were included in the present meta-analysis. The pooled sensitivity and specificity of DCE-MRI were 0.80 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.70, 0.88) and 0.84 (95% [CI]: 0.79, 0.88), respectively. Meta-regression analysis found no significant factors affecting heterogeneity. Sensitivity analysis showed that studies that set pathological complete response (pCR) (n = 14) as a responder showed a tendency for higher sensitivity compared with those that set pCR and near pCR together (n = 5) as a responder (0.83 vs. 0.72), and studies (n = 14) that used DCE-MRI to early predict the pathological response of breast cancer had a higher sensitivity (0.83 vs. 0.71) and equivalent specificity (0.80 vs. 0.86) compared to studies (n = 5) that assessed the response after NAC completion. Conclusion:Our results indicated that DCE-MRI could be considered an important auxiliary method for evaluating the pathological response of breast cancer to NAC and Cheng et al.Breast Cancer Response in DCE-MRI used as an effective method for dynamically monitoring the efficacy during NAC. DCE-MRI also performed well in predicting the pCR of breast cancer to NAC. However, due to the heterogeneity of the included studies, caution should be exercised in applying our results.

The primary aim of the present study was to evaluate abnormal iron distribution in specific regions of the brains in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) using quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) and R2 * mapping, and to compare the diagnostic performances of QSM and R2 * mapping in differentiating patients with PD with that in normal controls. A total of 25 patients with idiopathic PD and 28 sex-and age-matched normal controls were included in the present study and their brains investigated using a 3T scanner. Magnetic resonance imaging techniques, namely, QSM and R2 * mapping, were applied to generate susceptibility and R2 * values. The differences in susceptibility and R2 * values in deep grey matter nuclei between patients with PD and the normal controls were compared using independent samples t-tests. The abilities of QSM and R2 * mapping to classify patients with PD and normal controls were analyzed using receiver operating characteristic curves. Correlation analyses between imaging parameters (e.g. susceptibility and R2 * values) and clinical feature (disease severity assessed using the Hoehn and Yahr score) were performed. The intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) for susceptibility (ICC= 0.977; P<0.001) and R2 * (ICC=0.945; P<0.001) values between two neuro-radiologists were >0.81, showing excellent inter-rater agreement. The susceptibility values were significantly increased in the substantia nigra (SN) and red nucleus, but were decreased in the putamen of patients with PD compared with that in the corresponding brain regions of normal controls. However, increased R2 * values were observed only in the SN in patients with PD. QSM showed higher sensitivity and specificity compared with R2 * mapping to separate the patients with PD from the normal controls. There were no significant correlations between the susceptibility/R2 * values and clinical features in all targeted regions of the brains in patients with PD. In conclusion, both QSM and R2 * mapping are feasible to calculate the iron levels in human brains, and QSM provides a more sensitive and accurate method to assess regional abnormal iron distribution in patients with PD.

Curcumin (CUR) has the ability to attenuate oxidative stress in the myocardium and to protect the myocardium from lipotoxic injury owing to its lipid-reducing properties. However, the use of CUR is limited due to its hydrophobicity and instability. In this study, CUR-loaded nanoparticles (CUR NPs) were developed using an amphiphilic copolymer, monomethoxy poly (ethylene glycol)-b-poly (DL-lactide), as a vehicle material. CUR NPs with high drug loading and small size were prepared under optimized conditions. The effects of CUR NPs on palmitate-induced cardiomyocyte injury were investigated and the possible protective mechanism of CUR NPs was also examined. It was found that CUR NPs were able to control the release of CUR and to deliver CUR to H9C2 cells, and they could prevent palmitate-treated H9C2 cells from apoptosis. In addition, CUR NPs could regulate the Bax and Bcl-2 levels of palmitate-treated H9C2 cells back to their respective normal levels. A prospective mechanism for the function of CUR NPs is that they may activate the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)/mammalian target of rapamycin complex-1/p-p70 ribosomal protein S6 kinase signaling pathway, regulate the expression of downstream proteins and resist the palmitate-induced cardiomyocyte injury. Results suggest that CUR NPs can attenuate palmitate-induced oxidative stress in cardiomyocytes and protect cardiomyocytes from apoptosis through the AMPK pathway. In view of the safety and efficiency of these CUR NPs, they have potential for application in protecting the myocardium from lipotoxic injury.

Background and Objective: Acupuncture is used as an alternative treatment for patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). The associated therapeutic effect of acupuncture is often attributed to its modulatory effect on the activity of the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), although the mechanism is not well-studied. We employed a repeated measures design to investigate the brain modulatory effect of acupuncture on the PFC in a group of patients with MDD and investigated whether the modulatory effect is influenced by the severity of the disease.Methods: A total of 47 patients diagnosed with MDD were enrolled in this functional near-infrared spectroscopy experiment. The severity of depressive symptoms was measured at baseline using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-24 (HAMD). The cortical activation in the bilateral PFC areas during a verbal fluency task (VFT) was measured before and after a single session of acupuncture in the Baihui acupoint. We further explored the potential correlation between the severity of MDD and task-related activation before and after acupuncture.Results: A single session of acupuncture significantly tended to enhance the activation level of the left frontopolar cortex in patients with severe depression during VFT, but a null effect was found in those with mild to moderate depression. Among patients with severe depression, a strong correlation was observed between HAMD scores and the change in VFT-related activation after acupuncture in the left dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC).Conclusion: A single session of acupuncture did not significantly modulate the activation of the left PFC in patients with mild to moderate depression; however, it demonstrated a tendency to enhance the activation of the frontopolar area in patients with severe depression. Among patients with severe depression, there is a correlation between the activation by acupuncture of left DLPFC during executive functioning and the severity of depressive symptoms, suggesting that the brain activity induced by acupuncture is likely to be influenced by the baseline disease severity in patients with MDD.

BackgroundSmall animal models that can mimic degenerative disc disease (DDD) are commonly used to examine DDD progression. However, assessments such as histological studies and macroscopic measurements do not allow for longitudinal studies because they can only be completed after the animal is sacrificed. Dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) may provide a reliable, non-invasive in vivo method for detecting the progression.MethodsThe present study investigated the progression of changes in lumbar discs and the effect of endplate conditions on diffusion into the lumbar discs of aging sand rats after intravenous administration of gadolinium-containing contrast medium through the tail vein. Contrast enhancement was measured in the lumbar intervertebral discs on each image. The results were compared with those from conventional histological characterizations.ResultsT2-weighted images revealed that with aging, the shape of L3–L4, L4–L5, L5–L6, and L6–S1 nucleus pulposus (NP) became irregular, while the mean areas, signal intensities, and T2 values of the NP were significantly decreased. Each of the observed disc changes demonstrated a progressive increase in phase during 2-min scout scans. Post-contrast MRI showed impaired endplate nutritional diffusion to the disc with aging, enhancement was significantly greater in young animals than in old animals. Endplate calcification or sclerosis was histologically confirmed; histologic score was correlated with the age. We found the histological score of the endplate negatively corresponded to the DCE-MRI results.ConclusionsDCE-MRI studies offer a non-invasive in vivo method for investigating the progress of diffusion into the discs and the functional conditions of the endplate. We conclude that quantitative DCE-MRI can identify the severity of disc degeneration and efficiently reflect the progression of vertebral endplate changes in the aging sand rat lumbar spine via the NP contrast enhancement patterns.

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Diselenide-containing paclitaxel nanoparticles (SePTX NPs) indicated selectivity of cytotoxicity between cancerous and normal cells in our previous work. Herein, the mechanism is revealed by molecular biology in detail. Cancer cells and normal cells were treated with the SePTX NPs and cell proliferation was measured using 3-(4, 5-dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2, 5-diphenyl-2-H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay and cell morphology. Measurement of reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and biochemical parameters were employed to monitor oxidative stress of the cells. JC-1 assay was used to detect the mitochondrial dysfunction of the cells. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) analysis was used to detect apoptosis of the cells. Immunofluorescence analysis and western blotting were employed to monitor changes in signaling pathway-related proteins. Compared with PTX, SePTX NPs has a good selectivity to cancer cells and can obviously induce the proliferation damage of cancer cells, but has no significant toxicity to normal cells, indicating that SePTX NPs has a specific killing effect on cancer cells. The results of mechanism research show that SePTX NPs can successfully inhibit the depolymerization of microtubules and induce cell cycle arrest, which is related to the upregulation of p53 and CyclinB1. Simultaneously, SePTX NPs can successfully induce oxidative stress, cause mitochondrial dysfunction, resulting in mitochondrial pathway-mediated apoptosis, which is related to the upregulation of autophagy-related protein LC3-II. On the other hand, lewis lung cancer C57BL/6 mice were used to evaluate the anti-tumor effects of SePTX NPs in vivo. Our data show that SePTX NPs exhibited high inhibiting efficiency against the growth of tumors and were able to reduce the side effects. Collectively, these data indicate that the high antitumor effect and selective cytotoxicities of SePTX NPs is promising in future cancer therapy.