The performance of abdominal MDCT in patients with a high degree of clinical suspicion for acute appendicitis reduces the number of false positives and has the potential to reduce negative appendectomies.
This study examined the effects of a smoking cessation coaching program based on the motivation stage applying the Transtheoretical Model to stop the smoking of patients in terms of the amount of smoking, nicotine dependence, CO level, and urine cotinine. The study design was a multi-repeat multiple repeat intermittent time series study with one-group, a pre-post design. The participants were 47 smoking patients (44 males and 3 females), who were treated at a public hospital in N city. The participants were 4 (8.51%) subjects in the action stage and 43 subjects (91.49%) in the preparation stage of the motivation stage. The coaching program intervention was conducted at the first day, second week, and 6th week. The smoking cessation maintenance of the subjects was checked at the 12th week. A chi-square test and t-test were used to analyze the data. The subjects in the action stage were kept under the condition of no smoking and nicotine dependence. After the program of subjects in the preparation stage, the amount of smoking, nicotine dependence, and CO level were significantly lower compared to the pre-test (p<.001). The findings suggest that the coaching program based on the motivation stage was effective in improving the smoking cessation for patients who smoke. On the other hand, the patients in the smoking cessation program may require much more financial assistance than those of healthy people. A greater workforce and budget will be needed for patients to stop smoking.
To demonstrate potent efficacy, a cancer vaccine needs to activate both innate and adaptive immune cells. Personalized cancer vaccine strategies often require the identification of patient‐specific neoantigens; however, the clonal and mutational heterogeneity of cancer cells presents inherent challenges. Here, extracellular nanovesicles derived from alpha‐galactosylceramide‐conjugated autologous acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells (ECNV‐αGC) are presented as a personalized therapeutic vaccine that activates both innate and adaptive immune responses, bypassing the need to identify patient‐specific neoantigens. ECNV‐αGC vaccination directly engages with and activates both invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells and leukemia‐specific CD8+ T cells in mice with AML, thereby promoting long‐term anti‐leukemic immune memory. ECNV‐αGC sufficiently serves as an antigen‐presenting platform that can directly activate antigen‐specific CD8+ T cells even in the absence of dendritic cells, thereby demonstrating a multifaceted cellular mechanism of immune activation. Moreover, ECNV‐αGC vaccination results in a significantly lower AML burden and higher percentage of leukemia‐free survivors among cytarabine‐treated hosts with AML. Human AML‐derived ECNV‐αGCs activate iNKT cells in both healthy individuals and patients with AML regardless of responsiveness to conventional therapies. Together, autologous AML‐derived ECNV‐αGCs may be a promising personalized therapeutic vaccine that efficiently establishes AML‐specific long‐term immunity without requiring the identification of neoantigens.
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