Systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), on the basis of lymphocyte, neutrophil and platelet counts had been published to be a good prognostic factor in multiple cancers. Nevertheless, the prognostic value of SII in cancer patients remains inconsistent. Therefore, we carried out a meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic value of SII in these patients with cancer. A total of 22 articles with 7657 patients enrolled in this meta-analysis. The combined result revealed that a high SII was evidently correlated with poor overall survival (OS) (HR=1.69, 95%CI=1.42-2.01, p<0.001), poor time to recurrent (TTR) (HR=1.87, p<0.001) , poor progress-free survival (PFS) (HR=1.61, p=0.012) ,poor cancer-specific survival (CSS) (HR=1.44, p=0.027) , poor relapse-free survival (RFS) (HR=1.66, p=0.025) and poor disease-free survival (DFS) (HR=2.70, p<0.001) in patients with cancers. Subgroup analysis indicated that SII over the cutoff value could predict worse overall survival in Hepatocellular carcinoma (p<0.001), Gastric cancer (p=0.005), Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma (p=0.013), Urinary system cancer (p<0.001), Small cell lung cancer (p<0.001), Non-Small cell lung cancer (p<0.001) and Acral Melanoma (p<0.001). The largest effect size was observed in the Hepatocellular carcinoma (HR=2.11). In addition, these associations did not vary significantly by the cutoff value, sample size and ethnicity. Therefore, high SII may be a potential prognostic marker in patients with various cancers and associated with the poor overall outcomes.

Background:Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) has high mortality and is increasing in incidence. Barrett's esophagus (BE) increases the risk for EAC. Studies have reported inconsistent findings on the association between use of cyclooxygenase (COX) inhibitors and the risk of neoplastic progression in BE patients. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to investigate this association.Methods:A meta-analysis was undertaken among a total of 9 observational studies using fixed- and random-effects models, comprising 5446 participants; 605 had EAC or high-grade dysplasia (HGD).Results:Overall, COX inhibitors use was associated with a reduced risk of EAC/HGD among BE patients (relative risk (RR)=0.64, 95% confidence interval (CI)=0.53–0.77). Aspirin use also reduced the risk of EAC/HGD (RR=0.63, 95% CI=0.43–0.94), as well as non-aspirin COX inhibitors (RR=0.50, 95% CI=0.32–0.78). The chemopreventive effect seemed to be independent of duration response.Conclusions:Cyclooxygenase inhibitors use is associated with a reduced risk of developing EAC in patients with BE. Both low-dose aspirin and non-aspirin COX inhibitors are associated with a reduced risk of neoplasia. More well-designed randomised controlled trials are needed to increase our understanding of the chemopreventive effect of COX inhibitors.

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Indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) is an enzyme that catalyzes tryptophan to kynurenine and studies have revealed that IDO play a vital role in regulation of liver immunity and inflammation activities. This study investigated the association between plasma IDO and disease severity and the possible marker role of IDO in the inflammatory process of hepatitis C. In this study, 80 individuals with HCV infection were retrospectively selected. Plasma levels of IDO, IL-10, and TGF-β were assayed by ELISA. Clinical characteristics of patients, including the levels of ALT, AST, and total bilirubin (TBil) were collected from clinical databases. HCV-related liver cirrhosis (HC-Cirr) and HCV-related Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCV-HCC) had significantly high plasma levels of IDO compared to other patient groups and healthy controls. Plasma IL-10 level were significantly greater in all chronic liver disease groups and with respect to TGF-β, the level was high in all the selected patients with HCV infection compare with controls. Moreover, HCV-HCC patients showed highest values for both IL-10 and TGF-β, with significant difference compared with other groups. In addition, plasma IDO was positively correlated with TGF-β among all patients with HCV infection (r = 0.4509, P < 0.0001), with IL-10 in CHC patients (r = 0.4787, P = 0.0047), with TBil in HCV-Cirr patients (r = 0.4671; P = 0.0093). High level of IDO and TGF-β is associated with hepatocyte necrosis and intrahepatic inflammation, and may be used as an index of disease progression for patients with chronic HCV infection.

To systematically review and synthesize the safety and efficacy of coronavirus disease‐2019 (COVID‐19) vaccines in children and adolescents. PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cochrane Library databases, the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), the Chinese Clinical Trials Registry (ChiCTR), and https://ClinicalTrials.gov website were searched to collect accessible randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about the safety and efficacy of human COVID‐19 vaccines in children and adolescents until May 1, 2022. Three steps, including duplicate removal, title and abstract screening, and full‐text review, were used to screen the studies. The Cochrane risk‐of‐bias tool for RCTs was used to assess the bias risk of the included studies. Microsoft Excel 16.57 (2021) software was used for data extraction and analysis. (PROSPERO Code No: CRD42021295422). COVID‐19 vaccines were evaluated in a total of 10 950 children and adolescents in seven published studies and over 49 530 participants in 26 ongoing randomized controlled trials. Descriptive findings of the included published studies were reported stratified by vaccine type. The overall, local, and systemic adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) reported in most trials were similar between the vaccine and placebo groups. Most of the reactions reported were mild to moderate, whereas a few were severe. The common adverse events were injection‐site pain, fever, headache, cough, fatigue, and muscle pain. Few clinical trials reported serious adverse events, but most of them were unrelated to vaccination. In terms of efficacy, the investigated messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine was found to be 90.7%–100% efficacious in preventing COVID‐19 among children and adolescents, revealing good efficacy profiles in this age group. Among children and adolescents, the safety of current COVID‐19 vaccines is acceptable, and studies have suggested that mRNA vaccines can provide high protection against COVID‐19 infection in pediatric age groups.