Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. Method Systematic reviews and meta-analyses were searched in Cochrane Library (Issue 4, 2008), MEDLINE (1978-2008) and Clinical Evidence database. Search terms included Postmenopausal (post-menopausal) osteoporosis, therapy, vertebral fracture, hormone replacement therapy, randomized controlled trial, meta analysis, female,human. Result A total of 4 protocols were found in Cochrane Library and a meta-analyse was found in MEDLINE. The result demonstrated that both cancellous and cortical bone mineral density increased after HRT. Statistically significant reductions in the risk of vertebral and non-vertebral fracture were also found. Conclusion HRT can reduce the risk of osteoporotic fracture by increasing bone density. However, other disease and adverse event were also associated with the BMD increase. Therefore, both advantage and disadvantage should be considered before applying HRT therapy to postmenopausal osteoporosis patients.
ObjectiveBased on real-word data, and compared with two common chronic respiratory diseases, interstitial lung disease (ILD) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), this case-control study plans to investigate the risk factors and clinical characteristics of patients with combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema syndrome (CPFE).MethodsA retrospective case-control study was carried out to screen the clinical data of 96 patients with CPFE, 133 patients with COPD and 164 patients with ILD, analyze their demographics, clinical data, complications and related clinical indicators. Univariate analysis was used to compare the differences among the three groups, and multivariate logistic analysis was used to screen for risk factors.ResultsAll three groups were in old age with the average age of above 71 years. In terms of male ratio and smoking rate, the CPFE group (93.8%, 85.4%) was higher than the ILD group (75.0%, 64.0%), but there was no significant difference when compared with the COPD group (90.2%, 82.0%). Regarding comorbid disease, the proportion of connective tissue disease (CTD) in the CPFE group (10.4%) and the ILD group (13.4%) was higher than that in the COPD group (1.5%). The proportion of hyperlipidemia in the CPFE group (8.3%) was higher than that in the COPD group (1.5%) and the ILD group (1.2%). There were differences in the abnormal proportion of antinuclear antibody among the three groups, but no significant difference was found when compared with the CPFE group alone. The CPFE group (46.9%, 12.5%) and the ILD group (54.9%, 9.8%) were significantly higher than the COPD group (34.6%, 2.3%) in terms of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) abnormal proportion and cancer rate. In terms of the prevalence of pulmonary hypertension, the CPFE group (41.7%) > the COPD group (33.1%) > the ILD group (32.9%) was shown, but no statistical significance was found among the three groups.ConclusionsMale and smoking are not only risk factors for COPD but also for CPFE. At the same time, the suffering of CPFE may be affected by immune factors and hyperlipidemia. The proportion of CPFE patients complicated with cancer and CEA abnormalities is higher than COPD patients. The severity of pulmonary hypertension in CPFE patients is significantly higher than the other two diseases.
ObjectiveTo summarize the progress of radiomics in the diagnosis and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma and discuss its future direction, limitations and challenges. MethodWe retrieve the literature related to radiomics in the diagnosis and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma and make an review. ResultsTraditional hepatocellular carcinoma imaging examination, diagnosis and differential diagnosis had certain limitations. Radiomics as an emerging technology, it helped extract tissue biological information that could not be detected by the naked eye from high-throughput quantitative images and transform into high-dimensional qualitative quantitative data, and either alone or in combination with other clinical and molecular data such as demographics, histology, genomics or proteomics or other clinical and molecular data to solve clinical problems such as hepatocellular carcinoma diagnosis and differential diagnosis, staging and grading, therapeutic regimen development and predicting prognosis and survival after therapy, etc. At present, there were still several problems to be solved in radiomics, such as insufficient interpretability of the combined artificial intelligence-medical imaging approach, lack of uniform standards and lack of external validation, etc. ConclusionsThe study of radiomics in the diagnosis and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma has been deepened and expanded to different degrees with great potential and application prospects. Radiomics brings greater benefits to the diagnosis, treatment and management of hepatocellular carcinoma patients, provides a new direction for optimizing medical decision-making and promoting the development of precision medicine. However, there are still some deficiencies and challenges to overcome in the radiomics technology and methods, which require extensive validation and optimization through further clinical trials.