【摘要】 目的 探討血尿酸水平、頸動脈斑塊與冠心病之間的關系。 方法 收集2006年1月-2009年12月擬診為冠心病的住院患者280例,冠狀動脈造影檢查冠狀動脈狹窄程度gt;50%的194例為冠心病組,冠狀動脈無狹窄或狹窄程度lt;50%的86例為對照組;冠心病組又分為單支、雙支、多支病變亞組。分別測定冠心病組與對照組頸總動脈與頸動脈分叉處內膜中層厚度(IMT)、等級評分、Crouse積分、血尿酸濃度。結果 與對照組相比,冠心病組頸總動脈與頸動脈分叉處IMT、等級評分、Crouse積分、血尿酸濃度均高于對照組,差異有統計學意義。在冠心病組,隨病變分支的增多,頸動脈超聲檢查指標與血尿酸隨之升高(Plt;0.05或0.01)。 結論 頸動脈IMT、等級評分、Crouse積分、血尿酸濃度與冠心病相關,是冠心病的獨立危險因素。【Abstract】 Objective To investigate the relationships between serum uric acid levels, carotid artery plaque and coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods 194 patients with CHD and 86 nonCHD patients were selected through coronary angiography in patients with essential hypertension. CHD group was divided into three subgroups including a single branch, doublebranch and multivessel disease. Intimamedia thickness (IMT) of carotid artery and carotid bifurcation, grade score, Crouse score, serum uric acid concentrations were detected in patients with coronary heart disease and control group. Results IMT of carotid artery and carotid bifurcation, grade score,crouse score, serum uric acid concentrations were higher in CHD group than that in control group, and the difference was statistically significant. In the CHD group, ultrasound parameters of carotid artery and serum uric acid increased with the increase in branch lesions (Plt;005 or 001). Conclusions Carotid IMT, grade score, Crouse score, serum uric acid concentration relate to coronary heart disease, which is an independent risk factor for coronary heart disease, respectively.
ObjectiveTo study the characteristics of carotid atherosclerotic plaque and investigate the relationship between visfatin and plaque stabilization. Methodsfifty-six patients with carotid stenosis were divided into symptomatic group (n=31) and asymptomatic group (n=25) based on the clinical manifestation and onset time.All plaque specimens were stained with HE and Masson trichrome staining and studied pathologically.The plaques were grouped into stable and unstable plaques based on thickness of the fibrous cap and the area of lipid-rich core in the plaques.The expression of visfatin was detected by immunohistochemistry staining. Results①The proportion of unstable plaques were significantly higher in symptomatic group than in asymptomatic group (67.74% vs 36.00%, P < 0.05).②Compared with stable plaques, unstable plaques had thinner fibrous cap, larger lipid necrotic core, and higher proportion of hemorrhage: (49.87±8.75)μm vs (74.54±6.80)μm (P < 0.001), (65.63±12.97)% vs (31.81±5.13)% (P < 0.001), and 63.33% vs 30.77% (P < 0.05).③The integral optical density value of expressed visfatin in unstable plaques was significantly more than in stable plaques (84 165.47±9 183.12 vs 55 694.08±4 818.57, P < 0.001). ConclusionsThe plaque destabilization is closely related to the clinical symptoms of atherosclerosis.The thickness of fibrous cap, area of lipid-rich core, and hemorrhage play an important role in the plaque stabilization.The visfatin is related to atherogenesis and plaque destabilization.
ObjectiveTo systematically review the long-term efficacy of biologics for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. MethodsPubMed, EMbase, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library were electronically searched to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the long-term efficacy of approved biologics for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis from inception to May 2021. Two reviewers independently screened the literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of the included studies; then, the network meta-analysis was performed by using Stata 16.0 software. ResultsA total of 26 RCTs were included. The results of network meta-analysis showed that among 11 biologics, the most effective biologics were risankizumab, followed by bimekizumab, brodalumab, guselkumab, and ixekizumab, and followed by secukinumab, adalimumab, ustekinumab, and etanercept was the last. ConclusionCurrent evidence shows that risankizumab is likely to be the best option for long-term treatment of moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high-quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.
ObjectiveTo study the correlation between neck artery vascular sclerosis and homocysteine levels in hypertensive patients. MethodsA total of 2 132 patients with hypertension participated in the program of "Stroke screening and prevention in Dongying city" were included from Sep. 2012 to Jan. 2013. Questionnaire, physical examination, biochemical blood tests and carotid artery ultrasound were conducted in all included patients. According to the level of homocysteine (Hcy), patients were divided into three groups:716 patients with Hcy level less than 12.3 mm/L were in Group 1, 703 patients with Hcy level 12.3 to 16.5 mm/L were in Group 2, and 713 patients with Hcy level more than 16.5 mm/L were in Group 3. The influence of Hcy levels on carotid atherosclerosis was analyzed. Results① The prevalence rate for carotid plaques in Groups 1, 2, and 3 were 50.28%, 60.03% and 65.36%, respectively. The prevalence rate for carotid plaques in Group 2 was higher than that in Group 1 with a statistical difference (OR=1.485, 95% CI 1.203 to 1.833, P=0.000). The prevalence rate in Group 3 was also higher than that in Group 1 with a statistical difference (OR=1.866, 95% CI 1.508 to 2.308, P=0.000). ② The prevalence rate for carotid plaques was 62.24% in the rural population, and 52.39% in the urban population. The difference between urban and rural populations was statistically significant (OR=1.500, 95% CI 1.259 to 1.788, P=0.000). ③ Using the presence of carotid plaques as a dependent variable and Hcy level as a covariant, logistic regression analysis found that the plaque formation in Group 2 was 1.491 times than in Group 1 and the plaque formation in Group 3 was 1.752 times than in Group 1. After adjusting the risk factors (gender, age, BMI, TG, TC, LDL-C, HDL-C and blood sugar level), the results showed that the plaque formation in Group 2 was 1.388 times than in Group 1, and the plaque formation in Group 3 was 1.452 times than in Group 1. ConclusionThere is a correlation between the increased incidence of carotid plaque and homocysteine levels in patients with hypertension. The incidence of carotid plaque in the rural population with hypertension is higher than that in the urban population. In the population with hypertension, high homocysteine level is an independent risk factor for the formation of carotid plaques.
Medical images of coronary artery plaque are always accompanied by the situation of extreme class imbalance. The traditional two-step methods locate the region of interest (ROI) in the sample firstly, and then segment the sample within the ROI. On the other hand, the traditional resampling methods use resampling strategies to increase the number of minority class samples to mitigate the effects of class imbalance. These two types of methods either make the network structure more complex or decrease training efficiency and performance of the model due to the increase of samples. This paper proposes a method including a novel focal weighted accuracy loss function and improved metrics evaluation algorithms to address the issues in the segmentation of coronary artery calcification plaque mentioned above. Experimental results on the selected dataset show the proposed method increased the training speed and improved the segmentation performance of the model without performing resampling on the dataset. Specifically, the F1-score was 0.873 5, the precision was 0.929 6, and the recall was 0.823 8. The F1-score was largely improved compared with the method using focal loss function. Furthermore, compared with methods with multiple models and methods via resampling the minority class samples, research results demonstrate that the proposed method improved the accuracy and efficiency in coronary artery plaque segmentation while has a shorter training time, which lays the foundation for improving the efficiency and scientific nature of diagnosing related diseases in the future.
Objective To observe the different clinical response patterns of uveal melanoma (UM) patients after external scleral plaque radiotherapy (PRT), and to investigate the risk factors of secondary enucleation after treatment failure. MethodsA single-centre retrospective study. Demographic baseline characteristics and clinical data were collected from 465 UM patients treated with 125I external scleral PRT at Beijing Tongren Hospital from March 2011 to September 2017. Among them, 217 were male and 248 were female, tumor all occurred monocularly. The mean age of subjects was 46.7±12.1 years. Reasons for secondary enucleation included local tumor treatment failure, glaucoma, scleral necrosis and patient request. Tumor grading was based on the grading standards established by the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC). The pattern of tumor response after PRT was classified as degenerated type, growth type, stable type or other types according to literature criteria. The median follow-up time after PRT was 59 months to observe tumor changes. Complete follow-up records of 3 or more color doppler ultrasound imaging (CDI) was available in 245 cases. A t-test was performed to compare the patient's age, intraocular pressure, best corrected visual acuity, tumor thickness and maximum basal diameter before treatment; a chi-square test was performed to compare the patient's gender, AJCC T classification of the tumor, whether the ciliary body was involved, presence of subretinal fluid, optic disc invasion and vitreous hemorrhage, tumor shape and location. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was used to estimate the cumulative probability of secondary enucleation after extra-scleral PRT. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were used to evaluate the relationship between tumor characteristics and secondary enucleation after extra-scleral PRT. ResultsAmong 465 patients, eecondary enucleation was performed on 78 (16.8%, 78/465) patients during the follow-up period. The 1, 3 and 5 year secondary enucleation rates were 5.4%, 9.3% and 17.1%, respectively. Eye preservation was successful in 387 cases (83.2%, 387/465). Patients treated by secondary enucleation had a larger maximum basal diameter of tumor, a higher proportion of irregular and diffuse morphology, a cumulative macular involved and a higher AJCC T classification, the difference was statistically significant (P＜0.05). There were 115, 76, 27, and 27 cases of degenerated type, stable type, growth type, and other type, respectively. The tumor thickness of the growth type and other types was significantly smaller than that of the degenerated type and the stable type, and the difference was statistically significant (P＜0.05). Univariate Cox analysis showed that the maximum basal diameter of the tumor (HR=1.19), tumor thickness (HR=1.08), AJCC T classification (HR=1.90), growth type response pattern (relative to degenerated type response pattern) (HR=4.20) was associated with failure of eye preservation (P＜0.05). In the multivariate Cox analysis, the largest tumor basal diameter (HR=1.24) and the growth type response pattern (relative to the degenerated type response pattern) (HR=4.59) were still associated with failure of eye preservation (P＜0.05). ConclusionsThe tumor thickness of UM patients with growing and other response patterns after PRT is smaller before treatment; the maximum basal diameter of the tumor and the growing response pattern are independent risk factors for secondary enucleation.
The segmentation of the intracoronary optical coherence tomography (OCT) images is the basis of the plaque recognition, and it is important to the following plaque feature analysis, vulnerable plaque recognition and further coronary disease aided diagnosis. This paper proposes an algorithm about multi region plaque segmentation based on kernel graph cuts model that realizes accurate segmentation of fibrous, calcium and lipid pool plaques in coronary OCT image, while boundary information has been well reserved. We segmented 20 coronary images with typical plaques in our experiment, and compared the plaque regions segmented by this algorithm to the plaque regions obtained by doctor's manual segmentation. The results showed that our algorithm is accurate to segment the plaque regions. This work has demonstrated that it can be used for reducing doctors' working time on segmenting plaque significantly, reduce subjectivity and differences between different doctors, assist clinician's diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease.
A method of ultrasonic simulation based on the FIELD II software platform for carotid artery plaque was proposed according to the analysis for geometrical shape, tissue characteristics and acoustic properties of carotid artery plaques in clinic, and then a simulation system was developed by using the MATLAB graphical user interface (GUI). In the simulation and development, a three-dimensional geometric model of blood vessel with plaques was set up by using the metaball implicit surface technique, and a tissue model was established based on the scatterers with spatial position of gamma random distribution. Comparison of the statistical and geometrical characteristics from simulated ultrasound B-mode images with those based on clinical ones and preset values, the results fully demonstrated the effectiveness of the simulation methods and system.
ObjectiveTo explore the correlation between coronary artery plaque composition and the gender via 128-slice spiral CT coronary angiography (128-SCTCA). MethodsBetween January and December 2012, 143 patients with coronary artery plaque diagnosed by 128-SCTCA were selected. The patients were divided into group A (no more than 50 years old, n=37) and group B (over 50 years old, n=106). ResultsThere were 29 male patients in group A, with 70 plaques including 30 fibrous plaques, 17 mixed plaques, 11 soft plaques, 12 calcified plaques; and the other 8 female patients had 13 plaques including 7 fibrous plaques, 2 mixed plaques, 2 soft plaques, and 2 calcified plaques. In group B, 56 male patients had 116 plaques, including 48 mixed plaques, 40 fibrous plaques, 14 soft plaques and 14 calcified plaques; the other 50 female patients had 90 plaques, including 36 mixed plaques, 22 fibrous plaques, and 16 soft plaques and calcified plaques. The differences of the plaque composition between males and females were not significant both in group A (χ2=0.664, P>0.05) and group B (χ2=3.708, P>0.05). ConclusionThere is no obvious correlation between gender and coronary plaque composition.
Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is widely used in coronary artery examination. Ultrasonic elastography combined with IVUS is very conspicuous in identifying plaque component and in detecting plaque vulnerability degree. In this study, a simulation model of the blood vessel based on finite element analysis (FEA) was established. The vessel walls generally have radial changes caused by different intravascular pressure. The signals at lower pressures were used as the pre-deformation data and the signals at higher pressure were used as the post-deformation data. Displacement distribution was constructed using the time-domain cross-correlation method, and then strain images. By comparison of elastograms under different pressures, we obtained the optimal pressure step. Furthermore, on the basis of the obtained optimize pressure step, the simulation results showed that this method could effectively distinguish characteristics between different component plaques, and could guide the later experiments and clinical applications.