Proximity to petrochemical industry and risk of childhood asthma occurrence.

Adverse effects on the respiratory system were associated with intensive petroleum-related industrial activities. The study aimed to assess the impact of petrochemical exposure on childhood asthma using various surrogate indices. A singleton birth cohort from 2004 to 2017 was conducted, leveraging two linked nationwide databases in Taiwan.

PreLect: Prevalence leveraged consistent feature selection decodes microbial signatures across cohorts.

The intricate nature of microbiota sequencing data-high dimensionality and sparsity-presents a challenge in identifying informative and reproducible microbial features for both research and clinical applications. Addressing this, we introduce PreLect, an innovative feature selection framework that harnesses microbes' prevalence to facilitate consistent selection in sparse microbiota data. Upon rigorous benchmarking against established feature selection methodologies across 42 microbiome datasets, PreLect demonstrated superior classification capabilities compared to statistical methods and outperformed machine learning-based methods by selecting features with greater prevalence and abundance.

Large-scale multicenter study reveals anticitrullinated SR-A peptide antibody as a biomarker and exacerbator for rheumatoid arthritis.

Current diagnosis and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is still challenging. More than one-third of patients with RA could not be accurately diagnosed because of lacking biomarkers. Our recent study reported that scavenger receptor-A (SR-A) is a biomarker for RA, especially for anticyclic citrullinated peptide antibody (anti-CCP)-negative RA.

Tracheal mucosal keratosis: Case discussion and literature review.

A 57-year-old female presented with a chief complaint of cough, with productive yellow sputum particularly severe in the morning. Bronchoscopy revealed inflammatory changes in both main bronchi, with abundant white purulent secretions and necrotic material adhering to the luminal surface. Histopathological examination showed chronic inflammatory changes in the mucosal tissue, with mild hyperplasia of the local squamous epithelium and evidence of keratinization in the surrounding area, consistent with a diagnosis of tracheal mucosal keratosis.