Hyperbaric oxygen therapy ameliorates intestinal and systematic inflammation by modulating dysbiosis of the gut microbiota in Crohn's disease.

Background: Dysbiosis of the gut microbiota is pivotal in Crohn's disease (CD) and modulated by host physiological conditions. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a promising treatment for CD that can regulate gut microbiota. The relationship between HBOT and the gut microbiota in CD remains unknown.

A Cold-Adapted Chitinase-Producing Bacterium from Antarctica and Its Potential in Biocontrol of Plant Pathogenic Fungi.

To obtain chitinase-producing microorganisms with high chitinolytic activity at low temperature, samples collected from Fildes Peninsula in Antarctica were used as sources for bioprospecting of chitinolytic microorganisms. A cold-adapted strain, designated as GWSMS-1, was isolated from marine sediment and further characterized as . To improve the chitinase production, one-factor-at-a-time and orthogonal test approaches were adopted to optimize the medium components and culture conditions.

First-in-class immune-modulating small molecule Icaritin in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma: preliminary results of safety, durable survival and immune biomarkers.

Background: With poor prognosis and limited treatment options for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), development of novel therapeutic agents is urgently needed. This single-arm phase I study sought to assess the safety and preliminary efficacy of icaritin in human as a potential oral immunotherapy in addition to the immune-checkpoint inhibitors.

Methods: Eligible advanced HCC patients with Child-Pugh Class A or B were administered with a fixed oral dose of icaritin at either 600 or 800 mg b.

Statistical Properties of the Design for Simultaneous Global Drug Development Program.

Recently, a design was proposed for the Simultaneous Global Drug Development Program (SGDDP) to assess the impact of ethnic factors on the effect of a new treatment for a targeted ethnic (TE) population. It used weighted Z tests to combine the information collected from the TE and non-TE (NTE) subgroups in the SGDDP based on the fundamental assumption on their shared biological commonality. In this article, we mathematically formulated this assumption as the quantitative interaction between treatment effect and subgroup.

A comparison of nonparametric and parametric methods to adjust for baseline measures.

When analyzing the randomized controlled trial, we may employ various statistical methods to adjust for baseline measures. Depending on the method chosen to adjust for baseline measures, inferential results can vary. We investigate the Type 1 error and statistical power of tests comparing treatment outcomes based on parametric and nonparametic methods.

Optimal thresholds by maximizing or minimizing various metrics via ROC-type analysis.

Rationale And Objectives: Based on imaging features, the optimal thresholds are typically determined as cutoff points to dichotomize the corresponding measurement scales.

Materials And Methods: Five metrics (ie, the Youden index, Euclidian distance, percent of correct diagnosis, kappa statistic, and mutual information) are individually maximized or minimized to derive the corresponding optimal threshold. These optimal thresholds are estimated under the parametric binormal assumption.