Publications by authors named "Kuo-Yang Huang"

Aim: Studies evaluating the cardiovascular safety of pioglitazone show inconsistent results and ischemic heart disease (IHD) risks associated with different anti-diabetic drugs added to metformin uncontrolled type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are not assessed. This study aimed to evaluate IHD risk associated with pioglitazone and/or insulin added to patients with metformin uncontrolled T2DM.

Methods: Data were extracted from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The success and failure of extubation of patients with acute respiratory failure is a very important issue for clinicians, and the failure of the ventilator often leads to possible complications, which in turn leads to a lot of doubts about the medical treatment in the minds of the people, so in order to increase the success of extubation success of the doctors to prevent the possible complications, the present study compared different time series algorithms and different activation functions for the training and prediction of extubation success or failure models.

Methods: This study compared different time series algorithms and different activation functions for training and predicting the success or failure of the extubation model.

Results: The results of this study using four validation methods show that the GRU model and Tanh's model have a better predictive model for predicting the success or failure of the extubation and better predictive result of 94.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The NLRP3 inflammasome is an essential component of the innate immune system, but excessive activation can lead to inflammatory diseases. Ion fluxes across the plasma membrane or from intracellular stores are known to regulate NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Deep-sea water (DSW) contains high concentrations of many mineral ions, which could potentially influence NLRP3 inflammasome activation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Along with existing infection control policies, repeated education and training of environmental service workers (ESWs) improves their compliance and ultimately reduces hospital-associated infection (HAI) rates. However, only limited studies have explored the health behavioral determinants of ESWs regarding their cleaning performance after implementing an educational intervention with multi-faceted infection control strategy.

Objective: To determine whether an educational intervention with multi-faceted infection control strategy improves the health behavioral determinants associated with ESWs' cleaning performance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - ProFun is a new web-based platform designed for functional enrichment analysis (FEA) of gene expression in parasitic protozoans, addressing the lack of FEA tools for these important tropical pathogens.
  • - It offers three analytical modules (Gene Overlaps, Over-representation Analysis, and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis) and utilizes a user-friendly interface, allowing researchers to easily input gene IDs and customize their analysis.
  • - ProFun is the first of its kind for protozoans and enables comparisons of FEA results from complex experimental designs, making it a valuable tool for advancing research in this field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Intestinal parasitic infections are the most common infectious diseases among Southeast Asian migrant workers in Taiwan, especially for infections with Blastocystis hominis. However, little is known about the impact of Blastocystis subtypes (STs) on the gut microbiota.

Methods: We retrospectively evaluated the prevalence of intestinal parasites in a teaching hospital in Northern Taiwan in the period of 2015-2019.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Successful weaning from mechanical ventilation is important for patients admitted to intensive care units. However, models for predicting real-time weaning outcomes remain inadequate. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a machine-learning model for predicting successful extubation only using time-series ventilator-derived parameters with good accuracy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The aim of this study is to assess the impact of the duration of the integrated disease management (IDM) program on COPD-related outcomes in real-world setting.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study among 3771 patients with COPD who had regularly completed 4 visits of IDM program within 1 year between April 1, 2017 and December 31, 2018. CAT score as the primary outcome used to investigate the association between IDM intervention duration and improvement in CAT score.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pioglitazone is an insulin resistance inhibitor widely used as monotherapy or combined with metformin or insulin in treating type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). This study further investigated the relationship between pioglitazone use and the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD) in patients newly diagnosed with T2DM, and examined the potential impact of insulin use on this association. Data were extracted from the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) of Taiwan.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The nucleotide-binding and oligomerization domain, leucine-rich repeats, and pyrin domain-containing protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome plays a crucial role in innate immunity and is involved in the pathogenesis of autoinflammatory diseases. Glycolysis regulates NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages. However, how lactic acid fermentation and pyruvate oxidation controlled by the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier (MPC) affect NLRP3 inflammasome activation and autoinflammatory disease remains elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Monocytes were critical cells in the innate immune system. Monocyte recruitment to the lungs is a crucial process of pathophysiology in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Current evidence on the association between the occurrence of acute exacerbations of COPD (AECOPD) and monocytes was unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Trichomonas vaginalis infection is one of the most widespread sexually transmitted infections in the world. There are approximately 276 million cases worldwide. Most men remain undiagnosed and untreated because they are asymptomatic.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Both the annotation and identification of genes in pathogenic parasites are still challenging. Although, as a survival factor, nitric oxide (NO) has been proven to be synthesized in (TV), nitric oxide synthase (NOS) has not yet been annotated in the TV genome. We developed a witness-to-suspect strategy to identify incorrectly annotated genes in TV via the Smith-Waterman and Needleman-Wunsch algorithms through in-depth and repeated alignment of whole coding sequences of TV against thousands of sequences of known proteins from other organisms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Obesity is a world-wide problem, especially the child obesity, with the complication of various metabolic diseases. Child obesity can be developed as early as the age between 2 and 6. The expansion of fat mass in child age includes both hyperplasia and hypertrophy of adipose tissue, suggesting the importance of proliferation and adipogenesis of preadipocytes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study focused on comparing disease-free survival (DFS) rates after surgery between patients with clinically node-positive (cN+) and clinically node-negative (cN0) stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
  • Researchers analyzed data from 754 patients, revealing that those with cN+ status had a significantly lower 5-year DFS rate compared to cN0 patients (79% vs. 90%).
  • Findings suggest that cN+ patients may require more aggressive post-surgery treatment or closer follow-up to monitor for tumor recurrence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Trichomoniasis is the most prevalent sexually transmitted infection worldwide, and is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. However, Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) has received little public health attention, and only limited data are available on prevalence of TV and other Trichomonas-associated syndromes in pregnant women. This study aimed to determine associations between pregnancy and incident trichomoniasis-related diseases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Thoracic empyema is a disease with high mortality and morbidity. Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) is recommended to treat advanced stage empyema. The purpose of this study was to explore risk factors associated with post-surgery mortality for community-acquired empyema.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

is the causative agent of trichomoniasis, the most prevalent non-viral sexually transmitted infection worldwide. Metronidazole (MTZ) is the mainstay of anti-trichomonal chemotherapy; however, drug resistance has become an increasingly worrying issue. Additionally, the molecular events of MTZ-induced cell death in remain elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) are at greater risk of developing active tuberculosis and other intracellular bacterial infections, although the risk of acquiring infections from nontuberculous Mycobacterium (NTM) remains undefined. This study evaluated associations between DM and incidence of NTM infection-caused pulmonary and cutaneous diseases. Data for DM patients were extracted from the National Health Insurance Research Database of Taiwan.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The three most common sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are (CT), (GC) and (TV). The prevalence of these STIs in Taiwan remains largely unknown and the risk of STI acquisition affected by the vaginal microbiota is also elusive. In this study, a total of 327 vaginal swabs collected from women with vaginitis were analyzed to determine the presence of STIs and the associated microorganisms by using the BD Max CT/GC/TV molecular assay, microbial cultures, and 16S rRNA sequencing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Activation of the Nod-like receptor 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is important for activation of innate immune responses, but improper and excessive activation can cause inflammatory disease. We previously showed that glycolysis, a metabolic pathway that converts glucose into pyruvate, is essential for NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages. Here, we investigated the role of metabolic pathways downstream glycolysis - lactic acid fermentation and pyruvate oxidation-in activation of the NLRP3 inflammasome.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Beta-adrenergic blocking agents (abbreviated as beta-blockers) have been used for treating various cardiovascular diseases. However, the potential for asthma exacerbation is one of the major adverse effects of beta-blockers. This study aimed to compare the level of risk for an asthma attack in patients receiving various beta-blockers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Image evaluation strategy for lung cancer patients has difficulty obtaining the appropriate quantity of diffuse lung nodules and bone metastases. The study was to demonstrate whether early variations in the levels of serum 4-tumor markers (4-TMs)(carcinoembryonic antigen [CEA], cancer antigen [CA]125, CA19-9, and CA15-3) after TKI targeted therapy were associated with treatment response in patients with lung adenocarcinoma.

Methods: Patients with stage IIIB-IV lung adenocarcinoma taking epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) TKIs or anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitors were enrolled prospectively from June 2012 to February 2015.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Iron plays essential roles in the pathogenesis and proliferation of Trichomonas vaginalis, the causative agent of the most prevalent non-viral human sexually transmitted infection. We previously demonstrated that under iron deficiency, the endogenous nitric oxide (NO) is accumulated and capable of regulating the survival of T. vaginalis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF