Publications by authors named "LENG E"

We report the diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes of a 52-year-old woman who originally presented to her primary care provider with adenopathy. Core needle biopsy (CNB) was inconclusive as it could not distinguish between follicular and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas (DLBCLs). A left axillary surgical lymph node biopsy was performed and demonstrated that the patient had a DLBCL arising from grade 3 follicular lymphoma.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The utility of metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) in the diagnosis of tuberculous meningitis (TBM) remains uncertain. We performed a meta-analysis to comprehensively evaluate its diagnostic accuracy for the early diagnosis of TBM.

Methods: English (PubMed, Medline, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and Embase) and Chinese (CNKI, Wanfang, and CBM) databases were searched for relevant studies assessing the diagnostic accuracy of mNGS for TBM.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) is the leading form of central nervous system tuberculosis, associated with high rates of mortality and disability, making early diagnosis crucial for improving patient outcomes.
  • The traditional diagnostic methods for TBM, which include microscopy, culture, and PCR, are often ineffective due to the low bacterial load in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the limitations of conventional techniques.
  • This review highlights the current landscape of TBM diagnostics, emphasizing ongoing research, the pros and cons of available methods, and the challenges clinicians face in ensuring accurate and efficient diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The trade-off effect between strength and fracture toughness typically observed in composites is challenging for the design and development of novel materials. An amorphous state can impede the trade-off effect of strength and fracture toughness, improving the mechanical properties of composites. Choosing the typical tungsten carbide-cobalt (WC-Co) cemented carbides as examples, where the amorphous binder phase was found, the impact of binder phase Co on the mechanical properties was further investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on tuberculous meningitis (TBM) in South China, particularly looking at the occurrence of cranial nerve palsy as a serious complication in these patients.
  • Out of 114 patients analyzed, about 33.3% experienced cranial nerve palsy, with the most common types being oculomotor and optic nerve palsies.
  • Key risk factors identified for developing cranial nerve palsy included the presence of focal neurological deficits, extracranial tuberculosis, and elevated total white cell count in cerebrospinal fluid.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Central nervous system (CNS) infection has a high incidence and mortality worldwide. Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) accounts for approximately 5-6% of all extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB), and is considered an extremely lethal form of CNS TB, which has become an important threat to human health. Anemia is a common symptom of TB, and its prevalence is generally higher in patients with TBM than in other meningitis patients and healthy individuals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Poor social functioning is an emerging public health problem associated with physical and mental health consequences. Developing prognostic tools is critical to identify individuals at risk for poor social functioning and guide interventions. We aimed to inform prediction models of social functioning by evaluating models relying on bio-behavioral data using machine learning.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study compared the accuracy of blood and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) interferon release tests (IGRAs) for diagnosing tuberculous meningitis (TBM) through a meta-analysis of existing research.
  • A total of 12 studies were analyzed, with findings showing that blood IGRAs had 74% sensitivity and 78% specificity, while CSF IGRAs had higher accuracy with 79% sensitivity and 95% specificity.
  • The conclusion is that CSF IGRAs are more accurate than blood IGRAs for diagnosing TBM, indicating their potential for better clinical use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Tuberculous meningitis (TBM) is the most serious form of extrapulmonary tuberculosis caused by , and is characterized by high morbidity and mortality. Unfortunately, it is difficult to distinguish TBM from bacterial meningitis (BM) based on clinical features alone. The latest diagnostic tests and neuroimaging methods are still not available in many developing countries.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Mulberry (Morus alba L.) leaves are widely used in traditional Chinese medicine for their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, anti-obesity, antidiabetic, antiatherosclerotic, and anticancer properties. The current study aimed to investigate the effect of mulberry leaf extract (MLE) on Staphylococcus aureus (S.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The high mortality associated with invasive fungal infections, narrow spectrum of available antifungals, and increasing evolution of antifungal resistance necessitate the development of alternative therapies. Host defense peptides are regarded as the first line of defense against microbial invasion in both vertebrates and invertebrates. In this work, we investigated the effectiveness of four naturally occurring pore-forming antimicrobial peptides (melittin, magainin 2, cecropin A, and mastoparan B) against a panel of clinically relevant pathogens, including , , , and .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Professional soccer clubs invest significantly into the development of their academy prospects with the hopes of producing elite players. Talented youngsters in elite development systems are exposed to high amounts of sports-specific practise with the aims of developing the foundational skills underpinning the capabilities needed to excel in the game. Yet large disparities in maturation status, growth-related issues, and highly-specialised sport practise predisposes these elite youth soccer players to an increased injury risk.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Multi-parametric MRI (mpMRI) is a critical tool in prostate cancer (PCa) diagnosis and management. To further advance the use of mpMRI in patient care, computer aided diagnostic methods are under continuous development for supporting/supplanting standard radiological interpretation. While voxel-wise PCa classification models are the gold standard, few if any approaches have incorporated the inherent structure of the mpMRI data, such as spatial heterogeneity and between-voxel correlation, into PCa classification.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Spatial partitioning methods correct for nonstationarity in spatially related data by partitioning the space into regions of local stationarity. Existing spatial partitioning methods can only estimate linear partitioning boundaries. This is inadequate for detecting an arbitrarily shaped anomalous spatial region within a larger area.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Supercritical water (SCW) technology can be applied as an efficient and environment-friendly method to recover toxic or complex chemical wastes. Separation and chemical reactions under supercritical conditions may be realized by changing the temperature, pressure, and other operating parameters to adjust the physical and chemical properties of water. However, salt deposition and corrosion are often encountered during the treatment of inorganic substances, which will hinder the commercial applications of SCW technology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Multi-parametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) has been playing an increasingly important role in the detection of prostate cancer (PCa). Various computer-aided detection algorithms were proposed for automated PCa detection by combining information in multiple mpMRI parameters. However, there are specific features of mpMRI, including between-voxel correlation within each prostate and heterogeneity across patients, that have not been fully explored but could potentially improve PCa detection if leveraged appropriately.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Multi-zonal segmentation is a critical component of computer-aided diagnostic systems for detecting and staging prostate cancer. Previously, convolutional neural networks such as the U-Net have been used to produce fully automatic multi-zonal prostate segmentation on magnetic resonance images (MRIs) with performance comparable to human experts, but these often require large amounts of manually segmented training data to produce acceptable results. For institutions that have limited amounts of labeled MRI exams, it is not clear how much data is needed to train a segmentation model, and which training strategy should be used to maximize the value of the available data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Training load monitoring is a core aspect of modern-day sport science practice. Collecting, cleaning, analysing, interpreting, and disseminating load data is usually undertaken with a view to improve player performance and/or manage injury risk. To target these outcomes, practitioners attempt to optimise load at different stages throughout the training process, like adjusting individual sessions, planning day-to-day, periodising the season, and managing athletes with a long-term view.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Quercetin and crocin are the main active constituents of Eucommia and Gardenia species, respectively. This study was conducted to explore the effects of quercetin and crocin on fat reduction and renal fibrosis and the relationship of these compounds with autophagy. First, a model of high-fat diet- and streptozotocin-induced type 2 diabetes was established and then subjected model animals to 8 weeks of metformin, quercetin and crocin gavage.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Here, we present a rational approach that enhances the membrane selectivity of a prolific pore-forming peptide, melittin, based on experimental observations that the cationic polymer, ε-polylysine, disrupts bacterial membranes with greater affinity over mammalian cells when compared to poly-l-lysine and poly-d-lysine. We systematically replaced three α-lysine residues in melittin with ε-lysine residues and identified key residues that are important for cytotoxicity. We then assessed the antimicrobial properties of the modified peptides which carry two or three ε-lysyl residues.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a major cause of cancer death among men. The histopathological examination of post-surgical prostate specimens and manual annotation of PCa not only allow for detailed assessment of disease characteristics and extent, but also supply the ground truth for developing of computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems for PCa detection before definitive treatment. As manual cancer annotation is tedious and subjective, there have been a number of publications describing methods for automating the procedure via the analysis of digitized whole-slide images (WSIs).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI), which combines traditional anatomic and newer quantitative MRI methods, has been shown to result in improved voxel-wise classification of prostate cancer as compared with any single MRI parameter. While these results are promising, substantial heterogeneity in the mpMRI parameter values and voxel-wise prostate cancer risk has been observed both between and within regions of the prostate. This suggests that classification of prostate cancer can potentially be improved by incorporating structural information into the classifier.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Crocin (CRO), chlorogenic acid (CGA), geniposide (GEN), and quercetin (QUE) are all natural compounds with anti-obesity properties, in particular, hypolipidemic effects, which have been widely used for the treatment of obesity-related metabolic diseases. However, it is not yet known whether these compounds interact synergistically. Here, we investigated the effects and molecular mechanisms of CRO, CGA, GEN, QUE, and a combination of all four compounds (CCGQ), on lipid accumulation in human hepatoma (HepG2 cells).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Computer-aided detection/diagnosis (CAD) of prostate cancer (PCa) on multiparametric MRI (mpMRI) is an active area of research. In the literature, the performance of predictive models trained to detect PCa on mpMRI has typically been reported in terms of voxel-wise measures such as sensitivity and specificity and/or area under the receiver operating curve (AUC). However, it is unclear whether models that score higher by these measures are actually superior.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF