Enabling patients to actively document their health information significantly improves understanding of how therapies work, disease progression, and overall life quality affects for those living with chronic disorders such as hematologic malignancies. Advancements in artificial intelligence, particularly in areas such as natural language processing and speech recognition, have resulted in the development of interactive tools tailored for healthcare. This paper introduces an innovative conversational agent tailored to the Greek language.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Phyllodes tumors (PTs) of the breast are uncommon fibroepithelial neoplasms that tend to recur locally and may have metastatic potential. Their pathogenesis is poorly understood. Hippo signaling pathway plays an essential role in organ size control, tumor suppression, tissue regeneration and stem cell self-renewal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rising prevalence of obesity-related illnesses, such as metabolic steatotic liver disease (MASLD), represents a significant global public health concern. This disease affects approximately 30 % of the adult population and is the result of metabolic abnormalities rather than alcohol consumption. Additionally, MASLD is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), chronic liver disease, and a variety of cancers, particularly gastrointestinal cancers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn addressing the critical role of emotional context in patient-clinician conversations, this study conducted a comprehensive sentiment analysis using BERT, RoBERTa, GPT-2, and XLNet. Our dataset includes 185 h of Greek conversations focused on hematologic malignancies. The methodology involved data collection, data annotation, model training, and performance evaluation using metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and specificity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe umbilical cord blood (UCB) donated in public UCB banks is a source of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) alternative to bone marrow for allogeneic HSC transplantation (HSCT). However, the high rejection rate of the donated units due to the strict acceptance criteria and the wide application of the haploidentical HSCT have resulted in significant limitation of the use of UCB and difficulties in the economic sustainability of the public UCB banks. There is an ongoing effort within the UCB community to optimize the use of UCB in the field of HSCT and a parallel interest in exploring the use of UCB for applications beyond HSCT i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a transdifferentiation program whereby epithelial cells acquire mesenchymal phenotype, is essential during embryonic development. EMT has also been implicated in cancer progression by conferring migratory and metastatic potential, as well as cell plasticity and stem cell like traits, to cancer cells. Metaplastic breast carcinoma (MBC) is a rare aggressive type of breast cancer characterized by the presence of heterologous elements, typically by the existence of epithelial and mesenchymal components.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMyeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are notable innate immune cells, which are further divided into two subpopulations, i.e., monocytic and granulocytic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGiven the limited real-world data of caplacizumab, our multicenter real-world study was designed to assess the safety and efficacy of caplacizumab in immune thrombotic thrombocytopenic pupura (iTTP), compared to historic controls. We have studied 70 patients: 23 in the caplacizumab and 47 in the historic control group. Plasma exchange was applied in all episodes except for two patients that denied plasma exchange.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeutropenia, as an isolated blood cell deficiency, is a feature of a wide spectrum of acquired or congenital, benign or premalignant disorders with a predisposition to develop myelodysplastic neoplasms/acute myeloid leukemia that may arise at any age. In recent years, advances in diagnostic methodologies, particularly in the field of genomics, have revealed novel genes and mechanisms responsible for etiology and disease evolution and opened new perspectives for tailored treatment. Despite the research and diagnostic advances in the field, real world evidence, arising from international neutropenia patient registries and scientific networks, has shown that the diagnosis and management of neutropenic patients is mostly based on the physicians' experience and local practices.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThrombosis is the most common and a life-threatening complication in patients with Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria. One-third of patients with PNH experience at least one thromboembolic event during the course of the disease, with thrombosis being the most common cause of death in these patients. The mechanism of thrombosis in PNH is complex and continues to be of great research interest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Closed wedge osteotomy of the distal radius represents a treatment option for the advanced scaphoid pseudarthrosis. Few authors have reported good results with many of the cases achieving union of the scaphoid. The aim of this study is to inform about the functional long-term outcome of two patients in whom bone union was not achieved after this procedure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMyelodysplastic syndromes include a broad spectrum of malignant myeloid disorders that are characterized by dysplastic ineffective hematopoiesis, reduced peripheral blood cells counts and a high risk of progression to acute myeloid leukemia. The disease arises primarily because of accumulating chromosomal, genetic and epigenetic changes as well as immune-mediated alterations of the hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). However, mounting evidence suggests that aberrations within the bone marrow microenvironment critically contribute to myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) initiation and evolution by providing permissive cues that enable the abnormal HSCs to grow and eventually establish and propagate the disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObesity is a significant risk factor for cancer development. Within the tumor microenvironment, adipocytes interact with cancer cells, immune cells, fibroblasts and endothelial cells, and orchestrate several signaling pathways by secreting bioactive molecules, including adipokines. Adipokines or adipocytokines are produced predominantly by adipocytes and function as autocrine, paracrine and endocrine mediators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe definition of autoimmune neutropenias (AIN) has been based on the demonstration of autoantibodies directed to various epitopes on blood neutrophils. However, this definition is probably too limited and excludes neutropenias (NPs) with a negative autoantibody test but with other phenomena that indicate an underlying autoimmune process. Examples of such AINs may be complete or incomplete systemic lupus erythematosus or other autoimmune diseases where NP is common but patients may not fulfill formal diagnostic criteria for a rheumatic disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFData on animals emphasize the importance of the neuronal glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor (GLP-1R) for feeding suppression, although it is unclear whether astrocytes participate in the transduction of anorectic GLP-1R-dependent signals. In humans, the brain circuitry underlying these effects remains insufficiently investigated. The present study aimed to explore GLP-1R protein expression in the human hypothalamus and its correlation with body mass index (BMI).
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