Association between air pollutants and blood cell counts in pediatric patients with asthma: a retrospective observational study.

Background: Asthma is a common respiratory disease in children, and air pollution is a risk factor for pediatric asthma. However, how air pollution affects blood cells in pediatric patients with asthma remains unclear.

Methods: This retrospective observational study, performed in 2007-2018 at a medical center, enrolled non-trauma patients aged < 17 years who visited the emergency department and had asthma.

Real-world efficacy and safety of universal 8-week glecaprevir/pibrentasvir in patients with chronic hepatitis C with early chronic kidney disease or pre-end-stage renal disease: Insights from a nationwide hepatisis C virus registry in Taiwan.

An 8-week regimen of glecaprevir/pibrentasvir is recommended for treatment-naïve patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC). In alignment with the Taiwanese government's objective to eliminate hepatitis C by 2025, this study aimed to provide real-world evidence on the use of this regimen in treatment-naïve patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) by using data from the Taiwan Association for the Study of the Liver HCV Registry (TACR). CKD was defined by an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) of <60 mL/min/1.

Feasibility and safety of Taipei Veterans General Hospital Heavy Ion Therapy Center: The first carbon-ion irradiation facility in Taiwan.

Background: Unlike conventional photon radiotherapy, particle therapy has the advantage of dose distribution. Carbon-ion radiotherapy is also advantageous in terms of biological effectiveness and other radiobiological aspects. These benefits lead to a higher response probability for previously known radioresistant tumor types.

GestaltGAN: synthetic photorealistic portraits of individuals with rare genetic disorders.

The facial gestalt (overall facial morphology) is a characteristic clinical feature in many genetic disorders that is often essential for suspecting and establishing a specific diagnosis. Therefore, publishing images of individuals affected by pathogenic variants in disease-associated genes has been an important part of scientific communication. Furthermore, medical imaging data is also crucial for teaching and training deep-learning models such as GestaltMatcher.