Publications by authors named "Wong Z"

Hybridization chain reaction (HCR) and DNA-templated silver nanoclusters (AgNCs) have emerged as powerful tools in biosensing. HCR enables cascade amplification through programmable DNA interactions, while DNA-AgNCs serve as transducing units with unique fluorogenic and electrochemical properties. Integrating these components into a hybrid sensor could significantly enhance sensing capabilities across various fields.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022, generative artificial intelligence (AI) models have attracted significant attention in various fields, including surgery. These advancements have been particularly notable for creating highly detailed and contextually accurate images from textual prompts. A notable area of clinical application is the representation of surgeon demographics in various specialties, particularly in the context of microsurgery and plastic surgery-related subspecialties.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As the supply source for gingival grafts, the palatal tissue possesses marked regenerative ability after repeated wounding over the buccal attached gingiva and skin. However, the intrinsic mechanisms are poorly understood. Schwann cells reportedly participate in wound repair of many tissues.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Despite extensive discourse on the utilisation of the temporal muscle for facial reanimation, anatomical description regarding the innervation of its motor nerve branches is incomplete and varied. This systematic review aimed to consolidate the existing evidence concerning the distribution and variation in the pattern of temporalis innervation.

Methods: A PRISMA-compliant systematic literature search was conducted in November 2023 and included studies offering anatomical insights into the distribution and variation of temporalis innervation patterns.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Despite the encouraging findings of temporalis muscle-based facial reanimation surgery without the need for nerve grafting, there is a need for comprehensive evaluation of the impact of temporalis-based facial reanimation surgery on key outcome measures.

Methods: Comprehensive search in Medline and Embase databases were carried out up to 25 February 2023. The articles that examined facial reanimation surgery using the temporalis muscle were included in this study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bariatric surgery (BS) has demonstrated cardiovascular benefits in patients and was previously proven to be associated with an increased natriuretic peptide level without cardiac dysfunction. However, new studies have emerged, which require us to re-examine the relationship and extent of the correlation between BS, weight loss, and cardiac natriuretic peptide levels. A systematic search was conducted.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The rapid proliferation of germinal center (GC) B cells requires metabolic reprogramming to meet energy demands, yet these metabolic processes are poorly understood. By integrating metabolomic and transcriptomic profiling of GC B cells, we identified that asparagine (Asn) metabolism was highly up-regulated and essential for B cell function. Asparagine synthetase (ASNS) was up-regulated after B cell activation through the integrated stress response sensor GCN2.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Facial palsy (FP) leads to facial paralysis, impairments, and affects appearance, which can impact quality of life and mental health due to issues like social isolation.
  • A review of 16 studies from 2010 to 2023 found that botulinum toxin injections are effective in improving facial symmetry and aesthetics for long-term FP management, with benefits lasting around 4 months.
  • Although botulinum shows promise for treating FP, especially for long-term effects, more research is needed for its use in acute cases to establish guidelines for timing, dosage, and treatment intervals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The emerging field of photonic topological insulators offers promising platforms for high-performance optical communication, computing, and sensing. However, conventional photonic topological insulator designs typically operate within the diffraction limit due to their dielectric nature. This limitation imposes constraints on device miniaturization, reduces light-matter interaction, and decreases overall device sensitivity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Measurable residual disease (MRD) in adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in complete remission is an important prognostic marker, but detection methodology requires optimization. Persistence of mutated NPM1 or FLT3-ITD in the blood of adult patients with AML in first complete remission (CR1) prior to allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant (alloHCT) associates with increased relapse and death after transplant. The prognostic implications of persistence of other common AML-associated mutations, such as IDH1, at this treatment landmark however remain incompletely defined.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigated the use of point-of-care ultrasound among primary care physicians in Hong Kong, focusing on their knowledge, attitudes, practices, and barriers.
  • Results showed that only 22.5% of the participants used point-of-care ultrasound, with fair perceived knowledge and mostly positive attitudes towards its application in practice.
  • Key barriers identified included a lack of training, insufficient skills, and inadequate clinical support, despite most participants acknowledging the usefulness of point-of-care ultrasound.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Routine genetic profiling of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) at initial diagnosis has allowed subgroup specific prognostication, drug development, and clinical management strategies. The optimal approach for treatment response assessment for AML subgroups has not yet however been determined. A nationwide cohort of 257 adult patients in first remission (CR1) from AML associated with an IDH2 mutation (IDH2m) undergoing allogeneic transplant during the period 2013-2019 in the United States had rates of relapse and survival three years after transplantation of 24% and 71%, respectively.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Myeloproliferative neoplasms are stem cell-driven cancers associated with a large burden of morbidity and mortality. Most patients present with early-stage disease, but a substantial proportion progress to myelofibrosis or secondary leukemia, advanced cancers with a poor prognosis and high symptom burden. Currently, it remains difficult to predict progression, and therapies that reliably prevent or reverse fibrosis are lacking.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: is a species of the insect pathogenic genus that has been isolated as an etiological agent in human infections. Since then, multiple isolates have been identified worldwide; however, actual clinical infections have so far only been identified in North America, Australia, and Nepal. Previous research on the clinical isolates had shown that the strains differed in their behaviour when infecting cultured human cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aquaculture is part of the crucial industry that supplies food, especially for the global human population that is gradually increasing annually. Innovations of culture techniques have been improved throughout the years but aquaculture is regularly susceptible to bacterial and viral diseases. Numerous factors could contribute to occurrence of disease and usually they are from environmental or human stressors on the cultured animals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The General Medical Council (GMC) has made it mandatory to have a chaperone present during intimate examinations, including breast exams, highlighting the importance of medicolegal protection for both patients and clinicians.

Aims: The use of chaperones during breast examinations is logical, especially in an increasingly litigious society. This review aims to summarize current information regarding patients' and clinicians' perspectives on chaperone use in breast examination.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Vitamin D is being investigated for its potential to reduce mortality in COVID-19 patients, based on its known role in bone health and immunomodulation.
  • A systematic review and meta-analysis included 19 randomized controlled trials with a total of 2,495 participants, showing that vitamin D supplementation significantly lowers all-cause mortality (pooled OR 0.72) and even more so in severe COVID-19 cases (pooled OR 0.57).
  • The study suggests that vitamin D could be a beneficial adjunct treatment for COVID-19 patients, but more extensive research is needed to confirm the findings and identify the best dosing strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Case: A 53-year-old man presented with a 13-mm leg length discrepancy following left hip resurfacing arthroplasty (HRA), resulting in pain and imbalance. Advanced osteoarthritis of the contralateral hip was also noted. The patient strongly preferred HRA over total hip arthroplasty.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To compare outcomes and characteristics of two cohorts of patients: those receiving medication abortion (MAB) at ≤42 days gestation and those at 43 to 56 days gestation.

Study Design: We conducted a retrospective cohort study in 2022, comparing 142 patients accessing MAB at ≤42 days with 200 patients at 43 to 56 days. We sought to detect a 7% difference in MAB success with 80% power and alpha of 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Open source, lightweight and offline generative large language models (LLMs) hold promise for clinical information extraction due to their suitability to operate in secured environments using commodity hardware without token cost. By creating a simple lupus nephritis (LN) renal histopathology annotation schema and generating gold standard data, this study investigates prompt-based strategies using three state-of-the-art lightweight LLMs, namely BioMistral-DARE-7B (BioMistral), Llama-2-13B (Llama 2), and Mistral-7B-instruct-v0.2 (Mistral).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * It evaluates a hybrid deidentification strategy involving deep learning and contextual rules, tested on three different datasets containing medical reports and clinical narratives.
  • * The findings show that the best performing model, trained on 4,038 reports, achieved high F1-scores (0.9248 for strict and 0.9692 for relaxed settings), indicating strong deidentification capabilities that can protect patient information effectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Faecal haemoglobin (f-Hb) testing is used in colorectal cancer (CRC) screening and increasingly to guide the investigation in patients with symptoms suggestive of CRC. Studies have demonstrated increased mortality with raised f-Hb.

Aims: To assess the association of raised f-Hb with all-cause, non-CRC (any cause excluding CRC) and cause-specific mortality.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Pianists often suffered from postural related problems due to prolonged sitting and awkward postures. Despite that postural related problems are common among pianists, there is only one study found by the authors, which applied RULA to assess pianists' postures, without any modification to the original RULA worksheet. None of the other existing literature has applied this postural assessment tool to assess the pianists' overall posture.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Given the requirement to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of technology applications in health care provision, there is an urgent need to incorporate theory-informed health IT (HIT) evaluation frameworks into existing and emerging guidelines for the evaluation of artificial intelligence (AI). Such frameworks can help developers, implementers, and strategic decision makers to build on experience and the existing empirical evidence base. We provide a pragmatic conceptual overview of selected concrete examples of how existing theory-informed HIT evaluation frameworks may be used to inform the safe development and implementation of AI in health care settings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF