Once-daily tenofovir disoproxil fumarate in treatment-naive Taiwanese patients with chronic hepatitis B and minimally raised alanine aminotransferase (TORCH-B): a multicentre, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, randomised trial.

Background: Antiviral therapy for patients with non-cirrhotic chronic hepatitis B and minimally raised alanine aminotransferase (ALT) is controversial. We aimed to investigate the efficacy and safety of tenofovir disoproxil fumarate in reducing the risk of disease progression in this patient population.

Methods: TORCH-B is a multicentre, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, randomised trial done at six teaching hospitals in Taiwan that enrolled patients with chronic hepatitis B.

Association between cancer-related fatigue and traditional Chinese medicine body constitution in female patients with breast cancer.

Background: Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a common psychosomatic problem in breast cancer patients. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used to address symptoms in patients with CRF. Identification of the specific constitution in TCM is essential for personalized care.

Overused laboratory test of haemoglobin A at one medical centre in southern Taiwan.

Aims: To investigate overused laboratory test of haemoglobin Ac1 (HbA1c) in one medicine centre in southern Taiwan.

Methods: Data were extracted from the database of the Medical Center from March 2013 to March 2015. These patients were classified into five groups, including group A (diabetic patients with HbA1c value ≥7), group B (healthy people with HbA1c value ≥7), group C (diabetic patients with HbA1c test value <7), group D (healthy people with HbA1c value <6.

Automatic Detection and Segmentation of Breast Cancer on MRI Using Mask R-CNN Trained on Non-Fat-Sat Images and Tested on Fat-Sat Images.

Rationale And Objectives: Computer-aided methods have been widely applied to diagnose lesions on breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The first step was to identify abnormal areas. A deep learning Mask Regional Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN) was implemented to search the entire set of images and detect suspicious lesions.

Comparison of the effect of clarithromycin triple therapy with or without -acetylcysteine in the eradication of : a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Whether adjunctive -acetylcysteine (NAC) may improve the efficacy of triple therapy in the first-line treatment of infection remains unknown. Our aim was to compare the efficacy of 14-day triple therapy with or without NAC for the first-line treatment of .

Material And Methods: Between 1 January 2014 and 30 June 2018, 680 patients with infection naïve to treatment were enrolled in this multicenter, open-label, randomized trial.

Complex Cell Type-Specific Roles of Autophagy in Liver Fibrosis and Cirrhosis.

The lysosomal degradation pathway, or autophagy, plays a fundamental role in cellular, tissue, and organismal homeostasis. A correlation between dysregulated autophagy and liver fibrosis (including end-stage disease, cirrhosis) is well-established. However, both the up and downregulation of autophagy have been implicated in fibrogenesis.

Compatibility of pulse-pulse intervals with R-R intervals in assessing cardiac autonomic function and its relation to risks of atherosclerosis.

Objective: Heart rate variability (HRV) analysis using electrocardiographic R-R intervals (RRIs) in either a time or a frequency domain is a useful tool for assessing cardiac autonomic dysfunction in clinical research. For convenience, pulse-pulse intervals (PPIs) acquired by photoplethysmography have been used to assess HRV. However, the compatibility of PPI with RRI is controversial.

Chemotherapy in conjunction with traditional Chinese medicine for survival of patients with early female breast cancer: protocol for a non-randomized, single center prospective cohort study.

Background: Chemotherapy after surgery for breast cancer plays a fundamental role in reducing the risk of distant and local recurrence. An increasing number of patients seek traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) during adjuvant chemotherapy to relieve symptom discomfort and side effects as well as to strengthen the body's defenses. However, evidence on how concurrent TCM treatment affects prognosis is scarce.

Evaluation of breast stiffness measured by ultrasound and breast density measured by MRI using a prone-supine deformation model.

Background: This study evaluated breast tissue stiffness measured by ultrasound elastography and the percent breast density measured by magnetic resonance imaging to understand their relationship.

Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging and whole breast ultrasound were performed in 20 patients with suspicious lesions. Only the contralateral normal breasts were analyzed.

Ischemic stroke following neck dissection in the elderly.

Objective: Despite the known association of perioperative stroke with perioperative mortality, the prevalence of stroke following neck dissection in elderly patients remains unclear. This study compared the incidence of neck dissection-associated perioperative stroke in elderly and younger patients.

Materials And Methods: Totally, 1057 patients receiving neck dissection for head and neck cancers between June 2012 and July 2016 were reviewed at a single center.

Benralizumab for the Prevention of COPD Exacerbations.

Background: The efficacy and safety of benralizumab, an interleukin-5 receptor alpha-directed cytolytic monoclonal antibody, for the prevention of exacerbations in patients with moderate to very severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are not known.

Methods: In the GALATHEA and TERRANOVA trials, we enrolled patients with COPD (at a ratio of approximately 2:1 on the basis of eosinophil count [≥220 per cubic millimeter vs. <220 per cubic millimeter]) who had frequent exacerbations despite receiving guideline-based inhaled treatment.

Machine learning for prediction of chemoradiation therapy response in rectal cancer using pre-treatment and mid-radiation multi-parametric MRI.

Purpose: To predict the neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy (CRT) response in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC) using radiomics and deep learning based on pre-treatment MRI and a mid-radiation follow-up MRI taken 3-4 weeks after the start of CRT.

Methods: A total of 51 patients were included, 45 with pre-treatment, 41 with mid-radiation therapy (RT), and 35 with both MRI sets. The multi-parametric MRI protocol included T2, diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) with b-values of 0 and 800 s/mm, and dynamic-contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI.

Automatic Breast and Fibroglandular Tissue Segmentation in Breast MRI Using Deep Learning by a Fully-Convolutional Residual Neural Network U-Net.

Rationale And Objectives: Breast segmentation using the U-net architecture was implemented and tested in independent validation datasets to quantify fibroglandular tissue volume in breast MRI.

Materials And Methods: Two datasets were used. The training set was MRI of 286 patients with unilateral breast cancer.

Treatment outcomes for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in Eastern Taiwan.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to evaluate the treatment outcomes of patients with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) under special programmatic management in Eastern Taiwan over the past 10 years.

Materials And Methods: All newly diagnosed MDR-TB patients and MDR-TB patients enrolled previously with persistent positive cultures were included in this study, from May 2007 to April 2017, in Eastern Taiwan. A panel of pulmonologists designed the initial MDR-TB regimens.

Clinical and laboratory features distinguishing between and envenomation.

Background: There are 6 species of venomous snakes in Taiwan. Two of them, () and (), can cause significant coagulopathy. However, a significant proportion of patients with snakebites cannot identify the correct snake species after envenomation, which hampers the application of antivenom.

Automatic and fast segmentation of breast region-of-interest (ROI) and density in MRIs.

Accurate segmentation of the breast region of interest (BROI) and breast density (BD) is a significant challenge during the analysis of breast MR images. Most of the existing methods for breast segmentation are semi-automatic and limited in their ability to achieve accurate results. This is because of difficulties in removing landmarks from noisy magnetic resonance images (MRI) due to similar intensity levels and the close connection to BROI.

The relationship between health literacy and perceived shared decision making in patients with breast cancer.

Objectives: We explored the relationship between patient-perceived shared decision making (SDM) and three domains of health literacy (HL) in patients with breast cancer.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we prospectively recruited a convenience sample of 511 breast cancer patients from 3 hospitals in Taiwan. Patients completed questionnaires about HL and perceived SDM in a recent consultation.

ECE-1 overexpression in head and neck cancer is associated with poor tumor differentiation and patient outcome.

Background: Endothelin-converting enzyme-1 (ECE-1) primarily converts big endothelins (ETs) into active endothelin-1 (ET-1). However, the expression pattern and prognostication status of ECE-1 in head and neck cancer (HNC) are enigmatic. In this study, we investigated ECE-1 expression and assessed the roles of ECE-1 as a predictor for HNC differentiation and prognosis.

Quantitative analysis of peri-tumor fat in different molecular subtypes of breast cancer.

Background And Purposes: The aim of this study was to develop morphological analytic methods to analyze the tumor-fat interface and in different peritumoral shells away from the tumor, and to compare the results among three molecular subtypes of breast cancer.

Materials And Methods: A total of 102 women (mean age 48.5 y/o) with solitary well-defined breast cancers were analyzed, including 46 human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) (+), 46 HER2(-) hormonal receptor (HR) (+), and 10 triple negative (TN) breast cancers.

14 day sequential therapy versus 10 day bismuth quadruple therapy containing high-dose esomeprazole in the first-line and second-line treatment of Helicobacter pylori: a multicentre, non-inferiority, randomized trial.

Background: Whether extending the treatment length and the use of high-dose esomeprazole may optimize the efficacy of Helicobacter pylori eradication remains unknown.

Objectives: To compare the efficacy and tolerability of optimized 14 day sequential therapy and 10 day bismuth quadruple therapy containing high-dose esomeprazole in first-line therapy.

Methods: We recruited 620 adult patients (≥20 years of age) with H.

Kaempferol inhibits angiogenic ability by targeting VEGF receptor-2 and downregulating the PI3K/AKT, MEK and ERK pathways in VEGF-stimulated human umbilical vein endothelial cells.

Anti-angiogenesis is one of the most general clinical obstacles in cancer chemotherapy. Kaempferol is a flavonoid phytochemical found in many fruits and vegetables. Our previous study revealed that kaempferol triggered apoptosis in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) by ROS‑mediated p53/ATM/death receptor signaling.

Decreasing cytokeratin 17 expression in head and neck cancer predicts nodal metastasis and poor prognosis: The first evidence.

Objectives: Cytokeratins (CKs) are mainly expressed in epithelial carcinomas and are valuable for making diagnoses and identifying metastatic status. Changes in the expression of individual CKs in certain carcinoma may be relevant to establishing a prognosis. However, the prognostic significance of CKs in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remains elusive.

Noninvasive assessment of intracranial elastance and pressure in spontaneous intracranial hypotension by MRI.

Background: Spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) is often misdiagnosed, and can lead to severe complications. Conventional MR sequences show a limited ability to aid in this diagnosis. MR-based intracranial pressure (MR-ICP) may be able to detect changes of intracranial elastance and pressure.