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of schizophrenic patients. © 2020 Lam et al.Purpose Pre-operative association factors (pain and psychological vulnerability) could significantly contribute to post-Cesarean pain; however, limited information is available on the development of postnatal depression (PND). We aimed to investigate the development of PND and its association with pain vulnerability and psychological vulnerability factors. Patients and Methods Women undergoing Cesarean delivery under spinal anesthesia were given pre-operative questionnaires, psychological and pain assessments including pain on local anesthetic injection during spinal anesthesia and mechanical temporal summation. Post-operative assessments were administered at 6 to 10 weeks post-Cesarean delivery via follow-up survey to assess post-Cesarean psychological and pain outcomes. Results PND occurred in 21.1% (43 of 205) of patients who underwent elective Cesarean delivery. An increased pre-operative pain score with movement (Odds ratio (OR) 1.65, 95% CI 1.12-2.44, p = 0.0110), anxiety about upcoming surgery (OR 1.02, 95% CI 1.00-1.04, p = 0.0429), higher pre-operative Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) subscale on anxiety (OR 1.25, 95% CI 1.07-1.45, p = 0.0041) and higher pre-operative central sensitization inventory (CSI) scores (OR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01-1.09, p = 0.0156) were independently associated with an increased risk of PND. Anticipated pain medication needs were associated with reduced risk of PND (OR 0.48, 95% CI 0.29-0.79, p = 0.0038) (Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) = 0.8177). Conclusion Higher pre-operative anxiety, pain score, central sensitization and lower anticipated pain medication needs were associated with increased risks of PND. Further work using larger sample size will be needed to validate the model in predicting PND development after Cesarean delivery. © 2020 Chan et al.Purpose In recent years, machine learning techniques have received increasing attention as a promising approach to differentiating patients from healthy subjects. Therefore, some resting-state functional magnetic resonance neuroimaging (R-fMRI) studies have used interregional functional connections as discriminative features. The aim of this study was to investigate ADHD-related spatially distributed discriminative features derived from whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity patterns using machine learning. Patients and Methods We measured the interregional functional connections of the R-fMRI data from 40 ADHD patients and 28 matched typically developing controls. Machine learning was used to discriminate ADHD patients from controls. Classification performance was assessed by permutation tests. Results The results from the model with the highest classification accuracy showed that 85.3% of participants were correctly identified using leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOV) with support vector machine (SVM). The majority of the most discriminative functional connections were located within or between the cerebellum, default mode network (DMN) and frontoparietal regions. Approximately half of the most discriminative connections were associated with the cerebellum. The cerebellum, right superior orbitofrontal cortex, left olfactory cortex, left gyrus rectus, right superior temporal pole, right calcarine gyrus and bilateral inferior occipital cortex showed the highest discriminative power in classification. Regarding the brain-behaviour relationships, some functional connections between the cerebellum and DMN regions were significantly correlated with behavioural symptoms in ADHD (P less then 0.05). Conclusion This study indicated that whole-brain resting-state functional connections might provide potential neuroimaging-based information for clinically assisting the diagnosis of ADHD. © 2020 Sun et al.Purpose Amyloid-β protein (Aβ) is one of the causative proteins of Alzheimer's disease. STAT inhibitor We have been developing extracorporeal blood Aβ-removal systems as a method for enhancing Aβ clearance from the brain. We reported previously that medical adsorbents and hemodialyzers removed Aβ monomers from peripheral blood, which was associated with influx of Aβ monomers from the brain into the bloodstream. Our intent here was to develop a method to promote clearance of Aβ oligomers and to provide an estimate of the molecular size of intact Aβ oligomers in plasma. Methods Two hollow-fiber devices with different pore sizes (Membranes A and B) were evaluated as removers of Aβ oligomers with human plasma in vitro. The concomitant removal of Aβ oligomers and monomers was investigated by using Membrane B and hexadecyl alkylated cellulose beads or polysulfone hemodialyzers. Double-filtration plasmapheresis with Membrane A was investigated as an approach for the removal of plasma Aβ oligomers in humans. Results Aβ oligomers were effectively removed by both Membranes A and B. The increase of Aβ oligomers in plasma was observed just after the removal of plasma Aβ oligomers in humans. The intact molecular size of major Aβ oligomers in the plasma was estimated to be larger than albumin at approximately 60 kDa or more. Additionally, the concomitant removal of Aβ monomers and oligomers evoked dissociation of larger Aβ oligomers into smaller ones and monomers. Conclusion Aβ oligomers were cleared from plasma both in vitro and in human subjects by using hollow-fiber membranes with large pores, indicating that their intact sizes were mostly larger than 60 kDa. Aβ oligomers in peripheral circulation were increased after some clearances in human. Further investigation will determine whether the Aβ oligomers detected in circulation after clearance were via influx from the brain. © 2020 Saito et al.Background Paclitaxel is wildly used in chemotherapy, however, the adverse drug reactions (ADRs) occurred frequently. Various novel nano-based paclitaxel delivery systems were developed. The aim performed systemically review and meta-analyses to evaluate the effect adverse drug reactions (ADRs) of paclitaxel and its nano-based delivery systems. Methods Systematically searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane, Clinicalkey, Clinicaltrial.com, ASCO and ESMO. Data of adverse effect were analyzed to odds ratio (ORs) with 95% confidence interval (CI). The quality of studies was assessed with CASP Randomised Controlled Trial Checklist. Statistical analysis was used WinBUGS software (version 1.4.3) with the NetMetaXL interface (version 1.6.1). Results Twenty-one studies, including 7011 patients and 6 paclitaxel formulations fulfilled the inclusion criteria. In all grade hypersensitivity reactions, comparing to SB-P, people with Lip-P had 0.19 times (95% CI= 0.02, 1.3) of chance, with Nab-P had 0.47 times (95%n paclitaxel anticancer treatment. © 2020 Chou et al.Introduction In this study, the combination of TEMPO-oxidized sacchachitin nanofibers (TOSCNFs) with chitosan-activated platelet-rich plasma (cPRP) was evaluated for remedying dry eye syndrome (DES). Methods TOSCNFs, designated T050SC, were generated. T050SC combined with chitosan-activated (cPRP) was formulated as eye drops for application for severe DES. To evaluate the effects of cPRP and TOSCNFs on the repair of corneal injury, in vitro studies were conducted using Statens Seruminstitut rabbit corneal (SIRC) epithelial cells for cell proliferation and cell migration assays, and a severe DES animal model using rabbits was established with benzalkonium chloride (BAC) treatment for the evaluation. Results Results showed that the optimal eye formulation contained PRP activated by 350 μg/mL of the low-molecular-weight chitosan group (L3) combined with 300 μg/mL TO50SC (L3+T050SC). In the WST-1 cell-proliferation assay, L3 and L3+TO50SC significantly increased Statens SIRC cell proliferation after 24 hrs of incubation. In the SIRC cell migration assay, the L3+TO50SC group showed a wound-healing efficiency of 89% after 24-hr treatment. After 5 days of treatment, Schirmer's test results did not simulate the dry eye animal model. Typical cornea appearance and eye fluorescein staining results showed that the L3 group had the best effect on improving cornea haze and epithelial damage. Conclusion This study has determined that TOSCNFs effectively promoted the healing effect on severe cases of corneal damage, and also might enhance the clinical application and medical potential of PRP in ophthalmology. © 2020 Lin et al.Purpose We recently developed a new fluorescence-based technique called "diffuse in vivo flow cytometry" (DiFC) for enumerating rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) directly in the bloodstream. Non-specific tissue autofluorescence is a persistent problem, as it creates a background which may obscure signals from weakly-labeled CTCs. Here we investigated the use of upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs) as a contrast agent for DiFC, which in principle could significantly reduce the autofluorescence background and allow more sensitive detection of rare CTCs. Methods We built a new UCNP-compatible DiFC instrument (U-DiFC), which uses a 980 nm laser and detects upconverted luminescence in the 520, 545 and 660 nm emission bands. We used NaYF4Yb,Er UCNPs and several covalent and non-covalent surface modification strategies to improve their biocompatibility and cell uptake. We tested U-DiFC with multiple myeloma (MM) and Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC) cells in tissue-mimicking optical flow phantoms and in nude mice. Results U-DiFC significantly reduced the background autofluorescence signals and motion artifacts from breathing in mice. Upconverted luminescence from NaYF4Yb,Er microparticles (UμNP) and cells co-incubated with UCNPs were readily detectable with U-DiFC in phantoms, and from UCNPs in circulation in mice. However, we were unable to achieve reliable labeling of CTCs with UCNPs. Our data suggest that most (or all) of the measured U-DIFC signal in vitro and in vivo likely arose from unbound UCNPs or due to the uptake by non-CTC blood cells. Conclusion UCNPs have a number of properties that make them attractive contrast agents for high-sensitivity detection of CTCs in the bloodstream with U-DiFC and other intravital imaging methods. More work is needed to achieve reliable and specific labeling of CTCs with UCNPs and verify long-term retention and viability of cells. © 2020 Bartosik et al.Introduction Cancer treatment using functionalized vehicles in order to block involved genes has attracted a remarkable interest. In this study, we investigated the cellular uptake and cytotoxic effects of three sizes of anti Bcl-2 DNAi-conjugated gold nanoparticles by MCF-7 cells. Methods Three different sizes of gold nanoparticles were synthesized by citrate reduction method and after characterization, the nanoparticles were functionalized by Bcl-2 targeted DNAi. Cell internalization of the nanoparticles was analyzed by atomic absorption spectroscopy and light microscopy. The cytotoxic effects of the nanoparticles were investigated by MTT assay, flow cytometry and RT-PCR of the target gene. Results While poor cell internalization of bare gold nanoparticles was observed, the results demonstrated that cellular uptake of DNAi-conjugated gold nanoparticles is completely size-dependent, and the largest nanoparticle (~42 nm) revealed the highest internalization rate compared to other sizes (~14 and ~26 nm). Experimental findings showed that the DNAi-conjugated gold nanoparticles induced apoptotic pathway by silencing of the targeted Bcl-2 gene.