An improved method of searching inferior parathyroid gland for the patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma based on a retrospective study

ObjectiveMany surgeons knew the importance of parathyroid gland (PG) in the thyroid surgery, but it was even more difficult to be protected. This study aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the improved method of searching inferior parathyroid gland (IPG).Methods213 patients were enrolled and divided into test and control groups according to different methods of searching IPG in the surgery. Consequently, we compared the surgical outcome parameters between the two groups, including the operative time, numbers of PG identifying (PG protection in situ, PG auto-transplantation, and PG accidental removal), numbers of the total lymph node (LN) and metastatic LN, parathyroid hormone (PTH), transient hypoparathyroidism, transient recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy, and postoperative bleeding.ResultsWe identified 194 (194/196, 98.98%) and 215 (215/230, 93.48%) PGs in the test group and control group, respectively, and there was a significant difference (P = 0.005), and this result was due to IPG identification differences (96/98, 97.96% vs. 100/115, 86.96%, P = 0.004). Meanwhile, there was a lower ratio of IPG auto-transplantation in the test group compared with that in the control group (46.94% vs. 64.35%, P = 0.013). Serum PTH one day after the operation was 3.65 ± 1.86 vs. 2.96 ± 1.64 (P = 0.043) but with no difference at 6 months. There were no differences in metastatic LN and recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy between two groups.ConclusionThe improved method of searching IPG was simple, efficient, and safe, which was easy to be implemented for searching IPG and protecting it well

Pleiotropic effects of the twin-arginine translocation system on biofilm formation, colonization, and virulence in Vibrio cholerae

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The Twin-arginine translocation (Tat) system serves to translocate folded proteins, including periplasmic enzymes that bind redox cofactors in bacteria. The Tat system is also a determinant of virulence in some pathogenic bacteria, related to pleiotropic effects including growth, motility, and the secretion of some virulent factors. The contribution of the Tat pathway to <it>Vibrio cholerae </it>has not been explored. Here we investigated the functionality of the Tat system in <it>V. cholerae</it>, the etiologic agent of cholera.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In <it>V. cholerae</it>, the <it>tatABC </it>genes function in the translocation of TMAO reductase. Deletion of the <it>tatABC </it>genes led to a significant decrease in biofilm formation, the ability to attach to HT-29 cells, and the ability to colonize suckling mouse intestines. In addition, we observed a reduction in the output of cholera toxin, which may be due to the decreased transcription level of the toxin gene in <it>tatABC </it>mutants, suggesting an indirect effect of the mutation on toxin production. No obvious differences in flagellum biosynthesis and motility were found between the <it>tatABC </it>mutant and the parental strain, showing a variable effect of Tat in different bacteria.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The Tat system contributes to the survival of <it>V. cholerae </it>in the environment and <it>in vivo</it>, and it may be associated with its virulence.</p

Reputation-based Truth Discovery with Long-term Quality of Source in Internet of Things

Although the Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been widely used for data collection in various applications, the observed data of an object from each IoT device (i.e., source) may vary from the ground truth due to the different qualities of IoT devices and sensing environments. Truth discovery has become a promising technology to extract the truth among multiple conflicting pieces of data from different sources. Existing methods usually assume the quality of source (source reliability) is unknown a priori and will be estimated as the weight for calculating the truth during each truth discovery task. However, in a long-term data observation scenario, the quality of source can be accumulated and utilized in the future truth discovery process. Aiming to take the long-term quality of source into consideration, in this paper, we propose a reputation-based truth discovery method to derive the truth from the conflicting data. Specifically, we propose a generalized formulation with linear constraint for the truth discovery problem, which can cope with different regulations on the source reliability. Instead of directly using weight as the source reliability, we also define the reliability of a source by its contribution to the loss function. Then, we propose a novel reputation model to quantify the newly defined source reliability, which will be accumulated as the long-term source quality. Finally, we propose a reputation-based truth discovery model, where initial weights are assigned based on source reputations. Experiments conducted on real weather conditions and GPS datasets demonstrate that our reputation-based truth discovery can reduce the number of iterations during truth discovery and achieve high accuracy