OBJECTIVE The correlation of the embryo matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) secretion, embryonic development and clinical pregnancy was investigated. MATERIALS AND METHODS The embryo culture from in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET) patients were collected in the Xuzhou Central Hospital from January 2013 to September 2014. At the same time, the embryo grade was recorded. The secreti...

BACKGROUND Quantifying the cumulative effect of social risk factors on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk can help to better understand the sources of disparities in health outcomes. METHOD AND RESULTS Data from the Heart Strategies Concentrating on Risk Evaluation (HeartSCORE) study were used to create an index of cumulative social risk (CSR) and quantify its association with incident CVD and...

Taste ability is known to be impaired in elderly and even more so in acutely hospitalized elderly people. To our knowledge, no study has investigated the association between taste impairment and mortality. Our aim was to examine this association in acutely hospitalized older people. In a prospective study, 200 acutely hospitalized elderly people ≥70 years of age were included between November 2...

The association between systolic blood pressure (SBP) and cognitive function is controversial in elderly adults. In addition, few studies focused on the cumulative effect of SBP. We aimed to investigate the association between cumulative SBP exposure and cognitive function among middle-aged and elderly adults.The analysis was based on the Asymptomatic Polyvascular Abnormalities Community (APAC)...

OBJECTIVE To investigate hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) incidence, risk factors and the performance of baseline REACH-B risk score in a Portuguese chronic hepatitis B (CHB) population on antiviral therapy. METHODS Retrospective study of CHB patients who were treated with tenofovir or entecavir for at least 12 months. Multivariate analysis was performed to identify factors associated with HCC....

OBJECTIVE We examined the association between childhood adversity and cumulative biological risk for a variety of chronic diseases in adulthood, and whether this association varied by neighborhood affluence. METHODS Data were drawn from the Chicago Community Adult Health Study (2001-2003), a cross-sectional probability sample that included interviews and blood collection (n = 550 adults). A c...

This retrospective cohort study evaluated the risk of prostate cancer associated with sitagliptin use in Taiwanese male patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus by using the reimbursement databases of the National Health Insurance. Male patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus at an age ≥25 years between 1999 and 2010 were recruited. A total of 37,924 ever users of sitagliptin and 4...

The identification of major trauma patients before arrival in hospital allows the activation of an appropriate trauma response. The Wessex triage tool (WTT) uses a combination of anatomical injury assessment and physiological criteria to identify patients with major trauma suitable for triage direct to a major trauma centre (MTC), and has been adopted by the South-West Peninsula Trauma Network ...

OBJECTIVES The Injury Severity Score (ISS) has served as the standard summary measure of anatomic injury for more than 20 years. Nevertheless, the ISS has an idiosyncrasy that both impairs its predictive power and complicates its calculation. We present here a simple modification of the ISS called the New Injury Severity Score (NISS), which significantly outperforms the venerable but dated ISS ...