Association between Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease and Mediterranean Lifestyle: A Systematic Review

Background and Aims: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is an excessive accumulation of fat in the liver without alcohol abuse. It is linked to metabolic syndrome (MetS) and no pharmacological treatment exists. This systematic review aims to assess evidence about the effect of Mediterranean lifestyle on the prevention and reversion of NAFLD. Methods: A systematic literature search was performed in MEDLINE via Pubmed. MeSH terms used were: non-alcoholic fatty liver disease [MeSH Major Topic] AND metabolic syndrome [MeSH Term] AND (Diet, Mediterranean [MeSH Term]) OR (Exercise [MeSH Term]). (PROSPERO ID: 2021 CRD42021289495). Results: Thirteen articles were selected and divided into two categories (four focused on Mediterranean diet and NAFLD and nine focused on Mediterranean diet, physical activity, and NAFLD). Information of clinical endpoints was based on NAFLD, as well as MetS, body mass index, fasting glycemia, obesity, cholesterol, triglycerides, transaminases, albuminuria, and hepatic steatosis, among others. All studies found beneficial associations between the clinical parameters of NAFLD/MetS and following a Mediterranean diet and regular physical activity. Conclusions: An effective treatment that prevents, and even reverses, NAFLD is to adapt lifestyle to the Mediterranean one, based on a Mediterranean diet and regular physical activity.

Thoracic Spinal Angiolipomas: A Systematic Review

Background Spinal angiolipomas (SAs) are rare, benign tumors, representing 0.0004 to 1.2% of angiolipomas, usually located at the extradural and posterior thoracic level, with multimetameric extension. Methods A systematic literature review was performed according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement. The authors searched on PubMed and Scopus databases for published articles with the Mesh term “spinal angiolipoma” and pertinent associations. Language restriction to English papers was applied. The authors also reported three emblematic cases of patients who underwent surgical resection of spindle-shaped (type IA) and dumbbell-shaped (type II) SAs between 2014 and 2020. Results Of the 256 retrieved articles, 33 were included in the meta-analysis. These 33 studies, together with our 3 reported cases, included a total of 60 patients, 36 females (60%) and 24 males (40%), with a mean age of 53.12 ± 12.82 years (range: 12–77 years).T5 was the most represented level (22 patients). Usually, the localization of SA was extradural, with 53 patients suffering from spindle-shaped type IA SA (88.3%) and 7 patients from dumbbell-shaped type II SA (11.6%). Almost all patients underwent laminectomy (78.3%) and presented a full recovery of motor deficits (85%). Gross total removal (GTR) was performed in 93.3% of patients. The mean follow-up was of 22.71 ± 21.45 months (range: 2–80 months). There was no documented recurrence at follow-up magnetic resonance imaging in any of the patients. Conclusions SAs are rare, benign tumors with a great vascular component that presents a favorable outcome. GTR is the gold standard treatment and usually an adjuvant therapy is not required. Even infiltrative lesions, which are more complex, can be treated successfully with a good prognosis. Dumbbell-shaped SAs must be differentiated from schwannomas and meningiomas, and require different surgical techniques, given the profuse bleeding associated with the attempt of debulking. En block resection is the key to treat these common benign tumors with acceptable blood loss.

Treatment of Hypertriglyceridemia: A Review of Therapies in the Pipeline

Background The 2018 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) guidelines and 2021 ACC Expert Consensus Decision Pathway recommend nonpharmacological interventions and initiation of statin therapy for patients with moderate hypertriglyceridemia and addition of fibrates or omega-3 fatty acids in severe hypertriglyceridemia. Although the association between triglyceride (TG) lowering and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) risk reduction remains controversial, patients with hypertriglyceridemia may represent a subgroup that require additional therapy to further reduce residual ASCVD risk. Moreover, medications that target novel pathways could provide alternative options for patients who are intolerant of existing therapies or doses needed to provide adequate triglyceride lowering. Objective: Assess recent evidence for TG-lowering agents including omega-3 fatty acid-based therapies, PPARα modulators, apoC-III mRNA antisense inhibitors, angiopoietin-like 3 (ANGPTL3) antibodies, and herbal supplements. Methods: A literature search was performed using PubMed with hypertriglyceridemia specified as a MeSH term or included in the title or abstract of the article along with each individual agent. For inclusion, trials needed to have a primary or secondary outcome of TG levels or TG lowering. Conclusion: Currently, the only US Food and Drug Administration approved medication for CV risk reduction in patients with hypertriglyceridemia is icosapent ethyl. Results from phase 3 trials for CaPre, pemafibrate, and volanesorsen as well as additional evidence for pipeline pharmacotherapies with novel mechanisms of action (e.g., ApoC-III mRNA antisense inhibitors and ANGPTL3 antibodies) will help to guide future pharmacotherapy considerations for patients with hypertriglyceridemia.

Landscape of Infantile Hemangioma Management Trends on the 100 Top-Cited Articles Since 2010: Bibliometric Analysis

Background: An infantile hemangioma (IH) is a type of benign vascular tumor that affects babies. They usually begin during the first four weeks of life, grow until about five months of life, and then shrink in size and disappear over the next few years. Complications may include pain, bleeding, ulcer formation, heart failure, or disfigurement. Numerous articles on IH have been published in literature, sharing expanded management strategies. Nevertheless, definite treatment guideline for IH is inconclusive due to differences in heterogenous presentations, varied severity and treatment strategy among countries. This study aimed to apply the medical subject headings (MeSH terms) to predict the number of article citations using 100 top-cited IH articles (T100IHs) and dissect their characteristics including the influential authors and affiliated counties since 2010.Methods: By searching the PubMed Central® (PMC) database, the T100IHs since 2010 were downloaded. Citation analysis was performed to compare the dominant countries and authors using social network analysis (SNA) and visual representations. MeSH terms were clustered by SNA when referring their citations in articles. The prediction effect was assessed based on its correlation coefficients (CC) between impact factors(IF) of MeSH terms and the T100IHs. Results: We observed that (1) the top three productive countries and journals in T100IHs were the US (49%), China (10%), France (8%); and Pediatrics (10%), Br J Dermatol (6%), Pediatr Dermatol (4%); (2) the most cited article (PMID=25693013 with 145 citations) was authored by Christine Léauté-Labrèze from France in 2015; (3) the most cited MeSH term was pharmacology with IF equal to 42.46 in T100IHs. MeSH terms were evident in prediction power on the number of article citations (correlation coefficient = 0.46; t = 5.11; p<0.01, n = 100). Conclusion: The breakthrough was made by making the citation prediction on T100IHs. MeSH terms are evident in predicting article citations using SNA and IF calculation approaches that can be applied to future research, and is not limited to the IH topic as we did in this study.

A Bibliometric Analysis of 34,692 Publications on Thyroid Cancer by Machine Learning: How Much Has Been Done in the Past Three Decades?

IntroductionThyroid cancer (TC) is the most common neck malignancy. However, a large number of publications of TC have not been well summarized and discussed with more comprehensive methods. The purpose of this bibliometric study is to summarize scientific publications during the past three decades in the field of TC using a machine learning method.Material and MethodsScientific publications focusing on TC from 1990 to 2020 were searched in PubMed using the MeSH term “thyroid neoplasms”. Full associated data were downloaded in the format of PubMed, and extracted in the R platform. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was adopted to identify the research topics from the abstract of each publication using Python.ResultsA total of 34,692 publications related to TC from the last three decades were found and included in this study with an average of 1,119.1 publications per year. Clinical studies and experimental studies shared the most proportion of publications, while the proportion of clinical trials remained at a relatively small level (5.87% as the highest in 2004). Thyroidectomy was the lead MeSH term, followed by prognosis, differential diagnosis, and fine-needle biopsy. The LDA analyses showed the study topics were divided into four clusters, including treatment management, basic research, diagnosis research, epidemiology, and cancer risk. However, a relatively weak connection was shown between treatment managements and basic researches. Top 10 most cited publications in recent years particularly highlighted the applications of active surveillance in TC.ConclusionThyroidectomy, differential diagnosis, genomic analysis, active surveillance are the most concerning topics in TC researches. Although the BRAF-targeted therapy is under development with promising results, there is still an urgent need for conversions from basic studies to clinical practice.

Mapping the biomedical sciences using Medical Subject Headings: a comparison between MeSH co-assignments and MeSH citation pairs

Objective: This study compares two maps of biomedical sciences using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) term co-assignments versus MeSH terms of citing/cited articles and reveals similarities and differences between the two approaches. Methods: MeSH terms assigned to 397,475 journal articles published in 2015, as well as their 4,632,992 cited references, were retrieved from Web of Science and MEDLINE databases, respectively, which formed over 7 million MeSH co-assignments and nearly 18 million direct citation pairs. We generated six network visualizations of biomedical science at three levels using Gephi software based on these MeSH co-assignments and citation pairs.Results: The MeSH co-assignment map contained more nodes and edges, as MeSH co-assignments cover all medical topics discussed in articles. By contrast, the MeSH citation map contained fewer but larger nodes and wider edges, as citation links indicate connections to two similar medical topics. Conclusion: These two types of maps emphasize different aspects of biomedical sciences, with MeSH co-assignment maps focusing on the relationship between topics in different categories and MeSH direct citation maps providing insights into relationships between topics in the same or similar category.

Contribution of research-based pharmaceutical companies in Germany to personalised medicine

Background The term Personlised Medicine (PM) was introduced to the public more than 20 years ago and was related to tailor-made medicines and a treatment considering the individual human genome. In the meantime, the term PM can be found with various definitions in several different contexts. Considering this, the aim of this research is to analyse the current status of PM in Germany, especially with regard to scientific articles and the pharmaceutical industry. Methods First, a systematic literature review was conducted in PubMed and Web of Science. Each search strategy was adapted to the database conditions and consisted of the search terms personalised medicine or the MeSH term precision medicine, additionally pharmaceutical industry and Germany in topic, title or abstract (the Boolean operator AND was applied). Only results in German or English with an available abstract were considered. Second, the websites of all 47 members of the German association of research-based pharmaceutical companies (vfa) were systematically screened referring to their position and communication in terms of PM. Results The literature research yielded a total of only 4 results. The scope of the papers is nanomedicine, an interview study and gene disorders. The second research part shows differences on the company websites: More than half of the companies have no relation to PM or an analysis was not possible (n = 25). Some were categorized with indirect relation (n = 3) and on 19 websites PM was communicated in different ways. Conclusions The literature research clearly shows that although PM is not a new topic and furthermore, the research of pharmaceutical companies in this area is widely required, the number of scientific articles found is very low. The screening of company websites underlines this result as only 19 of 47 companies take a position to PM here and the scope varies greatly. Nevertheless, it is necessary to examine the reasons and how Germany compares to other countries. Key messages Although introduced more than 20 years ago, the appearance of PM by German pharmaceutical companies in scientific articles is quite low. The difference in companies’ communication should be examined.

Constructing Japanese MeSH term dictionaries related to the COVID-19 literature

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to a flood of research papers and the information has been updated with considerable frequency. For society to derive benefits from this research, it is necessary to promote sharing up-to-date knowledge from these papers. However, because most research papers are written in English, it is difficult for people who are not familiar with English medical terms to obtain knowledge from them. To facilitate sharing knowledge from COVID-19 papers written in English for Japanese speakers, we tried to construct a dictionary with an open license by assigning Japanese terms to MeSH unique identifiers (UIDs) annotated to words in the texts of COVID-19 papers. Using this dictionary, 98.99% of all occurrences of MeSH terms in COVID-19 papers were covered. We also created a curated version of the dictionary and uploaded it to PubDictionary for wider use in the PubAnnotation system.

A Bibliometric Analysis of 8,276 Publications During the Past 25 Years on Cholangiocarcinoma by Machine Learning

IntroductionCholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is the second most common hepatic malignancy. Progress and developments have also been made in the field of CCA management along with increasing scientific publications during the past decades, which reflect topics of general interest and suggest the future direction of studies. The purpose of this bibliometric study is to summarize scientific publications during the past 25 years in the field of CCA using a machine learning method.Material and MethodsScientific publications focusing on CCA from 1995 to 2019 were searched in PubMed using the MeSH term “cholangiocarcinoma.” Full associated data were downloaded in the format of PubMed and extracted in the R platform. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was adopted to identify the research topics from the abstract of each publication using Python.ResultsA total of 8,276 publications related to CCA from the last 25 years were found and included in this study. The most type of publications remained little changed, while the proportion of clinical trials remained relatively low (7.24% as the highest) and, more significantly, with a further downward trend during the recent years (1.42% in 2019). Neoplasm staging, hepatectomy, and survival rate were the most concerning terms among those who are diagnosis-related, treatment-related, and prognosis-related. The LDA analyses showed chemotherapy, hepatectomy, and stent as the highly concerned research topics of CCA treatment. Meanwhile, conversions from basic studies to clinical therapies were suggested by a poor connection between clusters of treatment management and basic research.ConclusionThe number of publications of CCA has increased rapidly during the past 25 years. Survival analysis, differential diagnosis, and microRNA expression are the most concerned topics in CCA studies. Besides, there is an urgent need for high-quality clinical trials and conversions from basic studies to clinical therapies.

Questions to the Article: A Global Overview of COVID-19 Research in the Pediatric Field (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED The article, published on 23 July 2021, is well-written and of interest, but remains several questions that are required for clarifications, such as (1) the static choropleth map of collaboration analysis between countries should be dynamically visualized and highlighted by top three countries on their publications and author collaboration characteristics; (2) the research achievements in authors, institutes, and countries should be quantified by author-weighted scheme considering author order in article bylines; and (3) keyword analysis was too simple to identify the difference in article types between countries. We downloaded 2,268 abstracts from the Pubmed database with a search string of (COVID-19[MeSH Major Topic]) AND (pediatrics[Affiliation]), similar to the mentioned study, and displayed (1) choropleth maps highlighted by the most productive and highly author-collaborated countries, and (2)forest plot to identify differences in article types between two countries. The medical subject headings(MeSH terms) were used to denote the article types in articles. We observed that (1) three top productive countries were the United States, Italy, and India; (2) three top countries collaborated the authors affiliated with the US were Canada, the United Kingdom, and Italy; and (3) only the MeSH term of epidemiology presents the difference in article types between the US and India when the top 10 most frequently occurred MeSH terms were compared. We produced the dashboard-type visualizations to provide valuable information for readers. The novel visual representations make data clear with a better understanding of bibliographic analysis. The methods used in this study are recommended for future studies, not just limited to the field of COVID-19 research.