No abstract

PurposeThe present study was attempted to compare the differences in gray matter volume (GMV) between the acute eye pain (EP) patients and the healthy controls (HCs) using voxel-based morphometry (VBM), and to explore the relationship with clinical features and behavioral performance.MethodsA total of 24 patients (17 males, 7 females) with acute EP and 24 (17 males, 7 females) age-, sex-, and education-matched HCs were recruited from the Ophthalmology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were conducted in all subjects. We analyzed the original three-dimensional (3D) T1 brain images by VBM and compared the GMV values with the HCs. The acute EP patients can be distinguished from the HCs by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.ResultsCompared with HCs, the acute EP patients had significantly lower GMV values in the brain regions of the left cerebellum posterior lobe, the left limbic lobe, the right insula, the left insula, the left thalamus, the left caudate, and the right cuneus. In addition, the WMV values of the whole brain in acute EP patients decreased slightly.ConclusionsThese results demonstrated that the acute EP patients showed an abnormal reduction in GMV in some brain regions, which might provide valuable information for further exploration of underlying neural mechanisms. These abnormal brain regions may reflect the functional disorders of acute EP patients in somatosensory, motor, cognitive functions, and so on.Translational RelevanceThe VBM study provides a diagnostic method for identifying the cause of acute EP, additionally, a novel direction was presented for further exploration of underlying neural mechanisms of acute EP.

It has been reported that microRNA-206(miR-206) plays an important role in cancers and could be used as a prognostic biomarker. However, the results are controversial. Therefore, we summarize all available evidence and present a meta-analysis to estimate the prognostic value of miR-206 in various cancers. The relevant studies were collected by searching PubMed, EMBASE, and Web of Science databases until August 21, 2020. Hazard ratios (HRs) and odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were applied to explore the association between miR-206 and survival results and clinicopathologic features. Sources of heterogeneity were investigated by subgroup analysis and sensitivity analysis. Publication bias was evaluated using Egger’s test. Twenty articles involving 2095 patients were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled HR showed that low miR-206 expression was significantly associated with unfavourable overall survival (OS) ( HR = 2.03 , 95 CI%: 1.53-2.70, P < 0.01 ). In addition, we found that low miR-206 expression predicted significantly negative association with tumor stage (III-IV VS. I-II) ( OR = 4.20 , 95% CI: 2.17-8.13, P < 0.01 ), lymph node status (yes VS. no) ( OR = 3.58 , 95%: 1.51-8.44, P = 0.004 ), distant metastasis (yes VS. no) ( OR = 3.19 , 95%: 1.07-9.50, P = 0.038 ), and invasion depth ( T 3 + T 4 vs. T 2 + T 1 ) ( OR = 2.43 , 95%: 1.70-3.49, P < 0.01 ). miR-206 can be used as an effective prognostic indicator in various cancers. Further investigations are warranted to validate the present results.

Background Previous neuroimaging studies demonstrated that primary angle closure glaucoma patients were associated with abnormal intrinsic brain activity in primary visual cortex (V1). Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the effective connectivity patterns of V1 in patients with primary angle closure glaucoma. Material and Methods Thirty-seven patients with primary angle closure glaucoma (20 men, 17 women) and 36 healthy controls (20 men, 16 women) closely matched for age, sex, and education, underwent resting-state MRI scans. A voxel-wise Granger causality analysis method was performed to explore different effective connectivity pattern of V1 between the two groups. Results Compared with healthy controls, patients with primary angle closure glaucoma showed decreased effective connectivity from the left V1 to left cuneus and increased effective connectivity from the left V1 to left precentral gyrus and right supplementary motor area. Meanwhile, patients with primary angle closure glaucoma showed decreased effective connectivity from left precentral gyrus to left V1 and right frontal middle gyrus to left V1. In addition, patients with primary angle closure glaucoma showed a decreased effective connectivity from the right V1 to left cuneus/calcarine and increased effective connectivity from the right V1 to left inferior frontal gyrus and right caudate. Meanwhile, patients with primary angle closure glaucoma showed decreased effective connectivity from right middle frontal gyrus/precentral gyrus to right V1 and left precentral gyrus to right V1. Conclusion Our results highlighted that patients with primary angle closure glaucoma had abnormal effective connectivity between V1 and higher visual area, motor cortices, somatosensory cortices, and frontal lobe, which indicated that they might present with abnormal top-down modulations, visual imagery, vision-motor function, and vision-related higher cognition function.

To investigate differences in the functional connectivity (FC) of the primary visual cortex between patients with corneal ulcer (CU) and healthy controls (HCs) using restingstate functional magnetic resonance imaging. Patients and Methods: A total of 30 patients with CU and 30 HCs were closely matched in terms of sex, age, and level of education. Two-sample t-test, receiver operating characteristic curve, and Pearson's correlation coefficient analyses were used to determine the differences in FC between the two groups, the mean FC value of patients with CU and HCs, and the correlation between FC signal values and clinical manifestations in different brain regions of patients. Results: The CU group showed significantly elevated FC in the left and right middle frontal gyri and lower FC with the right cuneus compared with the HC group. In addition, the FC of the right cingulate and left superior frontal gyri also increased in the CU group. The receiver operating characteristic curve revealed high diagnostic value in those brain regions. Conclusion: CU involves aberrant FC of the primary visual cortex in different brain areas, including visual-related and cognitive-related regions. This finding may unveil the underlying neural mechanisms of impaired visual function in CU.