Planar microstrip filters are designed to have a quasielliptic function passband and extended upper stopband with a rejection level of 40 or 50 dB. The design employs stepped-impedance resonators in a compact 2 × 2 cross coupled configuration. The geometric parameters of the resonators are planned to shift the third resonance as high as possible, and then the transmission zeros created by the structure are devised to suppress the second resonance, so that a wide upper stopband up to more than 4.5 times the passband frequency can be achieved. By employing the skew-symmetric input/output feeds, three transmission zeros in the frequency band of interest can be created. The leading two zeros are allocated on the both sides of the passband, generating a quasi-elliptic function response with enhanced roll-off rate in the transition bands, and the last zero incorporating with a zero created by anti-coupled-line at higher frequencies are employed to extend the rejection bandwidth. The measurement data agree very well with the simulation responses.

Backgrounds and Aim: Metabolic-associated fatty liver dis-ease (MAFLD) is a novel term proposed in 2020 to avoid the exclusion of certain subpopulations, though the application of this term in the real world is very limited. Here, we aimed to evaluate the impact of MAFLD on hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after curative resection. Methods: Patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB)-related HCC who received hepatectomy between January 2010 and December 2019 were consecutively selected. The association between histologically proven concurrent MAFLD and clinical outcomes were retrospectively analyzed. Results: Among the 812 eligible patients with CHB-related HCC, 369 (45.4%) were diagnosed with concurrent MAFLD. After a mean follow-up of 65 months, 303 patients (37.3%) developed HCC recurrence, 111 (13.7%) died, and 12 (1.5%) received liver transplantation. Although no differences in the incidences of HCC recurrence (HR: 0.902, 95% CI: 0.719–1.131, p = 0.370) and death or liver transplantation (HR: 0.743, 95% CI: 0.518–1.006, p = 0.107) were observed between patients with and without MAFLD in multivariate analysis, the patients with MAFLD tended to achieve better recurrent-free survival compared to patients without MAFLD. Notably, lean MAFLD (BMI < 23 kg/m2) was a relative risk factor for tumor recurrence (HR: 2.030, 95% CI: 1.117–3.690, p = 0.020) among patients with MAFLD. Conclusions: The overall prognosis in HBV-related early-stage HCC, in terms of HCC recurrence and death or liver transplantation, was not significantly different between patients with and without MAFLD. Among patients with MALFD, lean-MAFLD was a risk factor for HCC recurrence. Further studies are warranted to validate these results.

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Objective To compare hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA levels from serum and explanted native liver samples from patients undergoing living donor liver transplantation (LDLT). Methods This was a prospective observational study. Serum and liver samples were collected from consecutive serum anti-HCV-positive transplant recipients between February 2016 to August 2019. HCV RNA was extracted from liver samples and subjected to one-step reverse-transcription qPCR. using the TopScript One Step qRT-PCR Probe Kit with HCV qPCR probe assay and human GAPDH qPCR probe assay on a ViiA7 Real-Time PCR System. Results Among the 80 patients, 36% (29/80) were HCV RNA positive in serum and 85% (68/80) had positive hepatic HCV RNA. Post-liver transplantation, 4% (3/80) patients were serum positive. Conclusions Our study suggests that pre-transplant serum HCV RNA levels may give an underestimate of the number of positive HCV RNA cases and that hepatic HCV RNA data may be more accurate.