IGF-1R is an independent prognostic marker for osteosarcoma patients and increased expression of this molecular is correlated with metastasis of osteosarcoma.

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BackgroundPulsed electromagnetic field (PEMF) is reported to be an effective adjunct for the management of nonunion long-bone fractures. Most studies implement PEMF treatment after 6 months or longer of delayed union or nonunion following fracture treatment. Despite these variations in treatment, the early application of PEMF following a diagnosis of a postoperative delayed union has not been specifically analyzed. In this study, the outcomes of postoperative delayed union of long-bone fractures treated with an early application of PEMF were evaluated as compared with a sham-treated control group.MethodsIn this prospective, randomized controlled study, a total of 58 long-bone fracture patients, who presented with delayed union of between 16 weeks and 6 months, were randomly split into two groups and subjected to an early application of PEMF or sham treatment. Clinical and radiological assessments were performed to evaluate the healing status. Treatment efficacy was assessed at three month intervals.ResultsPatients in the PEMF group showed a higher rate of union than those in the control group after the first three months of treatment, but this difference failed to achieve statistical significance. At the end of the study, PEMF treatment conducted for an average of 4.8 months led to a success rate of 77.4%. This was significantly higher than the control, which had an average duration of 4.4 months and a success rate of 48.1%. The total time from operation to the end of the study was a mean of 9.6 months for patients in the PEMF group.ConclusionsFracture patients treated with an early application of PEMF achieved a significantly increased rate of union and an overall reduced suffering time compared with patients that receive PEMF after the 6 months or more of delayed union, as described by others.

The structural balance based on the triads structure is used to describe the evolution of the relationships in a social network of humans or animals, where the social network can be abstracted into a complex dynamical network which is composed of the nodes subsystem (NS) and the connection relationships subsystem (CS) coupled with each other. Similar to the synchronization or stabilization in NS with the help of CS, structural balance may be arrived at in CS with the help of NS. In this paper, the CS is described by the Riccati linear matrix differential equation with dynamical coupling term, only including the internal states of the NS. We mainly focus on the dynamic behaviors of NS which can lead to the structural balance in CS. It has been proved under some mathematical conditions that if the NS converges to some nonzero constant targets via the adaptive decentralized control scheme for each node, then the CS will asymptotically track a certain structural balance via the effective coupling. Such a result can be used as a specific explanation for the relationship between the structural balance and the dynamic changes of the nodes’ states. Finally, the simulation example is given to show the validity of the method in this paper.

Background: Both experimental and observational studies have provided conflicting evidence on the associations of selenium with incidence and mortality of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between selenium status in the body and incidence and mortality of CVD by performing a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies and randomized controlled trials. Methods: A systematic search for articles in MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase, Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) and Cochrane library (Wiley) was conducted. Thirteen of the 1811 articles obtained from the databases met our inclusion criteria and were considered in the final analysis. The effect sizes were presented as weighted relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) using random-effects model. To detect dose-response relationships, we used meta-regression. Results: Overall, there was a reduced risk of CVD incidence (RR ¼ 0.66; 95% CI: 0.40-1.09) and mortality (RR ¼ 0.69; 95% CI: 0.57-0.84) in physiologically high selenium status compared to low selenium status in the body. There was a 15% (RR ¼ 0.85, 95% CI: 0.76-0.94) decreased risk of CVD incidence per 10 mg increment in blood selenium concentration. In addition, a statistically significantly nonlinear dose-response relationship was found between CVD mortality and increased blood selenium concentration with the lowest risk at the 30-35 mg increment in blood selenium. Conclusions: Physiologically high selenium levels in the body are associated with decreased risk for CVD incidence and mortality, however, people should be cautious about the potential harmful effects from excessive intake of selenium.