METHODS: Retrospective review of all neonates with clinical and radiological evidence of non-perforated NEC that were treated in a tertiary-level referral hospital between 2009 and 2018. General patient demographics, laboratory parameters and outcomes were recorded. Receiver operating characteristics analysis was performed to evaluated optimal cut-offs and area under the curve (AUC) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

METHODS: per-orally infected C57BL/6 mice with 15-20 cysts of the avirulent T. gondii Beverly strain at 9-11 weeks of age were examined 12 weeks later during parasite establishment. Distributions of the parasite's cysts and the histopathological lesions in the brains were analyzed using Image J software. Relative expression of TNF-α and iNOS of cell-mediated immunity (CMI), Bax (pro-apoptosis) and Bcl-2 (anti-apoptosis) were all assessed using immunohistochemistry.

RESULTS: higher parasite burden was seen in the forebrain with p value <= 0.05. Dramatically increased TNF-α, iNOS, and Bax expressions with Bax/Bcl-2 ratio 2.42:0.52 were reported (p value <= 0.05). The significant correlation between Bax data and different CMI biomarkers including TNF-α and i-NOS was evaluated. Interestingly, no significant correlation was seen between TNF-α, iNOS, Bax and Bcl-2 expressions and location of the parasite. However, Bax/Bcl-2 ratio was statistically correlated with CMI biomarkers and whole sample mean parasite burden, p value <= 0.05.

MATERIALS AND METHOD: 180 SNPs, shown to be previously associated with prostate cancer, were used to develop a PHS model in men with European ancestry. A machine-learning approach, LASSO-regularized Cox regression, was used to select SNPs and to estimate their coefficients in the training set (75,596 men). Performance of the resulting model was evaluated in the testing/validation set (6,411 men) with two metrics: (1) hazard ratios (HRs) and (2) positive predictive value (PPV) of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing. HRs were estimated between individuals with PHS in the top 5% to those in the middle 40% (HR95/50), top 20% to bottom 20% (HR80/20), and bottom 20% to middle 40% (HR20/50). PPV was calculated for the top 20% (PPV80) and top 5% (PPV95) of PHS as the fraction of individuals with elevated PSA that were diagnosed with clinically significant prostate cancer on biopsy.

RESULTS: 166 SNPs had non-zero coefficients in the Cox model (PHS166). All HR metrics showed significant improvements for PHS166 compared to PHS46: HR95/50 increased from 3.72 to 5.09, HR80/20 increased from 6.12 to 9.45, and HR20/50 decreased from 0.41 to 0.34. By contrast, no significant differences were observed in PPV of PSA testing for clinically significant prostate cancer.

METHODS: A total of 82 archived paraffin embedded HM tissues with subtypes classified based on H&E staining - 39 (47.5%) CHM, 41 (50.0%) PHM and two (2.43%) unclassified molar pregnancy were retrieved. All tissue samples were subjected for p57kip2 IHC analysis and HM subtypes were then reclassified.

RESULTS: A total of 66 cases (80.5%) were re-classified as CHM, 14 cases (17.1%) as PHM and two cases (2.4%) were decidual and cystic tissues. Analysis using p57kip2 immunostaining showed a diagnostic discrepancy of 33.0% from routine H&E staining and helps to improve the characterisation of the HM subtypes specifically at early gestations which have less distinctive morphologies.