This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the correlations between the bone turnover markers (BTMs) and the bone mineral density (BMD) in patients treated for primary osteoporosis and to identify promising BTMs for the prediction of future BMD changes. The PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science databases were searched for relevant studies that investigated the relationship between the BTMs and the BMD changes in patients treated for osteoporosis. All significant correlation coefficients of the baseline BTMs or changes in BTMs from baseline with the BMD changes from baseline under different interventions from eligible studies were used for systematic review and the subgroup analyses. The correlations were analyzed in terms of bone sites, intervention, time duration of BTMs measurements, and time duration of BMD measurements. Twenty-two records reporting correlation coefficients and the corresponding p-values were included, 13 of which were enrolled in the further subgroup analyses. The combined results from the systematic review and meta-analyses indicated that the changes in osteocalcin (OC), procollagen type I N propeptide (PINP), and urine N-terminal crosslinking telopeptide of type I collagen (U-NTX), or the PINP at baseline tended to be useful in evaluating the long-term BMD changes after drug intervention.

Esophageal cancer (EC) is one of the deadliest cancers worldwide. However, reliable biomarkers for early diagnosis, or those for the prognosis of therapy, remain unfulfilled goals for its subtype esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). The purpose of this study was to identify reliable biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of ESCC by gene chip re-annotation technique and downstream bioinformatics analysis. In our research, the GSE53624 dataset was downloaded from the GEO database. Then, we reannotated the gene expression probe and obtained the gene expression matrix. Differential expressed genes (DEGs) were found by R packages and they were subjected to Gene Ontology enrichment analysis and protein–protein interaction (PPI) network construction. As a result, a total of 28,885 mRNA probes were reannotated, among which 210 down-regulated and 80 up-regulated DEGs were screened out. By combining these genes set in clinical prognosis information and Western blot analysis, we found four genes with diagnostic and prognostic significance, including MMP13, SPP1, MMP10, and COL1A1. Furthermore, markers of infiltrating immune cells exhibited different DEG-related immune infiltration patterns.