Aim. Analyze the gender difference of esophageal cancer patients in response to drug treatment. Methods. All publications on clinical trials were collected from PubMed, Scopus, and PMC. Each publication was examined to determine whether the publication is a clinical trial and whether data on gender difference were reported. Results. Selected from a total of 191 publications, data from 7 trials with a total of 2041 patients were evaluated for gender differences. These clinical trials involve different drugs and disease phenotype. A significant difference was obtained between male and female groups from Student’s t-test. There is no conclusive result on age, ethnicity, tumor size, and drug influence. Conclusions. Gender difference in response to treatment potentially most likely exists in esophageal cancer patients, regardless of age, race, and drugs.

Background: Cancer imposes significant physical and emotional distress not only on patients, but also on their caregivers. In recent years, there has been a growing focus on the mental and physical well-being of caregivers. Among various psychological interventions, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is widely recognized as one of the most effective approaches. However, traditional CBT is often limited by time and geographical constraints, resulting in delayed or inefficient support for caregivers. Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) presents a valuable alternative for alleviating the caregiving burden and the negative emotions experienced by caregivers. Objectives: This study aimed to provide a scoping review of ICBT interventions for caregivers of patients with cancer, examining intervention content, outcome measures, and effectiveness and to offer insights and references for the development and clinical applications of ICBT programs tailored to caregivers of patients with cancer in China. Methods: Relevant literature was systematically searched in PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, and VIP Chinese Journal Database. The search timeframe was from database inception to June 6, 2024. Inclusion criteria encompassed intervention studies that implemented cognitive behavioral therapy for caregivers of patients with cancer via the internet, WeChat (Tencent), or mobile electronic devices. This category includes both randomized and nonrandomized controlled trials. Results: A total of 12 studies met the criteria and were included in the review. The intervention content included the following components: treatment initiation and brief introduction (5/12, 41%), cognitive education and restructuring (7/12, 58%), emotional expression and coping (6/12, 50%), cognitive restructuring and reinforcement (4/12, 33%), behavioral training and activation (9/12, 75%), problem-solving techniques (4/12, 33%), communication (5/12, 41%), and completion of treatment with follow-up consolidation (3/12, 25%). The intervention duration typically ranged from 6 to 8 weeks. Outcome indicators encompassed feasibility and acceptability, anxiety, depression, caregiver burden, and quality of life. ICBT demonstrated positive effects for caregivers of patients with cancer. Most intervention programs were feasible and acceptable, with 2 out of 5 feasibility studies reporting recruitment rates below 50%. Attrition rates across studies ranged from 3% to 16%, and caregivers expressed satisfaction with the information, quality, and skills provided. ICBT exhibits a moderate effect in diminishing negative emotions among caregivers and alleviating caregiver stress. However, its impact on improving quality of life is not statistically significant, underscoring the need for long-term follow-up. Conclusions: The implementation of ICBT for caregivers of patients with cancer has demonstrated beneficial outcomes, attributed to its practicality and flexibility, which contribute to its greater acceptance among caregivers. Nevertheless, there is significant heterogeneity in intervention format, duration, and outcome indicators. It is necessary to develop optimal intervention strategies and secure online platforms based on the cultural background in China to improve the quality of life of caregivers.

Epidermal growth factor receptor (Egfr) has been the target of several drugs for cancers. The potential gender differences in genes in the Egfr axis have been suggested in humans and in animal models. Female and male mice from the same recombinant inbred (RI) strain have the same genomic components except the sex difference. A population of different RI mouse strains allows to conduct precise analysis of molecular pathways and regulation of Egfr between female and male mice. The whole genome expression profiles of 70 genetically diverse RI strains of mice were used to compare three major molecular aspects of Egfr gene: the relative expression levels, gene network and expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) that regulate the expression of Egfr between female and male mice. Our data showed that there is a significant sex difference in the expression levels in kidney. A considerable number of genes in the gene network of Egfr are sex differentially expressed. The expression levels of Egfr in mice are statistical significant different between C57BL/6 J (B6) and DBA/2 J (D2) genotypes in male while no difference in female mice. The eQTLs that regulate the expression levels of Egfr between female and male mice are also different. Furthermore, the differential expression levels of Egfr showed significantly different correlations with two known biological traits between male and female mice. Overall there is a substantial sex difference in the Egfr pathways in mice. These data may have significant impact on drug target design, development, formulation, and dosage determinant for women and men in clinical trials.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify and visualize from different perspectives the topic on occupational exposure in operating room (OEOR). Methods: In the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), all the half-century data were retrieved from January 1st, 1973 to December 31st, 2022. CiteSpace, VOSviewer and Excel 2019 were employed to analyze and visualize data, based on publications, countries, institutions, journals, authors, keywords. Result: A total of 336 journal papers were found. The increase of publications virtually started in 1991, peaked in 2020 and has been slowing down ever since. USA played most significant part among all the 49 countries/regions, while Universidade Estadual Paulista out of 499 institutions published the most papers. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health bears the most documents and citations in all the 219 retrieved journals. There are 1847 authors found, among whom Hoerauf K is the most influential one. "Occupational exposure”, “nitrous oxide” and “operating room personnel” are the top 3 co-occurrences keywords. Conclusion: The trend in the field lies in “anaesthetic gas”, “blood borne pathogen”, “radiation” and “aerosol”, while “surgical smoke” and “occupational safety” are the recently researching hot spots in this study. Accurate recognize and effective protection are always essential subjects for researchers.

Whether smokers respond to anti-cancer drugs differently than non-smokers remains controversial. The objective of this study is to explore whether the better response of the smokers is specific to therapy of anti-PD-1/PD-L1, anti-checkpoint inhibitor, individual drugs on the cell surface, or lung cancer. Our results showed that among all non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, when the data from anti-PD-1/PD-L1, anti-CTLA-4, and anti-MUC1 drugs are combined, the mean hazard ratios (HR) of smokers and non-smokers were 0.751 and 1.016, respectively. A meta-analysis with a fixed effect (FE) model indicated that the smokers have an HR value of 0.023 lower than that of the non-smokers. A stratified subgroup meta-analysis indicated that when treated with anti-CTLA-4 drugs, smokers had reduced HR values of 0.152 and 0.165 on average and FE model meta-analysis, respectively. When treated with an anti-MUC1 drug, smokers had reduced HR values of 1.563 and 0.645, on average and FE model meta-analysis, respectively. When treated with a combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab drugs, smokers had, on average, reduced HR and FE model meta-analysis values (0.257 and 0.141), respectively. Smoking is a clinical response predictor for anti-PD/PD-L1 monotherapy or first-line treatment in lung, urothelial carcinoma, and head and neck cancer. Smokers treated with other drugs have shown worse responses in comparison to non-smokers. These data suggest that, along with the progress in the development of new drugs for cancer, drugs acting on specific genotypes of smokers likely will arise.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify and characterize the literature on surgical smoke, visualize the data and sketch a certain trending outline. Methods: In the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), all the data were acquired from January 1st 2003 to December 31st 2022. VOSviewer and CiteSpace were employed to visualize data, based on publications, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship relations. Microsoft Excel 2019 was used to comb and categorize all the statistics. Result: A total 363 of journal papers were retrieved. The publication number was in a slow but steady growth between 2003 and 2019, followed by a sharp surge in 2020, and then the publication kept in a productive way. Surgical endoscopy and other interventional techniques was the most active journal on surgical smoke. USA played an important role among all the countries/regions. There were 1847 authors for these 363 papers, among whom 44 authors published more than three articles on surgical smoke. “Surgical smoke”, “covid-19” and “surgery” were the top 3 appeared keywords, while the latest hot-spot keywords were “COVID-19”, “virus”, “transmission”, “exposure” and “risk”. There were 1105 co-cited references and 3786 links appeared in all 363 articles. Among them, 38 references are cited more than 10 times. The most co-cited article was “Detecting hepatitis B virus in surgical smoke emitted during laparoscopic surgery.” Based on the titles of references and calculated by CiteSpace, the top 3 cluster trend network are “laparoscopic surgery”, “COVID-19 pandemic” and “surgical smoke”. Conclusion: According to bibliometric analysis, the research on surgical smoke has been drawing attention of more scholars in the world. Increasing number of countries or regions added in this field, and among them, USA, Italy, and China has been playing important roles, however, more wide and intense cooperation is still in expectation.