Metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD) is a new term that no longer excludes patients that consume alcohol or present other liver diseases, unlike nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of different biomarkers as predictors of MAFLD in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). In this regard, a cross-sectional, non-interventional study was conducted over a period of 8 months in patients with T2DM. Liver steatosis displayed by abdominal ultrasound certified the MAFLD diagnosis. A percentage of 49.5% of the studied patients presented MAFLD. Through logistic regression adjusted for gender, age, T2DM duration, lipid-lowering therapy, smoking status, nutritional status, we demonstrated that elevated triglycerides (TG) levels, high non-high-density-lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol-to-HDL-cholesterol (non-HDL/HDL) ratio, high atherogenic index of plasma (AIP), and increased Homeostatic Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) had predictive value for MAFLD in patients with T2DM. Furthermore, we calculated the optimal cut-off values for these biomarkers (184 mg/dL for TG, 0.615 for AIP, 3.9 for the non-HDL/HDL ratio, and 2.01 for HOMA-IR) which can predict the presence of MAFLD in patients with T2DM. To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the predictive value of the non-HDL/HDL ratio for MAFLD in patients with T2DM.

We aimed to comparatively assess the prognostic preoperative value of the main peripheral blood components and their ratios—the systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR)—to the use of artificial-neural-network analysis in determining undesired postoperative outcomes in colorectal cancer patients. Our retrospective study included 281 patients undergoing elective radical surgery for colorectal cancer in the last seven years. The preoperative values of SII, NLR, LMR, and PLR were analyzed in relation to postoperative complications, with a special emphasis on their ability to accurately predict the occurrence of anastomotic leak. A feed-forward fully connected multilayer perceptron network (MLP) was trained and tested alongside conventional statistical tools to assess the predictive value of the abovementioned blood markers in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Statistically significant differences and moderate correlation levels were observed for SII and NLR in predicting the anastomotic leak rate and degree of postoperative complications. No correlations were found between the LMR and PLR or the abovementioned outcomes. The MLP network analysis showed superior prediction value in terms of both sensitivity (0.78 ± 0.07; 0.74 ± 0.04; 0.71 ± 0.13) and specificity (0.81 ± 0.11; 0.69 ± 0.03; 0.9 ± 0.04) for all the given tasks. Preoperative SII and NLR appear to be modest prognostic factors for anastomotic leakage and overall morbidity. Using an artificial neural network offers superior prognostic results in the preoperative risk assessment for overall morbidity and anastomotic leak rate.

Objectives: To study the causes of iron deficiency, laboratory findings and clinical manifestation of infants aged 6-12 months and children aged 1-3 years diagnosed with severe iron-deficiency anemia. Patients, Materials and Methods: We conducted an observational, retrospective single tertiary center study between January 2015 and April 2022, which included 142 children. The control group (patients with no diagnosis of severe iron-deficiency anemia) included 71 patients and the study group (patients diagnosed with severe iron-deficiency anemia) included also 71 patients. Clinical data were retrospectively collected from hospital medical records. Statistical analysis was conducted using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 25.0 software. Results: Seventy-one children had hemoglobin <7 g/dL and low values of ferritin/serum iron (22 infants aged 6-12 months and 49 children aged 1-3 years). In both the study and control groups, the male gender was slightly more prevalent. Mother's age at birth and living standard is significantly lower in the study group. We note a higher frequency of premature births (14.08%) in children identified with anemia compared to control group (8.45%). We found a statistically significant distribution of cow's milk consumption among the two groups (p<0.001). Pearson's correlation test revealed a significant positive correlation, indicating that anemia is directly proportional to cow's milk consumption. Conclusions: The most frequent cause of iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children 1-3 years old was the consumption of cow's milk following incorrect diversification and incomplete prophylaxis of iron-deficiency anemia.