A self-administered immersive virtual reality tool for assessing cognitive impairment in patients with cancer

Concurrent Validity of Virtual Reality-Based Assessment of Executive Function: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis investigated the concurrent validity between virtual reality (VR)-based assessments and traditional neuropsychological assessments of executive function, with a focus on subcomponents such as cognitive flexibility, attention, and inhibition. A total of 1605 articles were identified through searches of PubMed, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect from 2013 to 2023. After removing duplicates, 1313 articles were screened based on their titles and abstracts, with 77 articles selected for full-text eligibility review. Of these, nine articles fully met the inclusion and exclusion criteria for this study. The effect size for overall executive function was assessed, with subcomponents categorized based on the specific assessment tools used in the studies. The effect size for each subcomponent-cognitive flexibility, attention, and inhibition-was then analyzed to provide a more detailed understanding of their relationships with traditional measures. The results revealed statistically significant correlations between VR-based assessments and traditional measures across all subcomponents. Additionally, sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of the findings, even when low-quality studies were excluded. These results support the use of VR-based assessments as a valid alternative to traditional methods for evaluating executive function. Moreover, the study highlights the potential of VR-based assessments as a valid alternative to traditional methods, emphasizing the need to address variability in executive function subcomponents and integrate diverse cognitive and motor metrics for greater ecological validity.

Identification and validation of immunity- and disulfidptosis-related genes signature for predicting prognosis in ovarian cancer

Background

Ovarian cancer (OC) ranks as the fifth most prevalent neoplasm in women and exhibits an unfavorable prognosis. To improve the OC patient's prognosis, a pioneering risk signature was formulated by amalgamating disulfidptosis-related genes.

Methods

A comparative analysis of OC tissues and normal tissues was carried out, and differentially expressed disulfidptosis-related genes (DRGs) were found using the criteria of |log2 (fold change) | > 0.585 and adjusted P-value <0.05. Subsequently, the TCGA training set was utilized to create a prognostic risk signature, which was validated by employing both the TCGA testing set and the GEO dataset. Moreover, the immune cell infiltration, mutational load, response to chemotherapy, and response to immunotherapy were analyzed. To further validate these findings, QRT-PCR analysis was conducted on ovarian tumor cell lines.

Results

A risk signature was created using fourteen differentially expressed genes (DEGs) associated with disulfidptosis, enabling the classification of ovarian cancer (OC) patients into high-risk group (HRG) and low-risk group (LRG). The HRG exhibited a lower overall survival (OS) compared to the LRG. In addition, the risk score remained an independent predictor even after incorporating clinical factors. Furthermore, the LRG displayed lower stromal, immune, and estimated scores compared to the HRG, suggesting a possible connection between the risk signature, immune cell infiltration, and mutational load. Finally, the QRT-PCR experiments revealed that eight genes were upregulated in the human OC cell line SKOV3 compared with the human normal OC line IOSE80, while six genes were down-regulated.

Conclusions

A fourteen-biomarker signature composed of disulfidptosis-related genes could serve as a valuable risk stratification tool in OC, facilitating the identification of patients who may benefit from individualized treatment and follow-up management.