BACKGROUND:Periodontitis is a common, chronic inflammatory disease that relies heavily on effective daily oral hygiene for long-term control. Light-based therapies have demonstrated strong antibacterial potential; however, their effectiveness in regular home use remains unexplored. METHODS:Two hundred stage I-III periodontitis maintenance patients were randomized for supportive periodontal care (SPC) or SPC combined with adjunct home-applied dual-light therapy. Bleeding on probing (BOP), visible plaque index (VPI), and the number of sites with ≥4 mm periodontal probing depth (PPD) were measured at the baseline, at 3 and 6 months. RESULTS:Of the 200 randomized patients, 184 completed all visits. At baseline, the groups were similar for BOP, VPI, and pocket depth. At 3 and 6 months, adjunctive dual-light therapy achieved lower BOP (12.6 ± 0.7% and 12.0 ± 0.8%) than SPC alone (17.8 ± 0.8% and 17.3 ± 1.0%); p < 0.0001 and p = 0.0002 and lower VPI (8.5 ± 0.7% and 9.7 ± 0.8%) vs. (13.3 ± 0.8% and 14.2 ± 1.0%); p < 0.0005 and 0.0142. The dual-light group also had fewer sites with PPD ≥ 4 mm (5.6 ± 0.7 and 5.3 ± 0.6) vs. (7.6 ± 1.2 and 7.8 ± 0.9); p = 0.02 and p = 0.02. CONCLUSION:Regularly home-applied dual-light therapy may represent a promising addition to existing home-care strategies and a potential advance in adjunctive periodontal maintenance. PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY:Periodontitis is a common disease that damages the tissues supporting the teeth. Daily brushing and cleaning between the teeth are essential, but even with good routines, people can still develop plaque and gum inflammation. Light-based treatments are known to eliminate plaque bacteria effectively, but until now, they have mostly been used in dental offices, and their potential for home use has not been tested. In the HOPE-CP study, we enrolled 200 adults with periodontitis to receive routine supportive periodontal care. Half of them were randomized to use a light-based antibacterial device to support their daily oral hygiene at home. After 3 and 6 months, those using the device had less gum bleeding, less visible plaque, and fewer sites with deeper periodontal pockets than those who used routine care alone. These results show that using a daily antibacterial light treatment at home may help people better control inflammation and maintain healthier gums between dental visits.
We present a large-scale comparative study of 242 Latin and Cyrillic-script languages using subword-based methodologies. By constructing 'glottosets' from Wikipedia lexicons, we introduce a framework for simultaneous cross-linguistic comparison via Byte-Pair Encoding (BPE). Our approach utilizes rank-based subword vectors to analyze vocabulary overlap, lexical divergence, and language similarity at scale. Evaluations demonstrate that BPE segmentation aligns with morpheme boundaries 95
Accumulating evidence implicates the microbiome as an important determinant of clinical outcomes in cancer therapies; however, the role of the microbiome in oncolytic virus therapy remains largely unexplored. We investigated the gut microbiome of cancer patients following treatment with the oncolytic adenovirus igrelimogene litadenorepvec (Ad5/3-E2F-d24-hTNF-IRES-hIL2; TILT-123). Baseline fecal samples from phase I clinical trials (NCT04695327 and NCT05271318) were analyzed using shotgun metagenomic sequencing and compared to treatment outcomes. A higher relative abundance of Alistipes was observed in patients with treatment benefit, while elevated Eggerthella was observed with reduced benefit. These associations were validated in a preclinical mouse model where administration of Alistipes shahii improved the efficacy of adenovirus therapy. In addition, enrichment analysis in patient samples showed a positive correlation between higher relative abundance of Alistipes and elevated short-chain fatty acids in both feces and serum, which in turn revealed higher circulating neutrophil counts. Finally, in a case study, we observed that adenovirus treatment resulted in increased Alistipes relative abundance and reduced Eggerthella relative abundance, indicating that adenovirus therapy may beneficially modulate the microbiome. Overall, our findings reveal a novel association between Alistipes, Eggerthella, and the therapeutic response to oncolytic adenovirus therapy, highlighting their potential as biomarkers or targets for microbiome-based interventions such as pre-, pro-, or postbiotics.
The Photovoltaic Thermal (PV/T) system, capable of simultaneously generating electricity and thermal energy, provides an alternative and efficient approach to conventional solar water heater (SWH) systems. Although numerous reviews on PV/T technology exist, they often operate in isolation, concentrating either on thermal performance, electrical efficiency, or a simple enumeration of components, without offering a critical synthesis of their synergistic integration. This review addresses this gap by arguing that the key advancement in PV/T-SWH systems is no longer incremental component design but the holistic integration of advanced materials such as nanofluids and PCMs with digital intelligence such as AI and machine learning. This manuscript provides a critical reassessment of this transition, outlining the evolution from flat-plate and concentrating collectors to the modern hybrid system. We consolidate the principal theoretical frameworks necessary for their design and conclude that the future challenge lies not in technical feasibility but in economic viability and standardization. This review therefore, serves as a roadmap for leveraging material-digital synergy to overcome commercialization barriers and unlock the full potential of the PV/T-SWH system.
