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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Surg. Nov 27, 2025; 17(11): 112124
Published online Nov 27, 2025. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v17.i11.112124
Published online Nov 27, 2025. doi: 10.4240/wjgs.v17.i11.112124
Concerns regarding lipid metabolism, immune regulation, and methodology in a study on esophageal cancer lymph node metastasis
Xu Cui, Department of Pediatric Surgery, Fujian Children's Hospital (Fujian Branch of Shanghai Children's Medical Center), College of Clinical Medicine for Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou 350011, Fujian Province, China
Zheng Liang, Institute of Transformation Studies, Fujian Children’s Hospital (Fujian Branch of Shanghai Children’s Medical Center), Fuzhou 350011, Fujian Province, China
Co-first authors: Xu Cui and Zheng Liang.
Author contributions: Cui X conceived and designed the critical analysis of the manuscript, drafted the letter to the editor, and revised the content based on peer review comments; Liang Z contributed to the methodological evaluation of the original study, provided scientific insights on lipid metabolism-immune regulation crosstalk, and assisted in finalizing the manuscript. Both authors approved the final version of the manuscript. Cui X and Liang Z contributed equally to this work as co-first authors.
Supported by Fujian Provincial Science and Technology Innovation Joint Fund Project, No. 2024Y9555; and Fujian Provincial Natural Science Foundation Project, No. 20241011124.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this manuscript. All authors confirm that there are no conflicts of interest, including but not limited to relationships with pharmaceutical companies, biomedical device manufacturers, or other entities that could benefit financially from the results of this study. No funding sources or grants have influenced the design, conduct, analysis, or interpretation of the work, nor the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Xu Cui, PhD, Department of Pediatric Surgery, Fujian Children's Hospital (Fujian Branch of Shanghai Children's Medical Center), College of Clinical Medicine for Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics, Fujian Medical University, No. 18 Daoshan Road, Fuzhou 350011, Fujian Province, China. 16802937@qq.com
Received: July 18, 2025
Revised: August 8, 2025
Accepted: September 17, 2025
Published online: November 27, 2025
Processing time: 130 Days and 12.1 Hours
Revised: August 8, 2025
Accepted: September 17, 2025
Published online: November 27, 2025
Processing time: 130 Days and 12.1 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This letter raises concerns about a study investigating lipid metabolism and lymph node metastasis in esophageal cancer, focusing on three key issues: Insufficient data on lipid parameters [especially low-density lipoprotein (LDL) distribution] in the patient cohort, unclear rationale for selecting LDL-related genes and excluding other lipid metabolism pa