BACKGROUND: Diseases and maternal poor habits before conception and during pregnancy have been considered as the definite risk factors for premature delivery and one of the results with better repeatability in the studies on the pathogenesis, whether parental socioeconomic status is related to the occurrence of premature birth?OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association of parental socioeconomic status with premature birth.DESIGN: A case-control study with the parents who has premature infants or normal infants as subjects.SETTING: Department of Preventive Medicine, Medical College of Qingdao University;Woman's Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qingdao Municipal Haici Medicine Group; Department of Obstetric and Gynecology, Qingdao Municipal Eighth People's Hospital PARTICIPANTS: A cohort of premature infants (n=227) were recruited from Qingdao Municipal Maternity and Children Health Institute and the Eighth People's Hospital, Qingdao, premature birth were confirmed according to the diagnostic standards; the control infants (n=750) were also recruited from the same place, they were delivered at pregnancy of from 38 to 42 weeks with birth mass of 3 000-4 000 g. Two groups were matched in sexual constitution and the birthday of within the same week.METHODS: Parents of two groups were asked to fill the self-made questionnaire. Maternal obstetric factors were referring to the perinatal booklet and infant birth record; meanwhile parental socio-economic status, daily-life behaviours and sociodemographic character were also investigated. Multivariate non-conditioned logistic regression analysis was used to assess the relationship of correlative factors.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Parental school education, occupation, the annual family income, as well as bad living and behavioral habits.RESULTS: According to the real state, data of 227 premature infants and 750 normal control infants were analyzed finally. Maternal delivery age of ＞ 35 years old (≤ 25 years old in normal control group), working as a teacher or unemployment (worker in control group), smoking and drinking during pregnancy, father's occupation as peasant (worker in control group), with a long smoking history, lower parental education (not lower than junior college education in control group) and family income less than 35 thousand Yuan (more than 35 thousand Yuan in control group) were proved to be the significant risk factors for premature birth (OR =1.629-15.701).CONCLUSION: Maternal employment as a teacher with father as a peasant, together with lower family income and lower parental education are connected with premature delivery.

Corynebacterium glutamicum is one of the most important traditional industrial microorganisms and receiving more and more attention towards a novel cellular factory due to the recently rapid development in genomics and genetic operation toolboxes for Corynebacterium. However, compared to other model organisms such as Escherichia coli, there were few studies on its metabolic regulation, especially a genome-scale integrated cellular network model currently missing for Corynebacterium, which hindered the systematic study of Corynebacterium glutamicum and large-scale rational design and optimization for strains. Here, by gathering relevant information from a number of public databases, we successfully constructed an integrated cellular network, which was composed of 1384 reactions, 1276 metabolites, 88 transcriptional factors and 999 pairs of transcriptional regulatory relationships. The transcriptional regulatory sub-network could be arranged into five layers and the metabolic sub-network presented a clear bow-tie structure. We proposed a new method to extract complex metabolic and regulatory sub-network for product-orientated study taking lysine biosynthesis as an example. The metabolic and regulatory sub-network extracted by our method was more close to the real functional network than the simplex biochemical pathways. The results would be greatly helpful for understanding the high-yielding biomechanism for amino acids and the re-design of the industrial strains.
Corynebacterium glutamicum ; genetics ; metabolism ; Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial ; Gene Regulatory Networks ; genetics ; Lysine ; biosynthesis ; Metabolic Networks and Pathways ; genetics ; Transcription Factors ; genetics ; Transcription, Genetic

Objective: To clarify the specific mechanisms of action of raw Phellodendron chinense Schneid. (RPC) and saltwater-processed PC (SPC) in the treatment of rats with a kidney-yin deficiency pattern (KYDP). Methods: Healthy rats were administered hydrocortisone to establish a KYDP model. The rats were divided into seven groups: blank control, model, positive control (Liuwei Dihuang pills), high-dose RPC, low-dose RPC, high-dose SPC, and low-dose SPC. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to measure the levels of cAMP, cGMP, TRH, TSH, T3, T4, IFN-γ, TNF-α, and testosterone in the serum and the levels of Na+-K+-ATPase and Ca2+-Mg2+-ATPase in the liver. TRH mRNA expression in the rat hypothalamus was measured using RT-PCR. THRα1+2 protein expression in the hypothalamus of rats was measured using Western blot. Immunohistochemistry was performed to determine the expression levels of FAS, FasL, and TSHR. Flow cytometry was used to determine CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocyte levels. Illumina MiSeq sequencing technology was used to evaluate the diversity of intestinal flora in KYDP rats. Results: The cAMP/cGMP ratio was significantly higher in the model group than in the blank control group (P = .048). Compared with the model group, after administration, the levels of the above-mentioned serum and liver indexes decreased, except that of testosterone. The CD4+/CD8+ ratio also decreased. Compared with the RPC group, the levels of T3, IFN-γ, FAS, FasL, and TSHR in the SPC group decreased whereas that of testosterone increased. Additionally, immune function and intestinal flora diversity improved in the SPC group. SPC proved to be more effective in improving liver energy metabolism in KYDP rats than RPC. Conclusion SPC had a better therapeutic effect on KYDP than RPC. The underlying mechanism of action may be related to improvements in liver energy metabolism, immune function, and intestinal flora diversity.

Objective:To investigate the pathological spectrum and variation of adult renal biopsies in People's Hospital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region from 1986 to 2020.Methods:The pathological data of 5 652 adult renal biopsies from August 1986 to December 2020 were retrospectively collected, and characteristics of pathological spectrum were analyzed. Regarding every 5 years as a research stage, the whole period was divided into 7 stages to analyze the pathological features and variation of renal biopsies. The first stage (P1) started from August 1986 to December 1990. The second stage (P2) started from January 1991 to December 1995. The third stage (P3) started from January 1996 to December 2000. The fourth stage (P4) started from January 2001 to December 2005. The fifth stage (P5) started from January 2006 to December 2010. The sixth stage (P6) started from January 2011 to December 2015. The seventh stage (P7) started from January 2016 to December 2020.Results:The age was (36.47±14.86) years old (18-83 years old) in 5 652 renal biopsies. There were 2 961 males (52.39%). There were 5 636 cases of autologous kidney biopsy and 16 cases of transplanted kidney biopsy. The descending order of incidence classified by disease types were primary glomerular disease (PGD, 4 470 cases, 79.31%), secondary glomerular disease (SGD, 994 cases, 17.64%), tubular-interstitial disease (160 cases, 2.84%), and hereditary nephropathy (12 cases, 0.21%). IgA nephropathy (IgAN, 1 573 cases, 35.19%) was the most frequent pathologic type of PGD, followed by membranous nephropathy (MN, 1 028 cases, 23.00%), mesangial proliferative glomerulonephritis (MsPGN, 878 cases, 19.64%), minimal change disease (MCD, 427 cases, 9.55%), and focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (345 cases, 7.72%). Lupus nephritis (LN, 251 cases, 25.25%) was the most common type of SGD, followed by hypertension nephropathy (193 cases, 19.42%), diabetic kidney disease (168 cases, 16.90%), purpura nephritis (138 cases, 13.88%), and ischemic nephropathy (90 cases, 9.05%). IgAN was the most common type of primary glomerulonephritis and mainly occurred in the age group of 18-59 years old. PGD was the most common glomerular disease in Han nationality (78.33%), Uygur nationality (81.72%) and other ethnic (77.15%) groups. Using Bonferroni correction method, the incidence of PGD in Uygur nationality was higher than that in Han nationality ( P<0.017). From P1 to P7, the detection rates of MN and MCD were increased in common renal pathological types, meanwhile, the ratio of MsPGN was decreased (all P<0.05). From P5 to P7, the detection rates of MN in Han nationality and Uygur nationality increased in the common pathological types of PGD, meanwhile, the ratio of MsPGN decreased (all P<0.05). LN was the most common SGD. The incidence of LN in females was higher than that in males ( P<0.001). Using Bonferroni correction method, the incidence of SGD in Uygur nationality was lower than that in Han nationality ( P<0.017). There was no significant variation in the common pathological type of SGD in Han and Uygur nationalities. Chronic rejection was the main pathological type of transplanted kidney biopsies. Conclusions:PGD is the main type of kidney disease spectrum in People's Hospital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. IgAN is the most common PGD and mainly occurrs in the age group of 18-59 years old. As time goes by, the proportion of MN and MCD is increased, meanwhile the proportion of MsPGN is decreased significantly. LN is the most common SGD.