Objective To investigate the function and regulatory mechanisms of VCAN gene and protein in metastatic prostate cancer.Methods The data of whole genomic expression profiles got from the prostate cancer metastasis were obtained from gene expression omnibus (GEO) database,a set of bioinformatics tools,such as BRB-Array Tools,protparam,SMART,SignalP 4.0,TMHMM,NetPhos2.0,PredictProtein,SWISS-MODEL,GO,KEGG and STRING softwares were used to accomplish data-mining and bioinformatics analysis.Results There were 73 co-expressed differentially genes in prostate cancer metastasis,21 up-regulated and 52 down-regulated.Bioinformatics analysis indicated that VCAN gene encoded 3396 amino acids,VCAN was also contained one Immunoglobulin domain,two hyaluronan-binding domain,one epidermal growth factor-like domain,one calcium-binding EGF-like domain,one C-type lectin domain and one domain abundant in complement control proteins,and a furthermore analysis suggested that VCAN played essential roles in such important biological function including cell adhesion,hyaluronic acid binding,calcium-binding,glycosaminoglycan binding,extracellular matrix and cell adhesion molecules.Conclusions Bioinformatics analysis had a high efficiency in analyzing microarray data and revealing internal biology information.VCAN may play an important role in the prostate cancer metastasis,Thus,VCAN might be a novel biomarker for the diagnosis of prostate cancer metastasis or a new target for its treatment.

Objective To detect the expression level of Taurine up?regulated gene 1( TUG1) in the re?nal cell carcinoma and paired paracancerous normal tissues,then explore the relationships between the expression level of TUG1 and clinical characteristics.Methods RNA was Extacted from the resected renal cell carcinoma tissues and paired paracancerous normal tissues of 46 patients respectively,by reverse transcription to get cDNA, the expression level of the TUG1 was detected by RT?qPCR, the relationship between the expression level of TUG1 and the clinicopathological characteristics was analyzed by statistically software. Results The expression of TUG1 in renal cell carcinoma was obviously lower than that in paired paracancerous normal tissues(0.533±0. 027 vs. 1.000±0.298,t=-3.350,P<0.01).The△CT value of Tug1 in 46 cases of renal cell carcinoma after log?arithmic transformation,the minimum value was -5.535,maximum was 3.085,average value was -0.908,with the average of -0.908 as a dividing line,46 cases of renal cell carcinoma with 25 cases (54.34%) were down regulated the expression.The expression level of TUG1 of patients with renal carcinoma have no significant corre?lation with age,sex,type of renal cell carcinoma,TNM staging and UICC/AJCC staging(P>0.05).Conclusion The expression of TUG1 in renal cell carcinoma tissues are down?regulated,which also suggest that it may be re?lated to the tumorigenesis and development of renal cell carcinoma.

Objective To review the diagnosis and treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of renal pelvis. Methods The clinical data from October 1991 to May 2009 of eight cases of squamous cell carcinoma of renal pelvis were reviewed and analyzed retrospectively. The symptoms of the patients were hematuria (eight cases), pain (seven cases) and abdominal mass (one case). All patients underwent B-ultrasound and IVU examination and four cases underwent CT scan. Three cases were diagnosed as having a tumor before surgery. Five cases were diagnosed as renal calculus, two of the five cases were diagnosed by intraoperative frozen section. Radical nephroureterectomy were performed in four cases, nephrectomy in three cases and palliative resection in one case. Results Histological classification revealed that six cases were moderately differentiated, one case was well differentiated and one case was poorly differentiated. Two cases had stage pT1/pT2 and six cases had stage pT3/pT4. 2 cases had regional lymph nodes metastasis. Seven cases were followed-up. All patients died of tumor recurrence or metastasis. The median tumor specific survive time was six months (range from two months to 42 months). Conclusions Squamous cell carcinoma of renal pelvis is often occurs concurrently with urolithiasis which could lead to difficulty in diagnose before operation. As the most of the patients were diagnosed with advanced stage disease, squamous cell carcinoma of renal pelvis tended to early recurrence and metastasis and the prognosis was very poor.

Objective Detecting of spermatozoal total RNAs by laboratory on chip gel electrophoresis so that it could provide better total RNAs for the sequent experiments, and spur the development of spermatozoal molecular biology. Methods Sperms of healthy adults were collected and then total RNAs were extracted by RNeasy mini kit(QIAGEN), detection and quality control were performed by loboratory on chip gel electrophoresis system. Meantime, the control RNAs were extracted from lymphocytes. Results It was found that there were a plenty of genes expressed in healthy sperms. Electrophoretic graphs showed that the total RNAs of spermatozoal had 2 bands which went ahead a little comparing to the normal somatic cells. The former peak appeared keenness, and the latter was broad and showed like a reversed U. The ratio of them was largely more than 2, no extra peaks were found in electrophoretic graph. Conclusion A simple,intuitionistic method to detect and control the quality of the healthy adults' spermatozoal total RNAs had been successfully constructed by using laboratory on chip gel electrophorosis.

Objective:To analyze the results of surgical treatment in patients with obstructed total anomalous pulmonary venous connection.Methods:Inclusion criteria: Patients with obstructed total anomalous pulmonary venous connection, who underwent surgical treatment in our hospital between December 2012 to January 2018. Exclusion criteria: (1)With complicated malformations, such as single ventricle and visceral inversion; (2)The maximum flow velocity of pulmonary vein was less than 1.2 m/s; (3)Had not underwent surgery. 57 patients[33 males and 24 females, age: (3.2±1.7) months, weight: (5.0±0.9) kg] were enrolled. There were four anatomical subtypes: supracardiac type(n=30), cardiac type(n=16), infracardiac type(n=5), and mixed type(n=6). Patients were followed up after operation.Results:During the follow-up of(52±21) months, 8 cases(14.0%, 8/57) died postoperatively. Postoperative pulmonary vein stenosis was present in 7 patients(12.3%, 7/57). The mortality of patients with postoperative pulmonary vein stenosis(57.1%, 4/7) was significantly higher than that of patients without postoperative pulmonary vein stenosis(8.0%, 4/50).Conclusion:The results of surgical treatment in patients with obstructed total anomalous pulmonary venous connection were encouraging, however, recurrent pulmonary venous stenosis still should be taken care.

Objective:To explore the predictive value of low-dose biphasic (inspiratory and expiratory) CT air trapping sign and semi-quantitative score in predicting abnormal blood gas parameters and progression to severe disease in COVID-19 patients.Methods:Patients with non-severe COVID-19 who were diagnosed by nucleic acid testing and hospitalized in designated hospitals in Wuxi City from January 23 to February 29, 2020 were prospectively and consecutively recruited. All patients received low-dose biphasic CT examination on admission and repeated CT examination at regular intervals during the course. On the inspiratory phase admission of the bipolar CT, the scope of the lesion was evaluated by semi-quantitative score, and the air trapping sign on bipolar CT was assessed. The differences of semi-quantitative score, the presence of the air trapping sign and other clinical factors were compared between the patients with abnormal and the normal blood gas index, as well as between the cases progressed to severe disease and cases without disease progression using the independent sample t-test or χ 2 test. The area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and the comprehensive discriminant improvement index (IDI) were used to evaluate the predictive effectiveness of the semi-quantitative scores, air trapping sign, and combination of two factors in differentiating cases with abnormal and normal blood gas indexes, as well as in differentiating cases with and without disease progression to severe COVID-19 cases. Results:In total 51 non-severe COVID-19 cases were included, with 16 cases showed air trapping sign during the first biphasic CT examination on admission. During the course of the disease, there were 13 patients with abnormal blood gas index, and 9 cases displaying air trapping sign (9/13). All 7 cases with progression to severe cases showed air trapping sign (7/7). Patients with advanced age, air trapping sign and higher semi-quantitative score were found more likely to have abnormal blood gas index ( t=3.10, χ 2=9.38, t=3.34, P<0.05); patients with advanced age, underlying diseases, air trapping sign and higher semi-quantitative score were more likely to develop into severe disease ( t=2.68, χ 2=6.65, χ 2=4.25, t=4.33, P<0.05). The AUC of semi-quantitative score, air trapping sign and combination of two factors in distinguishing abnormal blood gas index from normal blood gas index was 0.803, 0.754 and 0.794 respectively. The AUC of semi-quantitative score, air trapping sign and combination of two factors in distinguishing cases with progression to severe cases from non-progression was 0.881, 0.898 and 0.932, respectively. Air trapping sign combined with semi-quantitative score significantly improved the prediction effectiveness of disease progression, compared with semi-quantitative score or air trapping sign (IDI=0.271, 0.117). Conclusion:Air trapping sign and semi-quantitative score might be used as effective indicators to predict the progression of COVID-19 cases, and the combination of these two factors might be more helpful to predict the disease progression.

Objective:To examine the safety and clinical efficacy of ultrasound-guided irreversible electroporation (IRE) using the open surgery approach, after induction chemotherapy, in the treatment of locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC) .Methods:The data of 64 LAPC patients who underwent ultrasound-guided IRE using the open surgery approach after induction chemotherapy at Department of Pancreatobiliary Surgery, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center from August 2015 to March 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. The study comprised of 30 males and 34 females, with median age of 58.5 years old (range: 34 to 87 years old) , were included in this study.The tumor was located in the pancreatic head and body/tail in 30 and 34 patients, respectively.The largest recorded tumor size was 6.1 cm (≤4.0 cm: n=35; >4.0 cm: n=29) .To create an electric field around the tumor, Two to six probes were parallelly inserted into each patient′s tumor, based on the size of the tumor, at a distance of 2 cm apart through the transverse mesocolon in a caudal-to-cranial direction.According to the numerical sequence of patients undergoing ultrasound-guided IRE, the first 15 cases and following 49 patients were categorized as the primary and secondary treatment group, respectively.T text or χ 2 test was analyzed to the data between two groups.The study endpoints were overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS) , which were investigated using Kaplan-Meier method, and their differences were compared using log-rank test. Results:The overall length of hospital stay was (8.9±2.7) days (range: 5 to 20 days) . Four patients were lost to follow-up.The study follow-up rate was 93.8%, with a median follow-up time of 29.3 months (range: 13.5 to 55.7 months) .The median OS and PFS of the entire cohort was 24.6 months (95 % CI: 22.0 to 27.3 months) and 12.0 months (95 %CI: 8.8 to 15.2 months) , respectively.One month after IRE, abdominal pain was significantly relieved in 95.3% of the patients ( t=-28.55, P<0.01) .The rate of complications in the entire cohort was 20.3% and all were classified as grade B.Of them, pancreatic fistula, incisional infection, and upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage were observed in 7, 4, and 2 cases, respectively.The rate of complications for patients in the primary and secondary treatment groups were significantly different (10/15 vs. 6.1%) , respectively (χ 2=26.01, P<0.01) .Further, two deaths were observed after IRE in the primary treatment group, while none was observed in the secondary treatment group. Conclusions:Ultrasound-guided IRE using the open surgery approach after induction chemotherapy is found to be safe and effective in treating patients with LAPC.However, these findings should be validated in prospective randomized trials before wide clinical application.

Objective:To examine the safety and clinical efficacy of ultrasound-guided irreversible electroporation (IRE) using the open surgery approach, after induction chemotherapy, in the treatment of locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LAPC) .Methods:The data of 64 LAPC patients who underwent ultrasound-guided IRE using the open surgery approach after induction chemotherapy at Department of Pancreatobiliary Surgery, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center from August 2015 to March 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. The study comprised of 30 males and 34 females, with median age of 58.5 years old (range: 34 to 87 years old) , were included in this study.The tumor was located in the pancreatic head and body/tail in 30 and 34 patients, respectively.The largest recorded tumor size was 6.1 cm (≤4.0 cm: n=35; >4.0 cm: n=29) .To create an electric field around the tumor, Two to six probes were parallelly inserted into each patient′s tumor, based on the size of the tumor, at a distance of 2 cm apart through the transverse mesocolon in a caudal-to-cranial direction.According to the numerical sequence of patients undergoing ultrasound-guided IRE, the first 15 cases and following 49 patients were categorized as the primary and secondary treatment group, respectively.T text or χ 2 test was analyzed to the data between two groups.The study endpoints were overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS) , which were investigated using Kaplan-Meier method, and their differences were compared using log-rank test. Results:The overall length of hospital stay was (8.9±2.7) days (range: 5 to 20 days) . Four patients were lost to follow-up.The study follow-up rate was 93.8%, with a median follow-up time of 29.3 months (range: 13.5 to 55.7 months) .The median OS and PFS of the entire cohort was 24.6 months (95 % CI: 22.0 to 27.3 months) and 12.0 months (95 %CI: 8.8 to 15.2 months) , respectively.One month after IRE, abdominal pain was significantly relieved in 95.3% of the patients ( t=-28.55, P<0.01) .The rate of complications in the entire cohort was 20.3% and all were classified as grade B.Of them, pancreatic fistula, incisional infection, and upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage were observed in 7, 4, and 2 cases, respectively.The rate of complications for patients in the primary and secondary treatment groups were significantly different (10/15 vs. 6.1%) , respectively (χ 2=26.01, P<0.01) .Further, two deaths were observed after IRE in the primary treatment group, while none was observed in the secondary treatment group. Conclusions:Ultrasound-guided IRE using the open surgery approach after induction chemotherapy is found to be safe and effective in treating patients with LAPC.However, these findings should be validated in prospective randomized trials before wide clinical application.

Objective:To analyze the risk factors for postoperative pulmonary venous obstruction after correction of total anomalous pulmonary venous connection(TAPVC).Methods:We retrospectively reviewed all patients undergoing operative repair of TAPVC in our institution from December 2013 to January 2018. Patients with functionally univentricular circulations or atrial isomerism were excluded. Patients were divided into two groups according to whether there was pulmonary vein obstruction. The clinical variables of the two groups were compared. Variables for the multivariable analysis were chosen if there was statistical significance on univariable analysis.Results:145 patients were included, 91(63%) males, aged 4(2, 8)months and weight 5.5(4.5, 7.5)kg. Mean follow-up interval was(51±23) months. Postoperative obstruction developed in 27 patients(18.6%). The differences of anatomic type[supracardiac 18(67%) vs.59(50%), cardiac 4(15%) vs. 50(42%), infracardiac 3(11%) vs. 1(1%), mixed 2(7%) vs. 8(7%), P=0.003], preoperative obstruction[yes 19(70%) vs. 37(31%), no 8(30%) vs. 81(69%), P<0.001], associated cardiac lesions[yes 13(48%) vs. 27(23%), no 14(52%) vs. 91(77%), P=0.008] and bypass time[109(89, 129)min vs. 88(70, 110)min, P=0.002] between two groups were statistical significant. A multivariable model showed preoperative obstruction( P<0.001) and bypass time( P=0.009) were associated with postoperative obstruction. Conclusion:The incidence of pulmonary vein obstruction after correction of TAPVC was still high. If there was preoperative obstruction, or the bypass time was too long during operation, the surveillance of pulmonary vein obstruction should be strengthened after operation.

Objective To explore the changes of resting-state degree centrality(DC)in elderly patients with chronic insomnia disorder(CID).Methods Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging(rs-fMRI)data were collected from 26 untreated elderly patients with CID(CID group)and 45 healthy controls(HC)(HC group).Two-sample t-test was conducted to compare the intergroup differences in whole-brain DC values,and the correlation between DC values in different brain regions and clinical indicators were analyzed,and logistic regression analysis was performed to verify the diagnostic efficacy of changes in DC values for elderly CID.Results Compared with the HC group,the DC values of the right insula,left rolandic operculum,and opercular part of right inferior frontal gyrus in the elderly CID group decreased[P＜0.05,false discovery rate(FDR)corrected],while the DC values of the right middle frontal gyrus increased(P＜0.05,FDR corrected).And the DC values of the opercular part of right inferior frontal gyrus in the elderly CID group were positively correlated with sleep efficiency(r=0.504,P=0.009)and self-rating depression scale(SDS)(r=0.401,P=0.042),respectively.The sensitivity of DC value in the opercular part of right inferior frontal gyrus for diagnosing elderly CID was 0.822,the specificity was 0.615,and the accuracy was 0.701.Conclusion Elderly CID patients have abnormal DC values in the right insula,left rolandic operculum,opercular part of right inferior frontal gyrus and right middle frontal gyrus,which may provide imaging evidence for exploring the pathogenesis of CID and clinical diagnosis and treatment.