Objective To investigate the effects of the left ventricular geometry on left atrial structure and function in essential hypertension (EH).Methods One hundred and thirty-eight patients with EH and 86 normal controls were studied with echocardiography.According to left ventricular mass index (LVMI) and relative wall thickness (RWT),a total of 138 patients with EH were divided into normal geometry group (58 cases),concentric remodeling group (22 cases),concentric hypertrophy group (21 cases) and eccentric hypertrophy group (37 cases).Correlation between left atrial diameter index (LADI),left atrial ejection force (LAEF) and all parameters was respectively obtained using linear regression analysis,and the stepwise regression analysis was used to assess the independent effect of each parameter.Results Compared with control group,LADI and LAEF were higher ( P

Objective To determine the role of APPL1,an adaptor protein,played in pancreatic β-cell.Methods APPL1 was overexpressed in INS-1 cells with adenovirus encoding APPL1.Western blot was conducted to measure protein cxprcssion.Propidium iodide/Hoechst staining was used to determine the cell apoptosis.Insulin secretion was measured by ELISA.Results Exposure of INS-1 cells to 20 mmol/L glucose or 30U/ml interleukin-1 β plus 20 ng/ml TNF-α 48 h induced β-cell apoptosis (P＜0.01) and impaired 2 h glucosestimulated insulin secretion (P＜ 0.01).Overexpression of APPL1 in INS-1 decreased cell apoptosis by 34.16％-42.79％ (P＜0.01) and increased glucose-induced insulin secretion by 1.39-2.20 folds compared with control groups (P＜0.05).Conclusion APPL1 decreases β-cell apoptosis and increases glucose-stimulated insulin secretion,and thus protects β-cell against high glucose or cytokines-induced dysfunction.

Autoimmune diseases (ADs) arise from an abnormal immune response of the body against substances and tissues normally present in the body. More than a hundred of ADs have been described in the literature so far. Although their etiology remains largely unclear, various types of ADs tend to share more associated genes with other types of ADs than with non-AD types. Here we present GAAD, a gene and AD association database. In GAAD, we collected 44,762 associations between 49 ADs and 4249 genes from public databases and MEDLINE documents. We manually verified the associations to ensure the quality and credibility. We reconstructed and recapitulated the relationships among ADs using their shared genes, which further validated the quality of our data. We also provided a list of significantly co-occurring gene pairs among ADs; with embedded tools, users can query gene co-occurrences and construct customized co-occurrence network with genes of interest. To make GAAD more straightforward to experimental biologists and medical scientists, we extracted additional information describing the associations through text mining, including the putative diagnostic value of the associations, type and position of gene polymorphisms, expression changes of implicated genes, as well as the phenotypical consequences, and grouped the associations accordingly. GAAD is freely available at http://gaad.medgenius.info.
Autoimmune Diseases ; genetics ; Data Mining ; Databases, Factual ; Gene Regulatory Networks ; Genetic Association Studies ; Humans

Infant, Newborn ; Humans ; Infant, Premature ; Infant, Low Birth Weight ; Blood Transfusion ; Infant, Premature, Diseases