Objective To study the genes modulated during plasma cell development and their regulating network. Methods The changes of gene expression during differentiation from mature B cells to plasma cells were studied using cDNA microarray and RT PCR. Results The gene expression profile during plasma cell differentiation was established. During mature B cell plasma cell differentiation, numerous genes were modulated, including genes involving immunity, cell growth, survival, and signal transduction. The expressions of several molecules in the B cell antigen receptor (BCR) signaling pathways, such as Ig?, Ig?, Lyn, Syk, BLNK, SWAP 70, and SHP 1 were down regulated. The decreased expression of some of these molecules might be associated with the down regulation of the transcription factor BSAP. Conclusion During plasma cell differentiation, molecules involving BCR signaling pathways are down regulated.

Objective:To compare the mRNA expression of IRG1in PBMCs from patients with TB, individual with latent infection and healthy controls, and investigate its diagnostic value for Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection.Methods: The mRNA expression of IRG1 from PBMCs stimulated with Mtb-specific antigens was quantitatively detected by quantitative real-time PCR ( qPCR).Receiver-operating-characteristic ( ROC) curves were used to determine the cutoff points yielding the highest specificity and sensitivity,and discriminative ability was evaluated by the area under the ROC curve.Results: The mRNA expression of IRG1 in healthy controls was significantly lower than that in patients with tuberculosis and LTBI ( P<0.05 ).The AUC for using IRG1 mRNA levels (>0.01536 ) to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection was 0.91, with 76.47% sensitivity, 96.30% specificity, LR 20.65,and 85.2% of cases correctly classified.Conclusion: IRG1 may be used as a biomarker for diagnosing Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection.

Objective To compare the efficacy and survival of patients with malignant obstructive jaundice using either endoscopic self-expandable metallic stents or surgery,and to evaluate the compounding factors influencing prognosis.Methods 56 patients with malignant obstructive jaundice treated with endoscopic self-expandable metallic stents (the endoscopic group) were compared with 90 patients who received surgery (the surgery group) during the same study period.Clinical data and survival of the 2 groups of patients were retrospectively analyzed.Results The success rate was 100％ in the endoscopic group.The serum bilirubin,alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and γ-glutamyl transferase (γ-GT) decreased significantly by using either therapeutic endoscopy or surgery (P＜0.01).There was no significant difference between the two groups in the reduction of serum total bilirubin.The mean survival of the endoscopic and surgery groups were 340 d and 795 d respectively.The accumulative survivals of the endoscopic group at 3,6 and 12 months as evaluated by the Kaplan-Meier method were 82.6 ％,61.1％ and 46.6 ％,respectively,and for the surgery group were 97.0％,90.9 ％ and 65.4％ respectively. There was a significant difference in survival between the two groups (P＜0.01).Survival after therapeutic endoscopy was similar to surgery for patients with metastasis and hilar biliary obstruction.Conclusions Self-expandable metallic stents gave similar palliation in the relief of jaundice in patients with malignant biliary obstruction.The stents had no effect on the primary tumor.Therapeutic endoscopy with self-expandable metallic stents is a safe and effective method for the relief of jaundice in patients with obstructive jaundice caused by non-resectable malignant tumors.

Objective To investigate the feature of Th1 cytokines induced by Mtb-specific antigen in patients with refractory pulmonary tuberculosis.Methods 28 patients with refractory pulmonary tuberculosis,67 patients with first-treated pulmonary tuberculosis,and 25 healthy controls with positive T.spot (LTBI group) were enrolled.IFN-γ,IL-2 and TNF-α in supernatants from PBMCs stimulated with ESAT-6 and CFP-10 were analyzed with Bender Flowcytomix on flow cytometry.Results The levels of the three cytokines were utmost high in patients with first-treated pulmonary tuberculosis.The lowest level of IFN-γ and IL-2 were induced in patients with refractory pulmonary tuberculosis,and were significantly lower than the LTBI group(Mann-Whitney U ＝ 105.5,162.5,P ＜ 0.01).Conclusions The immunotherapy with IFN-γ and IL-2 may play a role in treatment for refractory pulmonary tuberculosis but not for most of first-treated pulmonary tuberculosis.

SELEX is a newly developed biochemical technique,which filter out high specificity and high affinity ligand for the target molecules through the identification of aptamer combined with the target molecules.The specific aptamer was used in a variety of clinical applications,such as diagnosis of the disease,development of new therapeutic drugs and even directly applied to disease treatment.

Objective To study the expression of CD27 and CD28 in antigen-specific CD4~+T cells in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and healthy people, and understand the role of differentiated stages of CD4~+T cells in the pathogenesis of tuberculosis. Methods The expression of CD27 and CD28 was analyzed by CD4, CD154, CD27 and CD28 staining and flow cytometry. The distributions of CD27 and CD28 in antigen-specific CD4~+T cells were compared between patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and healthy controls. Results In patients of pulmonary tuberculosis, the frequencies of CD27 + CD28 + (early differentiated stage), CD27~- CD28~+ and CD27~+ CD28~- (intermediate differentiated stage), CD27~- CD28~-(fully differentiated stage) T cell subsets in antigen specific CD4~+T cells were (49. 55 ±6. 15)%, (26. 85 ±3. 87)% ,(7. 2 ± 1.37)% and ( 16. 35 ±3.97)%, respectively. In healthy controls, the frequencies of the four subsets in antigen-specific CD4~+T cells were ( 51.81 ± 4. 94 ) %, ( 29. 83 ± 5.33 ) %, ( 12. 65 ±4. 48)% and (5.7±2)%, respectively. The early differentiated CD4~+T cell was the major subset both in patients and healthy people, however, which had significant difference compared with the fully differentiated subset ( t = 2. 26, P < 0. 05 ). Conclusion The population frequency of the fully differentiated CD4~+T cells in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis was significantly higher than that in healthy people. This suggested that the differentiation degree of the antigen-specific CD4~+T cell might be related with pulmonary tuberculosis.

Objective To study the feature of MIG and IFN-γ obtained from PBMCs stimulated with Mtb specific antigens and the potential value in the differential diagnosis of active pulmonary tuberculosis from bacterial pneumonia and primary lung cancer. Methods 90 patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis and 31 patients with bacterial pneumonia and primary lung cancer were enrolled. MIG and IFN-γin supernatants from PBMCs stimulated with Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific antigens were analyzed with Bender Flowcytomix on flow cytometry. The diagnostic values were established based on receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Results PBMCs stimulated with Mtb-specific antigens produced significantly higher levels of MIG compared with IFN-γ The level of MIG in active pulmonary TB patients was significantly higher than in controls(3023.0 pg/ml vs 112.5 pg/ml, P ＜0.0001). The MIG and IFN-γtests were positive in 96. 8 and 86. 7% of the TB patients, the specificity was up to 94. 4 and 87. 1%. With combination of MIG and IFN-γtests, the positive rate increased among TB patients to 97. 8% without a significant decrease in specificity. Conclusions The responses of the MIG and IFN-γagainst to Mtb-specific antigens could be used to discriminate newly-treated active pulmonary tuberculosis fiom bacterial pneumonia and primary lung cancer. Combination of MIG and IFN-γ might be a simple and quick approach to diagnosis newly-treated active pulmonary tuberculosis.

Objective To evaluate the prophylactic effects of propranolol, propranolol plus endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) and propranolol plus endoscopic sclerotherapy (EVS), and to determine the most effective combination for secondary prevention of esophageal variceal bleeding.Methods After hemostasis, a total of 78 patients with esophageal variceal bleeding were randomly assigned to receive propranolol (propranolol group), propranolol plus EVL (ligation group) or propranolol plus sclerotherapy (EVS group), with 26 in each group.All patients were followed up for 12 months, and the rates of variceal re-bleeding, mortality, portal hypertensive gastropathy (PHG), re-occurrence of esophageal varices and formation of gastric fundus varices were compared among different groups.Results During the 12-month follow-up, the rate of re-bleeding in EVL group (30.77%) was significantly lower than those of the EVS group (42.31%) or propranolol group (53.85%) (P<0.05).The occurrence of PHG and fundal varices in patients of EVL group was similar to that of propranolol group, which were both lower than that of EVS group (P<0.05), but the re-occurrence of esophageal varices in EVL group was significantly higher than that of EVS group (P<0.05).Conclusion EVL plus propranolol might be the most effective therapy for secondary prophylaxis of esophageal variceal bleeding.

Objective To study population frequencies of CD4+,CD154+ T cell subset in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and controls with positive PPD reaction. Methods Flow cytometry was used to detect the CD4+,CD154+ T cell subset, the population frequen-cies in patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and controls were compared. Results The expression level of CD154 was higher when PE-la-beled CD154 antibody was added during stimulation period, compared with CD154 labeling after stimulation(1.51±0. 36/0. 40±0. 13, P <0.05). The CD154+ cells were not detectable in fresh isolated CD4+ T cells, but significantly increased after stimulation with specific anti-gens. The population of CD4+, CD154+ T cell subset was significantly reduced in patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis, compared with healthy controls with PPD positive reaction(0. 72±0. 32/1.65±0. 76, P <0. 01). Conclusions The population of CD4± ,CD154± T cell subset was significantly reduced in patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis, which indicated that it may play an important role in the de-velopment of tuberculosis.

OBJECTIVE:To prepare Puerarin polymeric micelles and establish a method to determine its entrapment efficiency. METHODS:Puerarin polymeric micelles were prepared by film dispersion method. The polymeric micelles and free drug were sepa-rated by centrifugal-millipore filter filtration method. The entrapment efficiency of puerarin polymeric micelles was determined by HPLC. Diamonsil C18(2)column was used with 1% citric acid solution-methanol(65∶35)at the flow rate of 1 ml/min. The detec-tion wavelength was set at 250 nm,and column temperature was room temperature. RESULTS:The prepared polymeric micelles were spherical and spherical-like in shape with a mean particle size of 54.12 nm,polydispersity index of 0.122,Zeta potential of -13.60 mV;the linear range of puerarin was 2-10μg/ml(R2=0.999 4)with average recovery rate of 99.2%(RSD=0.9%,n=3). The re-covery rate of free drug was 95.3%(RSD=1.7%,n=3). The mean entrapment efficiency and drug-loading amount of puerarin were(35.5±2.12)% and(0.3±0.07)%,respectively(n=3). CONCLUSIONS:Film dispersion method is suitable for the prepara-tion of Puerarin polymeric micelles. Established method is convenient,accurate and reliable for the content and entrapment efficien-cy determination of Puerarin polymeric micelles.