Objective This study was designed to investigate positive rate of serum antibody and the distribution of serotypes of Legionella pneumophila in the patients of author's hospital for recent 5 years.Methods All the inspecting results of antibodies in the 1212 serums by indirect immunofluorescence from Jan 1, 2003 to Oct 31, 2007 were reviewed. The clinical information of patients was collected.Results 163 serums were positive (13.5%). Serotype 4 had the highest positive rate of 12.0% followed by serotype 12 (8.5%), 5 (7.8%), 14 (6.1%), 10 (5.9%). Three simultaneously positive serotypes were dominant (21.0%), and 4 or 5 simultaneously positive serotypes were common. In all departments, the highest positive rate (23.3%) was in respiratory ward, in which serotype 4 and 12 were the most (19.0% and 17.2%, respectively).Conclusions Serotype 4 was the most common type of Legionella pneumophila in serotype 1-14. Cross reaction could exist between Legionella pneumophila and other pathogenic microorganism or in different serotypes.

Objective To investigate the concurrent application value of indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).Methods A retrospective study.All patients who took anti-double stranded DNA (dsDNA) antibody test from June 1 2011 to September 30 2011 in our department were recruited in this study.The patients' anti-dsDNA antibody results and clinical diagnosis were collected and analyzed retrospectively.The consistence,sensitivity and specificity of IIF and ELISA tests were calculated and the consistence was compared by Kappa test.Results The positive rates of detecting anti-dsDNA antibodies by ELISA and IIF tests were 16.3％ and 13.1％ respectively.The consistency between these two tests was 90.8％,and showed good correlation by Kappa test (Kappa =0.641,P ＜ 0.05 ).Of 9.2％ of inconsistent results between IIF andi ELISA,most cases ( 6.2％ ) were ELISA positive and IIF negative.Taking the clinical diagnosis of lupus as a golden standard,the accuracy of IIF and ELISA was 84.8％ and 84.4％ respectively and the difference was no significant (x2 =0.25,P ＞ 0.05 ).The sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing lupus by IIF were 46.1％ and 99.2％,and 51.3％ and 96.7％ by ELISA.Conclusions Our results suggested that anti-dsDNA antibodies in samples should be detected by both ELISA and IIF tests simultaneously.If ELISA was used first and the positive samples were further tested by IIF,at least 3％ of ELISA negative and IIF positive samples would be misdiagnosed as anti-dsDNA antibodies negative.IIF negative and ELISA positive samples should be further analyzed the affinity of anti-dsDNA antibodies in order to help the diagnosis and evaluation of SLE.

In this study, we reviewed the data from 71 cases of hepatic hemangiomas (146 lesions). It was found that magnetic resonance imaging was much better than ultrasound (US) and computed tomograpgy (CT) in the diagnosis of hepatic hemangiomas. For US and CT, most of the undetected were in the left lobe and the areas near the surface of which right lobe; Most of the misdiagnosed were smaller than 3cm or larger than 4cm, many of them were misdiagnosed as hepatic cancer. The proportion of atypical lesions were 33.3%, 39.4%, 1.4% by US, CT and MRI, respectively. So, in our opinion, MRI is the best way in the diagnosis of hepatic hemangioma, especially for the atypical lesions.

BACKGROUND: Glutamine synthetase (GS) and arginase 1 (Arg1) are widely used pathological markers that discriminate hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) from intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma; however, their clinical significance in HCC remains unclear. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed 431 HCC patients: 251 received hepatectomy alone, and the other 180 received sorafenib as adjuvant treatment after hepatectomy. Expression of GS and Arg1 in tumor specimens was evaluated using immunostaining. mRNA sequencing and immunostaining to detect progenitor markers (cytokeratin 19 [CK19] and epithelial cell adhesion molecule [EpCAM]) and mutant TP53 were also conducted. RESULTS: Up to 72.4% (312/431) of HCC tumors were GS positive (GS+). Of the patients receiving hepatectomy alone, GS negative (GS-) patients had significantly better overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) than GS+ patients; negative expression of Arg1, which is exclusively expressed in GS- hepatocytes in the healthy liver, had a negative effect on prognosis. Of the patients with a high risk of recurrence who received additional sorafenib treatment, GS- patients tended to have better RFS than GS+ patients, regardless of the expression status of Arg1. GS+ HCC tumors exhibit many features of the established proliferation molecular stratification subtype, including poor differentiation, high alpha-fetoprotein levels, increased progenitor tumor cells, TP53 mutation, and upregulation of multiple tumor-related signaling pathways. CONCLUSIONS GS- HCC patients have a better prognosis and are more likely to benefit from sorafenib treatment after hepatectomy. Immunostaining of GS may provide a simple and applicable approach for HCC molecular stratification to predict prognosis and guide targeted therapy.
Humans ; Carcinoma, Hepatocellular/metabolism* ; Sorafenib/therapeutic use* ; Liver Neoplasms/metabolism* ; Glutamate-Ammonia Ligase/metabolism* ; Hepatectomy ; Retrospective Studies ; Prognosis ; Neoplasm Recurrence, Local/surgery*