Objective To investigate the clinical significance of combined detection of serum CEA, SCC, CYFRA21-1 before and after radiotherapy in esophagus carcinoma. Methods 226 cases of esophagus carcinoma patient were collected from November, 2006 to December, 2008. ELISA was used to detect the serum CEA, SCC and CYFRA21-1 of patients with esophagus cancer before and after radiotherapy. SPSS13.0 was used for the statistical analysis. Results The positive rate of CEA, SCC and CYFRA21-1 was 11.1 %, 16.8%, 27.4 %, respectively and the combined positive rate was 39.8 % from 226 patient serums before radiotherapy. The longer the lesion length, the later the clinical stage,the deeper the tumor invasion, the higher the mean value of serum CEA, SCC, CYFRA21-1 was. The mean value was lower in the early stage. The mean value of CEA, SCC and CYFRA21-1 was found to be well correlated with tumor size, TNM stage and depth of tumor invasion. Among three tumor biomarkers, the individual difference of CEA and CYFRA21-1 was bigger and the pathological stage and prognosis correlation with CYFRA21-1 was the best. The biomarker value dropped to the level below the normal in 76.7% patient out of 90 cases after radiotherapy. Conclusion The combined detection of serum CEA, SCC, CYFRA21-1 may be used as adjuvant diagnosis for esophagus cancer and has better clinical value for prediction to treatment and prognosis.

Objective To observe the effect of ginkgobalide B (GB) on neurocyte apoptosis and protein kinase B expression in neonatal rats after hypoxic-ischemic brain damage (HIBD).Methods Ninety seven-day-old Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into a sham group,an HIBD group and a GB group,each of 30.HIBD was induced in the HIBD and GB groups using the classical Rice method,while the sham group was given a sham operation.GB (10 mg/kg) was injected intraperitoneally to the rats in the GB group at 0 h and 24 h after the modeling.Then 6 rats were killed 6 h,12 h,24 h and 48 h after the modeling,and the expression of caspase-3 mRNA was detected using a real-time PCR to find the time point of maximum effectiveness.Then to further explore the role of the PI3K-AKT pathway in the anti-apoptosis effect of ginkgolide B,a a GB+LY294002 group of 6 rats,which was injected with PI3K-AKT pathway inhibitor LY294002 (1.8 mg/kg) intraperitoneally at 30 min before the modeling and with GB(10 mg/kg) at 0 h and 24 h after the modeling,was added to the experiment.Hematoxylin-eosin staining,terminal-deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated nick end labeling and immunohistochemical staining were then used to observe any morphological changes in the cortex,to detect neuronal apoptosis and to quantify the expression of P-AKT protein.Results The expression of caspase-3 in the HI and GB groups began to increase 6 hours after the HIBD and reached a peak after 24 hours,followed by a gradual decline.The expression of caspase-3 in the GB group was significantly lower than in the HI group throughout,while that of both of those groups was significantly higher than in the sham group.Apoptosis-positive cells and the expression of caspase-3increased had significantly in the HI,GB and GB+LY294002 groups 24 hours after the HIBD compared with the sham group,while the expression of P-AKT protein had decreased significantly.Moreover,the apoptosis-positive cells and the expression of caspase-3 of the HI and GB+LY294002 groups were significantly high-er than those of the GB group,while their expression of P-AKT protein was significantly lower after 24 hours.Conclusion Ginkgobalide B can decrease neurocyte apoptosis caused by hypoxic-ischemic brain damage,especially at 24 h after the damage.The PI3K-AKT signaling pathway plays an important role in this effect.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) regulate various biological processes ranging from gene expression to animal behavior. Although protein-coding genes, microRNAs, and neuropep-tides play important roles in the regulation of phenotypic plasticity in migratory locust, empirical studies on the function of lncRNAs in this process remain limited. Here, we applied high-throughput RNA-seq to compare the expression patterns of lncRNAs and mRNAs in the time course of locust phase change. We found that lncRNAs responded more rapidly at the early stages of phase transition. Functional annotations demonstrated that early changed lncRNAs employed different pathways in isolation and crowding phases to cope with changes in the population density. Two overlapping hub lncRNA loci in the crowding and isolation networks were screened for func-tional verification. One of them, LNC1010057, was validated as a potential regulator of locust phase change. This work offers insights into the molecular mechanism underlying locust phase change and expands the scope of lncRNA functions in animal behavior.