Tumor stem cells have abilities of high proliferation,serf-renewal and multi-directional dif-ferentiation ;which is closely responsible for tumor' s survival and recurrence. A minor portion of myeloma stem cells exist in multiple myeloma. The research of myeloma stem cells' origins, phenotypic analyses, signaling pathways, drug resistance and other biological characteristics will do great efforts to the effective therapy of mul-tiple myeloma.

Objective To investigate the clinical significance of serum lactic dehydrogenase (LDH)alteration in patients with acute leukemia (AL). Methods Serum LDH of 156 AL patients including untreated 63,completely remission (CR) 46 and relapsed 47 were measured by biochemistry analyzer. R banding technique was used for karyotype analysis this three groups were divided according to poor, good and normal prognostic chromsome. The correlation between LDH level with AL periods, chromsome groups, peripheral WBC counts and leukemia subtypes were analysed. Results The LDH level of AL patients untreated (P50 399 U/L) and relapsed (P50 265 U/L) were significantly higher than those CR (P50 153 U/L), P ＜0.05. LDH level were closely correlated with peripheral WBC counts (rs=0.604) and leukemia cells of bone marrow (rs=0.538, both P ＜ 0.01), and both were also correlated with leukemia subtypes (LDH in subtypes L2, M4 were higher than other subtypes of AL, P ＜ 0.01). The refractory and relapsed AL patients had higher LDH level (P50 538 U/L) than the others (P50 294 U/L) when they were diagnosed. And those with poor prognostic chromsome also had higher LDH level (P50 778 U/L) than those with good (P50 306 U/L) and normal prognostic chromsome (P50 405 U/L, P ＜0.01). Conclusion LDH level increased obviously in untreated AL patients and decreased in CR ones. It was correlated with different periods, subtypes and grade malignancy of AL So LDH level can be considered as an important indicator for therapeutic effects and prognosis for AL patients.

Current concerns for the diagnosis of functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs) in clinical practice is reviewed in this paper.They include the principle to exclude the organic diseases,a full recognition of subtype classification and the severity degrees in guiding the treatment,role of gastrointestinal function examination in diagnosis and treatment,influence of psychological factors on disease,and the overlapping phenomenon of functional disease with organic diseases.

Objective To observe anti-sense phosphorothioate oligonucletide (ASPSODN) targeted directly to hTERT mRNA to its inhibiting effect on aimed gene and the influence on the telomerase activity, cellular proliferation, cell apoptosis of K562 cells. Methods Human leukemia cell line K562 was transfected with anti-sense oligonucleotide ASPSODN by liposome. The proliferation activity of K562 cell line was determined by using methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium assay, and telomerase activity was detected by TRAP-PCR-ELISA. Flow cytometry was adopted to examine apoptotic rate and cell cycle. RT-PCR was used to detect the expression of target gene hTERT mRNA. Results 0.6 μmol/L ASPSODN (0.42 ±0.16) was remarkably decreased the expression of hTERT mRNA, Telomerase relative activation was decreased by 52 %. According to 0.6 (μmol/L ASPSODN caused significant the inhibition of K562 cell growth. Apoptotic rate and cell cycle was examined by 0.6 μmol/L ASPSODN with flow cytometry. The cell apoptosis rate of 0.6μmol/L ASPSODN were 10.31 %. It showed the cells treated with 0.6 uU PSASODN arrested in G_1/C_0. The ratio of cells in G_2/M and S period was reduced. But there was no characteristic apoptosis peak. Conclusion ASPSODN targeted hTERT can inhibit the expression of target gene hTERT mRNA, and decrease the telomerase activity of K562 cells. ASPSODN can inhibit strongly the proliferation of K562 cell and induce cell apoptosis by decreasing telomerase activity.

Objective To analyze the differences with the expression of glucocorticoids receptor isoforms ( GRα, GRβ, GRγand GR-P ) and cytokines [ IL-6, macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), IFN-γand IL-10] between patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and rheumatoid ar-thritis ( RA) , and to further understand their correlations with disease activities.Methods Fifty-five pa-tients with SLE, forty-nine patients with RA and thirty-eight healthy subjects were recruited in this study. All patients were steroid-naive.The expression of GRα, GRβ, GRγ, and GR-P in peripheral blood mononu-clear cells at transcript levels were determined by real-time PCR.Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect the expression of IL-6, MIF, IFN-γand IL-10 in serum samples.Results The percentages of GRαin all subjects were the highest among four isoforms of GR, followed by GR-P, GRγand GRβ.Com-pared with healthy subjects, patients with SLE or RA showed significantly decreased expression of GRα( P<0.05), but increased expression of GR-P (P<0.05).The percentages of GR-P in patients with RA were higher than those in patients with SLE (P<0.05).The expression of GRαwas negatively correlated with SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) and disease activity score 28 (DAS28).SLE or RA patients with high disease activity showed lower expression of GRαthan those with low disease activity.The levels of IL-6, IFN-γand MIF in patients with SLE or RA were significantly higher than those in healthy subjects ( P<0.05).A negative correlation was observed between the expression of IL-6 and GRαin patients with SLE (P<0.05).The expression of IFN-γwas negatively correlated with GRαin patients with RA (P<0.05). Conclusion There were significant differences with the expression of GR isoforms among patients with SLE, patients with RA and healthy subjects, indicating the change of internal environment in patients might be in-volved in GR alternative splicing.GRαwas the predominant isoform and was negatively correlated with dis-ease activities.Oversecretion of cytokines resulted in a decreased expression of GRα.This study would be useful for the diagnosis of the disease status and for monitoring clinical treatment.

Objective To study the relationship between overlapping symptoms (OS) and psycho- mental factors in patients with functional dyspepsia (FD) in order to understand the possible mechanisms of OS.Methods One hundred and three FD patients diagnosed by Rome Ⅲ criteria were divided into with or without OS groups by Rome Modular Questionnaire.The emotional status,sleep status,anxiety and depression status were evaluated by Zung Anxiety and Depression Scale and quality of life was eveluated by SF-36 questionnaire.The results were compared between the two groups.Results The proportion of the patients with and without OS accounted for 62.5% and 37.5%,respectively.The patients with OS had a worse emotional status ("bad%" and "very bad%" being 39.1% and 20.2% vs.15.4% and 12.8%,P=0.018) and a worse sleep status (45.3% and 11.0% vs.19.1% and 7.7%,p=0.018)than those without OS.The proportion of the patients with anxiety (49 % ) and depression (68 % ) status in OS group was significantly higher than that in without OS group (19% and 44%,respectively,P＜0.05). The quality of life of the patients with OS was worse in the dimensions of psychological health (47.9), vitality (47.1) and mental component score (32.8)than those in without OS group (57.8,57.0,37.0, respectively,P＜0.05).Conclusions The psycho-mental factors are associated with overlapping symptoms in patients with FD,which suggests that abnormal psycho-mental factors may be involved in the mechanisms underlying overlapping gastrointestinal symptoms in FD.

Objective To explore whether the pathophysiological mechanisms are same or not in different subtypes of functional dyspepsia (FD) patients. Methods Severity of symptoms and (44.2± 14. 6) years. Multi-gastrointestinal functions were also tested. Results No statistical difference was found among epigastric pain syndrome (EPS), postprandial distress syndrome (PDS) and mixed type in the data of gastric emptying function, gastric myoelectrical activity, autonomic nerve function,simultaneous introgastric pressure and water loading test, and psychological status assessment as well (P＞0.05). There was a positive linear correlation between postprandial fullness and half gastric emptying time (correlation coefficient=11.5, P= 0. 043). Early satiation was negatively related to maximal water intaking volume (correlation coefficient=-6. 8, P=0. 033). Conclusions In this study, it suggested that the FD patients with different pathophysiologic mechanisms cannot be distinguished efficiently according to Rome Ⅲ criteria, and then be treated in a well-targeted manner.

In view of the problems of more artificial interventions and segmentation defects in existing two-dimensional segmentation methods and abnormal liver segmentation errors in three-dimensional segmentation methods, this paper presents a semi-automatic liver organ segmentation method based on the image sequence context. The method takes advantage of the existing similarity between the image sequence contexts of the prior knowledge of liver organs, and combines region growing and level set method to carry out semi-automatic segmentation of livers, along with the aid of a small amount of manual intervention to deal with liver mutation situations. The experiment results showed that the liver segmentation algorithm presented in this paper had a high precision, and a good segmentation effect on livers which have greater variability, and can meet clinical application demands quite well.
Algorithms ; Humans ; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted ; Imaging, Three-Dimensional ; Liver ; anatomy & histology

Objective To select an efficient method to inhibit telomerase activity, antisenseoligodeoxynucleotide and plasmid-vector mediated RNAi against hTERT were used to inhibit telomerase activity. The inhibiting effects of the two methods were compared. Methods Against hTERT mRNA, siRNA and oligodeoxynucleotide were designed and transfected into K562 cells by liposome. Effective and specific siRNA strands were selected and then plasmid was constructed and transfected into K562 cells; followed by analysis of the results. Results hTERT mRNA were detected after the three chemo-synthesized strands were transfected. It was found that si-hTERT-1 and si-hTERT-2 were effective, but si-hTERT-3 had no effect. The inhibiting effect of hTERT mRNA lasted only 48 h and disappeared at 72 h. Two siRNA strands were sieved and plasmids were constructed and transfected into K562 cells. In the P-1 group, hTERT mRNA was 0.39±0.13 at 48 h, 0.57±0.32 at 72 h. In the P-2 group, hTERTmRNA was 0.55±0.20 at 48 h, 0.88±0.23 at 72 h.In the P-1 group, the relative telomerase activity was 0.42±0.07 at 48 h, 0.31±0.08 at 72 h. In the P-2 group was 0.49±0.27 at 48 h, 0.39±0.03 at 72 h. The best concentration of siRNA was 100 μmol/L. The best concentration of ASODN was 0.6 μ mol/L. hTERTmRNA was 0.42±0.16 at 24 h, 0.71±0.18 at 48 h. Relative telomerase activity was 0.52±0.002 at 24 h, 0.482±0.018 at 48 h. Conclusion Both ASODN and RNAi targeting hTERT can inhibit the expression of hTERT mRNA, and then inhibit telomerase activity. The inhibiting effect is closely relative to the targeting site. The inhibiting effect of RNAi is better than that of ASODN. RNAi has better efficiency and lasts for a longer time. Plasmid mediated RNAi has better inhibiting effect than the chemo-synthesized siRNA.