Objective To investigate the expression of Fascin in early-stage NSCLC, evaluate the relevance between Fascin expression level and prognosis.Methods The immunohistochemistry method was used to assess the expression of Fas-cin in 111 lung cancer FFPE tissues with stage Ⅰ and Ⅱ NSCLC.The relationship between Fascin expression and the clinico-pathological characteristics was analyzed.The prognostic significance of Fascin expression was evaluated with Kaplan-Meier sur-vival analysis.Results In the early-stage of NSCLC, the positive rate of Fascin expression was 64.8%, no expression in the paracarcinoma tissue.The positive rate of squamous cell carcinoma was 78.7% and was significantly higher than that in adeno-carcinoma 48.0%(P<0.01).Whether in squamous cell carcinoma or adenocarcinoma group, the expression of Fascin was correlated significantly with lymph node metastasis tumor stages and DFS(P<0.05).And the positive expression of Fascin was an independent risk factor of poor prognosis for patient with NSCLC .Conclusion Fascin is expected to be a biomarker for the prognosis of patients with early-stage NSCLC.

Objective: To investigate the expressions of programmed death ligand 1（PD-L1）in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and its correlation with angiogenesis. Methods: 120 cases of TNBC patients who underwent surgery in the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University from March 1, 2011 to June 1, 2012 were collected. The tumor tissues of patients were surgically resected and confirmed by pathology. PD-L1 protein expression in TNBC tissues of 120 patients was detected by tissue microarray combined with immunohistochemistry, and its relationship with various clinical indicators was analyzed. Blood vessels and lymphatic vessels were labeled withCD34andD2-40todetectmicrovesseldensity(MVD)andlymphaticvesseldensity(LVD)inTNBC.Results:Thepositiveexpression rate of PD-L1 in the tumor cells and interstitial infiltrating lymphocytes fromTNBC was 56.7% (68/120); No correlation was found between PD-L1 protein expression and the gender, age, histological grade, clinical stage, or tumor size of patients with TNBC (P>0.05), but related to the lymph node metastasis (P<0.05) and vascular thrombus (P<0.05). TNBC with high PD-L1 expression exhibited high incidence of lymph node metastasis and formation of vascular thrombus, and the expression of PD-L1 was positively correlated with MVD (r=0.500, P=0.02) as well as LVD (r=0.662, P=0.01). Log-Rank test showed that the survival time of TNBC patients with positive PD-L1 protein expression was significantly shorter than that of patients with negative expression (P<0.05). Cox multivariate analysis suggested that PD-L1 protein expression could be an independent prognostic factor for TNBC overall survival. Conclusion: PD-L1 plays an important role in TNBC angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis, and is closely related to TNBC invasion and metastasis; blocking PD1/PD-L1 signal pathway is expected to be an effective new strategy for TNBC treatment.

Prostate cancer is one of the common malignant tumors of male urogenital system, and the incidence of prostate cancer in China has increased significantly in the past decade. At present, endocrine therapy based on androgen blockade is the main method of clinical treatment except radical surgery and radiotherapy/chemotherapy for prostate cancer. However, the clinical benefit can only be obtained in the early stage of treatment, and nearly 90% of patients will develop to the castration resistance, and among them, nearly 90% of patients will have bone metastasis. The quality of life decreases sharply with the progression of disease for patients. In addition to the androgen signal pathway, studies have shown that many other oncogenic signal pathways have involved in the development of castration resistance, including classic cancer signaling pathways, immune and inflammatory signaling pathways, etc. Understanding the mechanism of androgen independent signal pathway in the formation of castration resistance will help to understand the off-target effect of androgen blocking therapy and introduce new treatment targets or strategies to get rid of the "no drug available" dilemma for clinical treatment of castration resistance.

In the past two decades,with the increase of smoking population,more and more people are suffering from small cell lung cancer(SCLC).Besides,it is difficult to find an effective way to cure SCLC,since patience can easily develop drug resistance.On the other hand,with the development of science and technology,people began to study the anti-cancer strategy to increase apoptosis,such as inhibiting the overexpression of survival factors.In these survival factors,BCL-2 family has attracted a lot of attention.BH3-only protein is a member of BCL-2 family and it can directly inhibit the expression of BCL-2 protein,thereby prompting apoptosis.Since the BH3-only protein itself is difficult to become a clinical drug, to find alternatives BH3-only protein-BH3 mimetics is particularly important. Plus, more and more researchers have paid attention on the natural BH3 mimetic since it has less side-effect than artificial BH3 mimetics.To find possible BH3 mimetics,we made a primary screening with this pharma-cophore on a small molecular compounds library via Discovery Studio software. And then MTS assay were introduced to verify the activity of compounds. After that, we use Western Blot and Co-IP meth-ods to test the effect of BH3 mimetics.And finally use CDOCKER to predict the further mechanism on autophagy and apoptosis.In our studies, we found 3 possible BH3 mimetics compounds from 170,000 natural small molecular compounds via pharmacophore-based virtual screening.Furthermore,we dem-onstrated AD23,one of the 3 possible natural BH3 mimetics,induced autophagy and apoptosis simulta-neously in dose-time dependence in SCLC cell line. Finally, we use Molecular Docking to predict the further mechanism on autophagy and apoptosis. We believe our works would provide evidences and clues for the structural optimizing and further study of new drugs in the future.

Objective To study whether carbon dioxide used to establish pneumoperitoneum has an influence on port-site and intraperitoneal implantation and metastasis of tumor cells. Methods R 15 hepatic cancer cells were injected into 30 Wistar rats’ peritoneal cavities 1 hour before operation, then the 30 Wistar rats were randomly divided into 3 groups: gasless group, helium group and carbon dioxide group. The suspension was exposed to the gas environment for 2 hours, all animals were killed after 28 days and the port-site and intraperitoneal implantation and metastasis of tumor cells were examined.Results On port-site, intestinal serous coat, mesentery, greater omentum and diaphragm, the weights of tumor cells, in carbon dioxide group were (326.7?230.3) mg, (626.2?215.9) mg, (476.2?204.8) mg,(2 536.5?906.7) mg and (384.5?149.9) mg respectively; in helium group were (235.6?107.3) mg, (414.2?148.4) mg, (261.8?92.6) mg, (1 633.4?247.3) mg and(220.0?57.9) mg; in gasless group were (145.0?42.4) mg, (221.5?108.2) mg, (212.5?109.6) mg, (797.5?335.9) mg and 113.0 mg.The weights of carbon dioxide group showed a significant increase, compared with helium group and gasless group (P 0.05). Conclusion The insufflation of carbon dioxide promotes intraperitoneal tumor implantation and growth compared with helium and gaslessness in a rat model.

OBJECTIVETo determine the incidence of work-related acute pesticide poisoning among farmers in Jiangsu Province and to identify the risk factors.

METHODSMulti-stage stratified sampling and cluster sampling methods were used to randomly select 1490 farmers from the south (Z village), centre (Y village) and north (X village) of Jiangsu Province. The database was established by EpiData 3.1. SPSS 17.0 and SAS 9.13 were used to do chi-square test, trend chi-square test, single factor and multi-factor logistic regression analysis.

RESULTSAmong 1490 farmers, 121 people had work-related acute pesticide poisoning in the past year. The incidence rate in Jiangsu Province was 8.1%. 118 farmers (97.5%) were mild pesticide poisoning.3 farmers (2.5%) were moderate pesticide poisoning. The incidence rate of Work-related acute pesticide poisoning in X village of North Jiangsu Province (13.5%, 68/505) is obviously higher than that in Y village of Central Jiangsu Province (4.8%, 19/399) and Z village of South Jiangsu Province (5.8%, 34/586), and the difference is statistically significant (χ(2) = 29.60, P < 0.01). The incidence rate of Work-related acute pesticide poisoning in female (10.4%, 58/557) is obviously higher than that in male (6.8%, 63/933), and the difference is statistically significant (χ(2) = 6.26, P < 0.05). There are lack of safety guidance, unsafety application methods (without alternate row spraying, without backward application, without down-wind application) and risk behaviors in the spraying (without read labels, preparing pesticides without gloves, wiping sweat with hand (s), equipment leakage, body pollution by pesticide, working when feeling sick, without bath after work). If farmers have risk behaviors above, the incidence rate of Work-related acute pesticide poisoning will be obviously higher than farmers who receive safety guidance and have no such dangerous behaviors, and all the differences are statistically significant (P < 0.05). The group of 24 ∼ 34 years old has the highest risk of work-related acute pesticide poisoning (OR = 7.15).

CONCLUSIONThe incidence rate of work-related acute pesticide poisoning among farmers in Jiangsu Province was higher. Effective measures are needed to prevent and reduce the occurrence of work-related acute pesticide poisoning. We can teach the farmers who spray pesticides about safety guidance, safety application methods and avoiding risky behaviors.

Adult ; Aged ; Agricultural Workers' Diseases ; epidemiology ; Agriculture ; methods ; Female ; Humans ; Incidence ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Occupational Exposure ; Pesticides ; poisoning ; Risk Factors

Objective:To investigate the expression of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1), programmed cell death ligand 1(PD-L1), and lymphocyte-activation gene 3(LAG-3) in different subsets of lymphocytes and their relationship with the immunologic imbalance in preeclampsia.Methods:We enrolled 25 cases of singleton pregnant women with preeclampsia who were delivered by cesarean section in the Shandong Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University from May 2019 to January 2020 as the preeclampsia group. According to the allocation ratio of 1∶1 matched for the date of cesarean section and pregnancy week at delivery, another 25 healthy singleton pregnant women underwent elective cesarean section were selected as the normal group. The decidua tissue was obtained during cesarean section. The expression levels of PD-1, PD-L1, and LAG-3 on decidual T cells, natural killer (NK), and natural killer T (NKT) cells were measured by flow cytometry and compared between the two groups using two independent samples- t test. Results:(1) The expression of PD-1 on decidual T cells and NK cells of the preeclampsia group were lower than those of the normal group (37.84±3.82 vs 57.02±3.89, t=3.529, P<0.001; 3.28±0.48 vs 5.69±0.99, t=2.184, P=0.034), but did not differ significantly in the expression on decidual NKT cells ( P=0.461). PD-L1 expression on decidual NK cells of preeclampsia group was lower than that of the normal group (0.60±0.11 vs 1.32±0.19, t=3.319, P=0.002), but showed no significant difference in the expression level on T cells and NKT cells (both P>0.05). The preeclampsia group was noted for a lower expression of LAG-3 on decidual T cells and NKT cells compared with the normal group (2.32±0.36 vs 4.09±0.67, t=2.335, P=0.024; 35.40±4.97 vs 56.27±4.49, t=3.282, P=0.002), while showed no significant difference in the expression level of NK cells ( P=0.112). Conclusions:The decreased expression of PD-1, PD-L1, and LAG-3 in the decidual lymphocyte subsets may be involved in the immunologic imbalance of preeclampsia through the over-activation of immunocytes at the maternal-fetal interface.

OBJECTIVE: To carried out prenatal diagnosis and genetic analysis for a case with Nail-patella syndrome. METHODS: Based on the clinical phenotype and prenatal imaging, genetic testing and prenatal diagnosis were carried out through whole exome sequencing (WES) and Sanger sequencing. RESULTS: Analysis of amniotic fluid showed that the fetus has carried a heterozygous c.139+1G>T splicing site variant [Chr9(GRCh37): g.129376868G>T] of the LMX1B gene, which was verified by Sanger sequencing. The same heterozygous variant was found in the pregnant woman, her daughter and her mother but not in her husband. Searching of HGMD database showed that the c.139+1G>T was previously unreported. CONCLUSION Nail-patella syndrome is an autosomal dominant genetic disorder with various clinical manifestations. WES is helpful for its genetic and prenatal diagnosis.
Female ; Heterozygote ; Humans ; Mutation ; Nail-Patella Syndrome/genetics* ; Pedigree ; Pregnancy ; Prenatal Diagnosis ; Whole Exome Sequencing

To compare the differences on current ethical issues in the areas of epidemiological practice between China and America,to identify the major ethical problems existing in the epidemiological studies in China.Through searching and reviewing papers published on Chinese Journal of Epidemiology and American Journal of Epidemiology from Jan.2006 to Dec.2010,we made a comparison on ethical issues involved in the original studies that focusing on human beings.In total,749 Chinese articles and 1221 American articles were recruited,with the following findings: (1)The proportion with announcements of “Informed consent by the subjects” was 29.24％ in Chinese literature and 38.08％ in the Americans (x2=16.02,P＜0.001 ).The proportion with “having had approvals from the ethic committees” was 29.24％ in Chinese,while 38.08％ in American ( x2=604.40,P＜ 0.0001 ).(2) Both in China and America,there had been an increase of ethical issues in the last 5 years.(3)Articles derived from trial studies had better involvement on ethics than those from observational studies.(4) The level on ethical issues in the American Research Institutes exceeded those in China (5)American studies also had showed better ideas on Ethic issues on biological specimens collection and privacy protection,than those in Chinese studies.Among the studies on Chinese Journal of Epidemiology,the proportion of ‘informed consent' was higher than in ethical review,but both ethical review and awareness on ‘informed consent' had left far behind than the American Journal of Epidemiology.This could be seen at the institution level of the writers,during specimen collection and privacy protection,as well as at the overall level.The results reminded us that the Departments of Technology Management should spend more efforts on the improvement of public education regarding ethics for researchers and to update the process of edition for Journals as well as to reinforce the rules of ethics in epidemiological research.

OBJECTIVETo determine the changes in the levels of endogenous metabolites in rats with chronic immobilization stress (CIS) taking Xiaoyao Powder (XYP) and its modified prescription version, which lacks the volatile oils extracted from Herba Menthae.

METHODSTwenty-four experimental male SD rats were randomly divided into 4 groups of 6 rats each: control, model, XYP-1 (containing volatile oils from Herba Menthae), and XYP-2 (lacking volatile oils). All rats except control group rats were subjected to CIS 3 h per day for 21 consecutive days. Groups XYP-1 and XYP-2 were given the extracted XYS with or without volatile oils (3.854 g/kg; suspended in distilled water) via gavage 1 h before CIS each day for 21 days. Rats were anesthetized using intraperitoneal injection of pentobarbital sodium (40 mg/kg) on the 22nd day. Observations were made using a Varian INOVA 600 MHz NMR spectrometer at 27 °C. Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) and longitudinal eddy-delay (LED) were applied, resulting in spectra showing only the signals from micro- and macro-metabolites.

RESULTSCompared to controls, rats subjected to CIS showed increased levels of plasma metabolites, such as acetic acid, choline, N-glycoprotein (NAC), saturated fatty acid, and blood sugars. Levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL), and unsaturated fatty acids were decreased. The biochemical effects of XYS were characterized by elevated levels of VLDL, LDL, threonine, methionine, and glutamic acid in plasma.

CONCLUSIONSome common and characteristic metabolites on the anti-CIS of XYP and its modified prescription were obtained. The metabolomics technology is a valuable tool and may be used to identify the specific metabolites and potential biomarkers of therapeutic effect of Chinese medicinal prescriptions.

Animals ; Blood Proteins ; drug effects ; metabolism ; Chronic Disease ; Drug Evaluation, Preclinical ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; chemistry ; pharmacology ; therapeutic use ; Male ; Metabolome ; drug effects ; Powders ; Rats ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Restraint, Physical ; Stress, Psychological ; blood ; drug therapy ; metabolism