Objective To investigate expression and significance of decorin(DCN)in liver tissue and serum of liver transplant patients with chronic rejection(CR).Methods Immunohistochemistry(SP method)was used to detect expression of DCN in liver tissue of 16 normal controls, 20 patients with cirrhosis, 46 liver translantion patients without CR and 8 patients with CR.Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method(ELISA method)was used to determined the content of DCN in serum of all research subjects.Results The expression of DCN was negative in normal hepatic tissues and with/without CR, cirrhosis tissues showed strong expression of DCN.The positive expression rate and the average optical density value of DCN in liver transplant tissues with CR had significant difference comparing with Cirrhosis tissues(25% vs 55%, 0.1249 ±0.0039 vs 0.2357 ±0.0396, P <0.01,while no statistic siqnificance compared to normal liver tissues and those without CR.The level of DCN in serum was significantly higher in liver transplant patients with CR, with significant difference comparing with normal people, liver cirrhosis and transplant liver patients without CR(54.0833 ± 6.0325)μg/L vs(1.0232 ± 0.9105)μg/L,(12.6202 ± 1.5370)μg/L,(17.7102 ± 2.3562)μg/L, P < 0.01).The concentration of DCN in serum showed a positive correlation with the degree of CR.Conclusions DCN showed negative expression in liver tissue and increased significantly in serum of liver transplantation patients with CR.This suggests that DCN may be involved in occurrence and development of CR.At the same time the determination of DCN in serum maybe become an important indicator of the early diagnosis, development and prognosis of CR for liver transplant patients.

OBJECTIVETo study whether hematologic malignancy patients with anemia have a lower erythropoietin (EPO) response.

METHODSSerum EPO levels were detected by ELISA in patients with hematologic malignancies and with iron deficiency anemia (IDA). Eighty patients with hematologic malignancies, including 13 multiple myeloma (MM), 7 chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and 60 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) were studied. Thirty of them had anemia(21 NHL,6 MM and 3 CLL). Twenty patients with IDA were studied as the control.

RESULTSHematologic malignancy patients with anemia had higher EPO levels [(97.8 +/- 183.9) IU/L] than those with normal Hb values [(27.8 +/- 85.4) IU/L; P <0.01]. In patients with IDA, serum EPO response was inversely correlated with Hb level (r= -0.5, P <0.05) , but no such inverse correlation was found in the hematologic malignancy patients with anemia (r = -0.14). After corrected for Hb level, the serum EPO levels were significantly lower in anemic patients with hematologic malignancies than in IDA patients (P = 0.032) , indicating a decreased EPO response in the former group.

CONCLUSIONAnemia associated with hematologic malignancy might result from an inappropriately low EPO response. EPO treatment for these patients may be beneficial.

Adolescent ; Adult ; Aged ; Anemia, Iron-Deficiency ; blood ; complications ; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay ; Erythropoietin ; blood ; Female ; Hematologic Neoplasms ; blood ; complications ; Hemoglobins ; metabolism ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Prospective Studies

OBJECTIVETo investigate the prevalence of obesity and distribution of body mass index (BMI) in school children of four ethnic groups in Urumqi, Xinjiang, China.

METHODSA total of 55508 school children of Han, Hui, Uygur and Kazak nationalities aged 8-18 years were selected by a cluster sampling from a districts of Urumqi City for anthropometric measurement and demographic survey. Prevalence of obesity and overweight and distribution of body mass index (BMI) by gender, age, and nationality were analyzed and compared. Cutoff points of BMI for defining obesity and overweight were based on the proposal set by the Working Group on Obesity in China (WGOC) to assess age-, gender- and nationality-specific prevalence of obesity and overweight.

RESULTSPrevalence of obesity was 5.34%, 6.78%, 3.39 %, and 1.22% for boys and 2.61%, 1.83%, 1.78%, and 1.40% for girls of Han, Hui, Uygur and Kazak nationalities, respectively. Prevalence of obesity tended to decrease with age overall, whereas that of overweight increased with age in Han children.

CONCLUSIONSPrevalence of obesity in school children in Urumqi varies with their nationalities and is lower than that of an average national level and a level of western countries. Obesity is more prevalent in boys than in girls of Urmuqi overall, which is just the opposite in Kazak children. Han boys and Hui girls have the highest prevalence of obesity and Kazak boys and girls have the lowest ones. Prevalence of obesity decreases with age, but that of overweight shows a different trend.

Adolescent ; Body Mass Index ; Child ; China ; epidemiology ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Obesity ; ethnology ; Prevalence ; Sex Factors

Adolescent ; Adult ; Aged ; Anemia ; drug therapy ; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay ; Erythropoietin ; blood ; therapeutic use ; Female ; Humans ; Leukemia, Lymphocytic, Chronic, B-Cell ; complications ; Lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin ; complications ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Multiple Myeloma ; complications