Objective To observe the effect of Chinese medicine Tangshenling, which can increase function of spleen and kidney and, remove blood stasis, on early Diabetic Nephropathy, and explore the mechanism. Methods 70 cases of early diabetic nephropathy were observed for comparation with 2 months as a course of treatment. The observing indexes were clinical symptoms, blood fat, blood sugar, HbA1C, UAER, Urine ?2-MG. Results Tangshenling could evidently not only improve the symptoms of early DN patients but also decrease blood fat, blood sugar, UAER, HbA1C and Urine ?2-MG. Conclusion Tangshenling could improve the high blood sugar, high blood fat of the early DN patients, decrease UAER, protect kidney function, which proves Tangshenling has definite curative effect on early DN.

Objective To investigate the expression level of thymus microRNA-27a-3p in patients with myasthenia gravis (MG) and to explore the pathogenesis of MG.Methods Thymus tissue samples from 36 cases were collected from December 2014 to February 2015 in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University.Nineteen thymus tissue samples of MG group were collected from department of chest surgery,17 thymus tissue samples of control group were collected from department of chest surgery or congenital heart disease patients from department of cardiac surgery.The expression of microRNA-27a-3p in the thymus from 36 patients was determined by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR),using U6 as housekeeping control.The Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test was used to analyze the relative expression of microRNA-27a-3p of the two groups.Spearman rank correlation was used to determine the correlation coefficient between microRNA-27a-3p and Quantitative Myasthenia Gravis Score (QMGS).Results (1) The expression level of microRNA-27a-3p in thymus was significantly higher in MG group (0.195(0.049,0.714)) compared with control group (0.045(0.004,0.088),Z =-2.646,P =0.008).(2) Nineteen MG patients were included in the study,out of which 7 were ocular myasthenia gravis (OMG) patients and 12 were generalized myasthenia gravis (GMG) patients.The expression of microRNA-27a-3p in GMG patients (0.493 (0.157,1.123)) was significantly higher than that in OMG patients (0.035 (0.008,0.103),Z =-2.620,P =0.009).(3) There was a positive correlation between the expression of microRNA-27a-3p and QMGS (r =0.576,P =0.010).Conclusions The expression of microRNA-27a-3p in thymus is significantly up-regulated in the patients with MG.MicroRNA-27a-3p may be associated with MG severity and significantly elevated in GMG patients compared with OMG patients.

Objective To investigate the association between myasthenia gravis (MG) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of PTPN22 + 1858C/T,CTLA-4 (+ 49A/G;-1772C/T;-1661A/G),KRAS(rs9226),BCL2(rs4987855) and IGF-1R(rs34804698) genes.Methods Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) was adopted to detect the gene types of SNPs in 76 MG patients who were enrolled in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University from July 2011 to June 2015 and 59 healthy blood donors.Results In MG patients,the frequences of CTLA-4 +49A/G(rs231775) (57.9％) and-1772C/T (rs733618) (43.4％) were higher than that in the healthy controls (22.1％) (x2 =35.252,P =0.000; x2 =4.098,P =0.043).The frequence of CTLA-4 +49A/G in MG patients combined with thymoma (25.6％) was higher than other subgroups (thymic hyperplasia group:13.8％; normal thymus group:18.4％)(x2 =7.564,P=0.006; x2 =7.155,P=0.007).Meanwhile,the frequence of the C-1772 allele was higher in thymoma group (19.7％) compared with other two groups (thymic hyperplasia group:9.86％ ; normal thymus group:13.8％) (x2 =5.331,P =0.021 ;x2 =4.411,P =0.036).However,the other SNPs were not associated with the risk of MG.Conclusion There are associations of MG with CTLA-4 + 49A/G and-1772C/T SNPs,but not with PTPN,KRAS,BC12 and IGF-1R SNPs.

Objective: To study the clinicopathological features, immunohistochemical phenotype, molecular changes, differential diagnosis and prognosis of eosinophilic solid and cystic renal cell carcinoma (ESC RCC). Methods: A total of 15 cases were selected from 2005 to 2019 at Nanjing Jinling Hospital,Nanjing University School of Medicine for clinicopathological and immunohistochemical analysis, 10 of which were subject to cancer-associated mutation analysis using targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) panel. A literature review was also performed. Results: The patients′ ages ranged from 15 to 68 years (mean, 33 years). The male-to-female ratio was 1.1∶1.0. During a mean follow-up of 22 months, none of the patients developed tumor recurrence, progression or metastasis. Histologically, the tumors typically demonstrated solid and cystic architectures and the neoplastic cells contained voluminous eosinophilic cytoplasm with prominent granular cytoplasmic stippling. Immunohistochemically, tumor cells in all cases were immunoreactive for CK20. Signal pathway related protein mTOR and S6 were positive in 14/15 and 6/15 cases, respectively. Cathepsin K, Melan A and HMB45 were at least focally positive in 12/15, 6/15 and 2/15 cases, respectively. CK7 and CD10 showed focal immunostain positivity in some cases, while TFE3, TFEB, CA9 and CD117 were negative in all cases. NGS demonstrated TSC1/TSC2 mutations in all tested cases (10/10). Conclusions ESC RCC is a rare tumor that tends to occur in young patients with an indolent behavior. Diagnosis can be established by its distinct clinical and histopathologic findings, immunohistochemical phenotype and molecular genetics. The tumor may be considered as a new subtype of RCC.

Objective:1. To detect any change in the PTEN/Akt/FoxO1 signaling pathway in the muscles of rats with chronic hypoxia-hypercapnia treated using neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), and 2. To document the role of chronic hypoxia-hypercapnia in inducing muscle atrophy.Methods:Thirty-two male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into a control group, a model group, a mock stimulation group, and an NMES group, each of eight. All of the rats in the model group, the mock stimulation group and the NMES group were placed in a hypoxia-hypercapnia chamber with a 9-11% O 2 and 5.5-6.5% CO 2 atmosphere for 8h per day and 7d per week, lasting 4 weeks. The control group were placed in a similar chamber with normal air. In the last 2 weeks, after the 8h in the chamber, the NMES group were given 30min of electrical stimulation at 100Hz to the calf muscles of their bound lower limbs. The mock stimulation group were only bound without any electrical stimulation. After the 4-week intervention, the gastrocnemius muscles were resected and their cross-sectional areas (CSAs) were observed using hematoxylin-eosin staining. Immunohistochemistry and western blotting were employed to detect the protein expression of phosphatase and tensin (PTEN), p-Akt, Akt and FoxO1. Results:Compared with the control group, a significant decrease was observed in the average CSA and in the expression of p-Akt and Akt in the model group, while a significant increase was found in the average protein expression of PTEN and FoxO1. Compared with the model group, there was a significant increase in the average CSA, as well as the average expression of p-Akt and Akt in the NMES group, but a significant decrease in the average expression of PTEN and FoxO1.Conclusion:Neuromuscular electrical stimulation can relieve muscle atrophy from chronic hypoxia-hypercapnia by inducing skeletal muscle protein synthesis through regulating the PTEN/Akt/FoxO1 signaling pathway, at least in rats.

Objective To observe the electromyography characteristics of children's handwriting with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD),and explore its electrophysiological mechanism,so as to provide an objective basis for developing non-pharmacological treatment for such children.Methods Between September 2021 and April 2022,29 ADHD children were recruited from an ordinary public primary school and the psychiatric clinic of a class-3 grade-A hospital in Beijing.Among them,25 were boys and 4 were girls,with an average age of 8.21±1.78 years.Meanwhile,23 male and 5 fe-male healthy counterparts were selected with the age gap no more than 6 months.The Delsys wireless surface EMG system was used to collect the electromyographic signals of the abductor pollicis breve,the first dorsal interosseous muscle,the flexor radial carpi motor and the extensor finger muscles dur-ing their writing tasks such as tracing trajectories,writing Arabic numerals 0-9,26 small and capital English letters,Chinese characters one to ten and"Yong".The percentage of the averaged electromyog-raphy(AEMG)of a muscle in the sum value of all measured muscles,and the coefficient of differ-ence were selected to evaluate the muscle contribution rate and the consistency of exertion,respective-ly.Moreover,the independent sample t-test was employed to compare the two different groups with the significance set at α=0.05.Results There was a significant difference in the muscle contribution of abductor pollicis breve and first dorsal interosseous muscles when writing Arabic numerals and that of abductor pollicis breve muscles when writing Chinese characters between ADHD children(27.29%,25.58%and 27.53%)and their healthy counterparts(42.87%,19.96%and 37.13%)(P<0.05).Most muscle differentiation coefficients of ADHD children were higher than 100%,with that of the domi-nant hand radial wrist flexor muscle reaching 270%in the trajectory tracing task.Conclusion Accord-ing to the characteristics of EMG signals,school-age ADHD children show an immature writing pat-tern,including poor stability of writing-related muscles,insufficient control of small finger muscle groups,poor control of hand coordination,and insufficient muscle inhibition of non-dominant hand.It is recommended to conduct the electromyoelectric assessment of handwriting movements in ADHD chil-dren,so as to carry out targeted intervention at an early stage.

Protein nitration and nitrosylation are essential post-translational modifications (PTMs) involved in many fundamental cellular processes. Recent studies have revealed that excessive levels of nitration and nitrosylation in some critical proteins are linked to numerous chronic diseases. Therefore, the identification of substrates that undergo such modifications in a site-specific manner is an important research topic in the community and will provide candidates for targeted therapy. In this study, we aimed to develop a computational tool for predicting nitration and nitrosylation sites in proteins. We first constructed four types of encoding features, including positional amino acid distributions, sequence contextual dependencies, physicochemical properties, and position-specific scoring features, to represent the modified residues. Based on these encoding features, we established a predictor called DeepNitro using deep learning methods for predicting protein nitration and nitrosylation. Using n-fold cross-validation, our evaluation shows great AUC values for DeepNitro, 0.65 for tyrosine nitration, 0.80 for tryptophan nitration, and 0.70 for cysteine nitrosylation, respectively, demonstrating the robustness and reliability of our tool. Also, when tested in the independent dataset, DeepNitro is substantially superior to other similar tools with a 7%-42% improvement in the prediction performance. Taken together, the application of deep learning method and novel encoding schemes, especially the position-specific scoring feature, greatly improves the accuracy of nitration and nitrosylation site prediction and may facilitate the prediction of other PTM sites. DeepNitro is implemented in JAVA and PHP and is freely available for academic research at http://deepnitro.renlab.org.
Amino Acid Sequence ; Amino Acids ; metabolism ; Deep Learning ; Humans ; Internet ; Neural Networks (Computer) ; Nitrosation ; Proteins ; chemistry ; metabolism ; Reproducibility of Results ; Software

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.apsb.2021.04.022.].

Insurmountable blood‒brain barrier (BBB) and complex pathological features are the key factors affecting the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Poor accumulation of drugs in lesion sites and undesired effectiveness of simply reducing A