BACKGROUND: Diseases and maternal poor habits before conception and during pregnancy have been considered as the definite risk factors for premature delivery and one of the results with better repeatability in the studies on the pathogenesis, whether parental socioeconomic status is related to the occurrence of premature birth?OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association of parental socioeconomic status with premature birth.DESIGN: A case-control study with the parents who has premature infants or normal infants as subjects.SETTING: Department of Preventive Medicine, Medical College of Qingdao University;Woman's Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qingdao Municipal Haici Medicine Group; Department of Obstetric and Gynecology, Qingdao Municipal Eighth People's Hospital PARTICIPANTS: A cohort of premature infants (n=227) were recruited from Qingdao Municipal Maternity and Children Health Institute and the Eighth People's Hospital, Qingdao, premature birth were confirmed according to the diagnostic standards; the control infants (n=750) were also recruited from the same place, they were delivered at pregnancy of from 38 to 42 weeks with birth mass of 3 000-4 000 g. Two groups were matched in sexual constitution and the birthday of within the same week.METHODS: Parents of two groups were asked to fill the self-made questionnaire. Maternal obstetric factors were referring to the perinatal booklet and infant birth record; meanwhile parental socio-economic status, daily-life behaviours and sociodemographic character were also investigated. Multivariate non-conditioned logistic regression analysis was used to assess the relationship of correlative factors.MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Parental school education, occupation, the annual family income, as well as bad living and behavioral habits.RESULTS: According to the real state, data of 227 premature infants and 750 normal control infants were analyzed finally. Maternal delivery age of ＞ 35 years old (≤ 25 years old in normal control group), working as a teacher or unemployment (worker in control group), smoking and drinking during pregnancy, father's occupation as peasant (worker in control group), with a long smoking history, lower parental education (not lower than junior college education in control group) and family income less than 35 thousand Yuan (more than 35 thousand Yuan in control group) were proved to be the significant risk factors for premature birth (OR =1.629-15.701).CONCLUSION: Maternal employment as a teacher with father as a peasant, together with lower family income and lower parental education are connected with premature delivery.

Objective: To investigate the intelligence development of the low birth weight babies and related factors. Method: The development ability of 190 low birth weight babies was assessed with the Revised Gesell Development Schedule. The result was compared with that of normal control. Result: The development quotients (DQ) of low birth weight infants in motor, adaptive and personal/social areas at 1 and 2 years of age and in language at 2 years of age were significantly lower than that of the normal controls. The stepwise regression analysis showed that all performances in motor, adaptive, language and personal/social areas were significantly related to age, sex, head circumstance, low birth weight and feeding way of infants, and education of their parents. Conclusion: Low birth weight infants have poorer intelligence at the age of 1 and 2 years than normal controls.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of transmembrane 9 superfamily protein member 2 (TM9SF2) in proliferation and migration of triple negative breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231.The expression of TM9SF2 in triple negative breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 and nontumorigenic mammary epithelial cell line MCF-10A were measured by Western blot. MDA-MB-231 cells were treated with siRNA-TM9SF2 to knock-down the expression of TM9SF2. The effect of silencing TM9SF2 was measured with Western blot.The proliferation of cells was tested by MTS,and the migration was measured with Transwell and wound-healing assay.Proteins related to proliferation (PI3K,AKT,SRC and ERK) and migration (Snail,Slug and N-cadherin) were measured with Western blot.Protein expressions of TM9SF2 was better improved in triple negative breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cell line than MCF-10A.Compared with the control group, the siRNA-TM9SF2 infected group had lower expressions of PI3K, Snail, Slug and N-cadherin, and at the same time phosphorylation of AKT was decreased. The results suggest TM9SF2 can promote the proliferation and metastasis of triple negative breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cell line.

Leaf water potential of peanut subjected to drought stress is positively related to the oil content of peanut kernels. The aim of this study was to directly screen the high oil mutants of peanut and create the new peanut varieties using hydroxyproline as water potential regulator. In vitro mutagenesis was carried out with the embryonic leaflets of peanut variety Huayu 20 as explants and pingyangmycin as a mutagen added into the somatic embryo formation medium. The formed somatic embryos were successively transferred to somatic embryo germination and selection medium containing 6 mmol/L hydroxyproline (at -2.079 MPa water potential ) to induce regeneration and directionally screen high oil content mutants. After that, these plantlets were grafted and transplanted to the experimental field and 132 high oil mutants with oil content over 55% were obtained from the offspring of regenerated plants. Finally, among them, the oil contents of 27 lines were higher than 58% and of 2 lines were higher than 60%. A new peanut variety Yuhua 9 with high yield and oil content was bred from the regenerated plant progenies combining the pedigree breeding method. The yield was 14.0% higher than that of the control cultivar in the testing new peanut varieties of Liaoning province, and also it has passed the national registration of non-major crop varieties. Yuhua 9 with an oil content of 61.05%, which was 11.55 percentage points higher than that of the parent Huayu 20, was the peanut cultivar with the highest oil content in the world. The result showed that it was an effective way for directional breeding of high oil peanut varieties by means of the three-step technique including in vitro mutagenesis, directional screening by reducing water potential in medium and pedigree selection of regenerated plant progenies.
Arachis ; Droughts ; Germination ; Mutagenesis ; Plant Breeding