BACKGROUND: Human acellular amniotic membrane is a kind of extracellular matrix material with good biocompatibility and biological activity. It has been widely used in various clinical studies because of its low immunogenicity, small rejection and easy preparation.OBJECTIVE: To review the applications of human acellular amniotic membranes in tissue engineering field, such as skin, blood vessel, cornea, cartilage and bone.METHODS: CNKI (from January 2005 to May 2017), CBMdisc (from January 2005 to May 2017), PubMed (from January 1990 to May 2017) and Elsevier (from January 1990 to May 2017) were retrieved for articles addressing the application of human acellular amniotic membrane as a tissue-engineered scaffold in the bone, cartilage, skin, and blood vessels.The keywords were acelluar amniotic membrane, scaffold, material, tissue engineering ECM in Chinese and English, respectively.RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Human acellular amniotic membrane owns the structure and function of the natural extracellular matrix, which can be combined with stem cells from different sources to differentiate into different tissues and organs, such as bone, cartilage, skin, blood vessel, and corneal tissues. As a tissue-engineered scaffold, human acellular amniotic membrane has good biocompatibility, biodegradability and low immunogenicity, although it has some shortcomings, such as poor strength and post-transplantation rejection reactions. Therefore, the future studies are mainly focused on shortening the adhesion time between cells and scaffolds, increasing the own mechanical strength of human acellular amniotic membrane, optimizing the cell growth microenvironment, and combining human acellular amniotic membrane with other tissue-engineered scaffolds.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: To determine the risk of Parkinson's disease (PD) in relation to erectile dysfunction (ED) based on the National Health Insurance Research Database in Taiwan. METHODS: We identified 3,153 patients who were newly diagnosed with ED between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2010. A total of 12,612 randomly selected people without ED served as healthy controls. All of the study subjects were followed-up from the index date to the date of PD diagnosis, withdrawal from the National Health Insurance program, or the end of 2012 whichever occurred first. RESULTS: The incidence density rate of PD was 1.52-fold higher in the ED cohort than the non-ED cohort (3.44 vs. 1.64 per 1,000 person-years), with an adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of 1.52 [95% confidence interval (CI)=1.09–2.12]. The combined effects on patients with ED and diabetes as well as hypertension showed a significant combined association with the PD risk compared with patients without ED, counterpart comorbidities, or medication use. The adjusted HR of PD for ED was higher for diabetes (2.82, 95% CI=1.42–5.63) and hypertension (2.19, 95% CI = 1.35–3.55). CONCLUSIONS: ED leads to an increased risk of PD. ED patients with diabetes or hypertension have an elevated risk of PD.
Cohort Studies ; Comorbidity* ; Diagnosis ; Erectile Dysfunction* ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Incidence ; Longitudinal Studies* ; Male ; National Health Programs ; Parkinson Disease* ; Taiwan

OBJECTIVES: The results of elastic imaging in evaluating the function and histopathological changes of allogeneic renal transplantation are contradictory, one of the important reasons may be that there are differences in human parameters related to kidney transplantation among individuals. The purpose of this study is to explore the related human body parameters on shear-wave elastography (SWE) effects on quantitative stiffness of graft cortex. METHODS: From March 2021 to November 2021, a total of 63 patients with allogeneic kidney transplantation in the Department of Ultrasonography, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, were selected to collect the parameters of two-dimensional, color Doppler and SWE. The subjects were divided into a <20% group and a 20%-30% group according to the variation of cortical hardness measurement. Mann Whitney U test was used to compare the differences in relevant human parameters, and Spearman rank correlation was used to analyze the correlation between relevant human parameters and cortical hardness of transplanted kidney. RESULTS: There was no significant difference between the 2 groups in age, sex, postoperative time, resistance index of interlobar artery, SCr, blood uric acid, ratio of fat layer to muscle layer, and BMI (all P>0.05). Compared with the <20% group, the patients in the 20%-30% group had smaller cortical hardness of the transplanted kidney, greater total distance between the transplanted kidney and the skin surface, and thicker fat layer or muscle layer in front of the transplanted kidney (all P<0.05). The age of patients, the total distance from the transplanted kidney to the skin surface, the thickness of fat layer and muscle layer, the ratio of fat layer to muscle layer, BMI, and the variation of cortical hardness were significantly negatively correlated with the cortical hardness of the transplanted kidney (all P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS Human parameters relevant to kidney transplantation affect the accuracy of SWE in measuring the cortical hardness of the transplanted kidney. It is very important to obtain the highly stabile elastic measurement value and interpret the elastic measurement results according to different levels of human body related parameters in combination with individual conditions.
Humans ; Kidney Transplantation ; Elasticity Imaging Techniques/methods* ; Kidney ; Ultrasonography/methods* ; Transplantation, Homologous

Previous studies suggest that the reduction of SMAD3 (mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 3) has a great impact on tumor development, but its exact pathological function remains unclear. In this study, we found that the protein level of SMAD3 was greatly reduced in human-grade IV glioblastoma tissues, in which LAMP2A (lysosome-associated membrane protein type 2A) was significantly up-regulated. LAMP2A is a key rate-limiting protein of chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), a lysosome pathway of protein degradation that is activated in glioma. We carefully analyzed the amino-acid sequence of SMAD3 and found that it contained a pentapeptide motif biochemically related to KFERQ, which has been proposed to be a targeting sequence for CMA. In vitro, we confirmed that SMAD3 was degraded in either serum-free or KFERQ motif deleted condition, which was regulated by LAMP2A and interacted with HSC70 (heat shock cognate 71 kDa protein). Using isolated lysosomes, amino-acid residues 75 and 128 of SMAD3 were found to be of importance for this process, which affected the CMA pathway in which SMAD3 was involved. Similarly, down-regulating SMAD3 or up-regulating LAMP2A in cultured glioma cells enhanced their proliferation and invasion. Taken together, these results suggest that excessive activation of CMA regulates glioma cell growth by promoting the degradation of SMAD3. Therefore, targeting the SMAD3-LAMP2A-mediated CMA-lysosome pathway may be a promising approach in anti-cancer therapy.