Objective:To study the early predictors of Mycoplasma pneumoniae necrotizing pneumonia in children.Methods:Clinical data of 291 children with lobar pneumonia caused by Mycoplasma pneumoniae who were hospitalized in Department of Respiratory Intervention, Qilu Children′s Hospital of Shandong University from August 2016 to September 2018, were retrospectively analyzed.The patients were divided into necrotizing pneumonia group (154 cases) and non-necrotizing pneumonia group (137 cases). After comparing clinical characteristics, laboratory tests, and bronchoscopy findings, multivariate logistic regression analysis was carried out on the indicators with statistical significance to obtain the independent predictive indicators of Mycoplasma pneumoniae necrotizing pneumonia, and then the cutoff value with the maximum diagnostic value of each indicator was found through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis.Results:There were no significant differences in gender and age distribution, duration before admission, and platelet count between the 2 groups(all P>0.05). Necrotizing pneumonia group manifested with 11.0(8.3-14.4)×10 9/L of white blood cell count, 0.740±0.115 of neutrophil, 44.2(21.2-72.0) mg/L of C-reactive protein(CRP), 55(35-80) mm/1 h of erythrocyte sedimentation rate, 0.19(0.08-0.60) ng/L of procalcitonin, 2.63(1.62-3.79) mg/L of plasma D-dimer, 456(340-665) U/L of serum lactate dehydrogenase, (35.6±4.3) g/L of serum albumin, 121 cases(78.6%)of bronchoscopic mucosal erosion, 75 cases(48.7%)of purulent lavage, 119 cases(77.3%)of massive secretions embolism; non-necrotizing pneumonia group manifested with 8.7(6.9-11.6)×10 9/L of white blood cell count, 0.660±0.127 of neutrophil percentage, 15.9(7.5-34.3) mg/L of CRP, 45(30-60) mm/1 h of erythrocyte sedimentation rate, 0.10(0.06-0.20) ng/L of procalcitonin, 0.69(0.46-1.24) mg/L of plasma D-dimer, 314(250-419) U/L of serum lactate dehydrogenase, (38.9±3.7) g/L of serum albumin, 53 cases(38.7%)of bronchoscopic mucosal erosion, 20 cases(14.6%)of purulent lavage, and 76 cases(55.5%)of massive secretions embolism.All the above indicators had statistical differences between the 2 groups.Erythrocyte sedimentation rate, serum lactate dehydrogenase, D-dimer, and bronchoscopic mucosal erosion were independent predictors of Mycoplasma necrotizing pneumonia.The area under the ROC curve were 0.643, 0.749, 0.858 and 0.699, respectively, with the cut off point of 53 mm/1 h, 335 U/L, and 1.36 mg/L, respectively. Conclusions:Erythrocyte sedimentation rate≥53 mm/1 h, serum lactate dehydrogenase≥335 U/L, D-dimer≥1.36 mg/L, and bronchoscopic mucosal erosion are early independent predictors of Mycoplasma necrotizing pneumonia in children, among which D-dimer has the highest value.

Objective:To investigate the diagnostic value of rapid on-site evaluation (ROSE) technique in the mucosal biopsy under respiratory endoscopy in children with active tuberculosis.Methods:Clinical data of 40 patients with active tuberculosis diagnosed in Department of Respiratory Intervention, Qilu Children′s Hospital, Shandong University from June 2017 to January 2020 were retrospectively analyzed.Results:(1) There were 33 cases of tracheobronchial tuberculosis and 7 cases of tuberculous pleurisy in the 40 cases, among them 9 cases were difficult to diagnose.(2)Among 33 cases of tracheobronchial tuberculosis, 24 cases (72.7%) of caseous necrosis breaking into the lumen, and 9 cases (27.3%) of mucosal swelling and external pressure.Cytological ROSE (C-ROSE) showed granuloma, epithelioid cells and lymphocytic infiltration with all bronchial mucosal biopsies.Different positives results of microbiological ROSE (M-ROSE) in different biopsy parts: positive results were found 6 times at caseous necrosis (13.6%, 6/44 times), 4 times at granulation hyperplasia (12.5%, 4/32 times), 2 times at hyperemia and edema (22.2%, 2/18 times), 0 time at yellow-white necrosis, and 54 times at the junction between lesions and normal mucosa (81.8%, 54/66 times). The mucosal pathology showed granuloma, exudation and necrosis, including 22 cases with tuberculous granuloma, 5 cases with characteristic tuberculous nodules, and 11 cases with positive acid-fast staining.(3)Seven cases of tuberculous pleurisy, serious pleural adhesion, pleural hyperemia and edema were observed under thoracoscopy.After clearing the adhesive tape, scattered caseous miliary nodules were found in pleura in 4 cases with a difficult clinical diagnosis.The C-ROSE of smear on thoracoscopic biopsy were characterized by necrotic and histopathic cell, with multinucleated giant cells, but granuloma was rare.M-ROSE in different parts: 8 times positive for millet nodules (80.0%), 0 time positive for adhesion band, 2 times positive for congestion oedema (14.3%); biopsy pathology showed granuloma and necrosis, with 3 cases characteristic tuberculosis nodules and 2 cases positive for anti-acid staining.(4)Pathogenic microorganisms were detected in 19 children using next generation sequencing (NGS) and Mycobacterium tuberculosis/Rifampicin resistance real-time nucleic acid amplification detection technology (Xpert MTB/RIF), including 7 positive for NGS (36.8%), 8 positive (42.1%) and 5 positive for both NGS and Xpert MTB/RIF (26.3%).Conclusions:Respiratory endoscopy combined with ROSE technique has important clinical significance in early diagnosis of active tuberculosis in children, and it is worth of promotion and applying.

BACKGROUND:Intervertebral disc degeneration is an important cause of low back pain.At present,there are many modeling methods for disc degeneration in China and abroad,but there is not a model for low back pain due to disc degeneration. OBJECTIVE:To compare the effect of mechanical puncture combined with tumor necrosis factor α and complete Freund's adjuvant with a conventional disc mechanical puncture alone. METHODS:A total of 18 male adult Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 3 groups,with 6 animals in each group.No treatment was given in the blank group.Animal models of intervertebral disc degeneration were made in the L4-5 segments of rats in the control using conventional mechanical puncture.In the experimental group,on the basis of mechanical puncture,tumor necrosis factor α+complete Freund's adjuvant was injected into the L4-5 intervertebral discs using a microinjector to establish a model of disc degeneration induced by mechanical puncture combined with inflammatory factors.Four weeks after surgery,the pain threshold of rats was measured by the hot plate method for assessing the perception of heat injury in rats with intervertebral disc degeneration.MRI examination was performed to observe the disc degeneration in each group.ELISA was used to detect the levels of serum tumor necrosis factor α,interleukin 1β,interleukin 6 and prostaglandin E2.Hematoxylin-eosin and Safranin O-fast green staining were used to observe the morphological changes of the disc. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:In terms of pain,the behavioral pain threshold of the experimental group was continuously decreased,and the levels of serum inflammatory factors were significantly higher compared with the control group.In terms of morphology,the MRI results showed that the L4-5 nucleus pulposus signal completely disappeared in the experimental group.Histopathological results showed that in the control group,the nucleus pulposus was intact,more notochord cells were visible,and some fiber rings were ruptured,while in the experimental group,there are fewer notochord cells and the structure of the nucleus pulposus and fibrous ring is disturbed,with the boundary disappearing.To conclude,mechanical puncture combined with tumor necrosis factor alpha and complete Freund's adjuvant can successfully establish a discogenic low back pain model in rats.This operation is simple and economical to achieve obvious disc degeneration and low back pain,with greatly shortened molding cycle.This model can be used as a reference for studying discogenic low back pain models.

The accurate annotation of transcription start sites(TSSs)and their usage are critical for the mechanistic understanding of gene regulation in different biological contexts.To fulfill this,specific high-throughput experimental technologies have been developed to capture TSSs in a genome-wide manner,and various computational tools have also been developed for in silico pre-diction of TSSs solely based on genomic sequences.Most of these computational tools cast the problem as a binary classification task on a balanced dataset,thus resulting in drastic false positive predictions when applied on the genome scale.Here,we present DeeReCT-TSS,a deep learning-based method that is capable of identifying TSSs across the whole genome based on both DNA sequence and conventional RNA sequencing data.We show that by effectively incorporating these two sources of information,DeeReCT-TSS significantly outperforms other solely sequence-based methods on the precise annotation of TSSs used in different cell types.Furthermore,we develop a meta-learning-based extension for simultaneous TSS annotations on 10 cell types,which enables the identification of cell type-specific TSSs.Finally,we demonstrate the high precision of DeeReCT-TSS on two independent datasets by correlating our predicted TSSs with experimentally defined TSS chromatin states.The source code for DeeReCT-TSS is available at https://github.-com/JoshuaChou2018/DeeReCT-TSS_release and https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/biocode/tools/BT007316.