OBJECTIVES: Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is characterized by complex pathogenesis and poor prognosis. In recent years, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in tumor initiation and progression has attracted increasing attention. Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2), which is aberrantly expressed in various tumors, may be closely related to the EMT process. This study aims to examine the expression and correlation of EZH2 and EMT markers in ESCC cells and tissues, evaluate the effects of EZH2 knockdown on ESCC cell proliferation, invasion, and migration, and explore how EZH2 contributes to the malignant biological behavior of ESCC. METHODS: Bioinformatics analyses were used to assess EZH2 expression levels in ESCC. Small interfering RNA was used to knock down EZH2 in ESCC cell lines EC109 and EC9706. Cell proliferation, invasion, and migration were evaluated using cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), wound healing, and Transwell assays. Protein and mRNA expression levels of EZH2, E-cadherin (E-cad), and vimentin (Vim) were detected by Western blotting and real time fluorogenic quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR), respectively. Immunohistochemical (IHC) staining was performed on 70 ESCC tissue samples and 40 paired adjacent normal tissues collected from the First Affiliated Hospital of Shihezi University between 2010 and 2016 to assess the expression of EZH2, E-cad, and Vim, and to analyze their associations with clinicopathological feature and patient prognosis. RESULTS: Bioinformatics analysis showed that EZH2 was highly expressed in ESCC (P<0.001), and high EZH2 expression was associated with worse prognosis (P<0.001). CCK-8, wound healing, and Transwell assays demonstrated that EZH2 knockdown significantly suppressed the proliferation, invasion, and migration of ESCC cells (P<0.001). In addition, Vim expression was significantly reduced, while E-cad expression was significantly increased at both protein and mRNA levels in EZH2-silenced cells (all P<0.05). IHC staining analysis revealed higher expression of EZH2 and Vim and lower expression of E-cad in ESCC tissues compared to adjacent normal tissues. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that low expression of EZH2 and Vim and high expression of E-cad were associated with longer survival (all P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS EZH2 promotes malignant biological behavior in ESCC by mediating EMT. Elevated EZH2 expression is associated with poor prognosis in ESCC patients.
Humans ; Enhancer of Zeste Homolog 2 Protein/physiology* ; Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma/pathology* ; Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition/genetics* ; Esophageal Neoplasms/metabolism* ; Cell Proliferation ; Cell Line, Tumor ; Cell Movement ; Cadherins/genetics* ; Vimentin/genetics* ; Male ; Female ; Middle Aged ; Neoplasm Invasiveness ; Prognosis ; RNA, Small Interfering/genetics* ; Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the therapeutic mechanism of Thesium chinense Turcz. (TCT) for antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD). METHODS: Network pharmacology, KEGG pathway enrichment analysis and molecular docking were used to identify the shared targets and genes of TCT and AAD, the key signaling pathways and the binding between the active components in TCT and the core protein targets. In a Kunming mouse model of AAD established by intragastric administration of lincomycin hydrochloride, the effects of daily gavage of 1% carboxymethyl cellulose sodium or TCT gel solutions at 1.5 g/kg and 3 g/kg (n=10) on body weight and diarrhea were observed. HE staining, ELISA, 16S rRNA sequencing, and Western blotting were used to examine pathologies, expression levels of IL-6 and TNF-α, changes in gut microbiota, and protein expressions of EGFR, p-EGFR, PI3K, p-PI3K, Akt, and p-Akt in the colon tissues of the mice. RESULTS: We identified a total of 66 active components of TCT and 68 core targets including EGFR, STAT3 and PIK3CA. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis suggested that the therapeutic effects of TCT was mediated primarily through the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway. Molecular docking showed that EGFR had the highest binding affinity with coniferin, and the EGFR-coniferin complex maintained a stable conformation at 10 ns, whose stability was also confirmed by Gibbs free energy analysis. In the mouse models of AAD, treatment with TCT significantly improved colonic tissue morphology, decreased colonic levels of TNF-α and IL-6, increased gut microbiota diversity, and modulated the relative abundances of the key genera including Lactobacillus and Bacteroides. TCT treatment also markedly reduced protein expressions of p-EGFR, p-PI3K and p-Akt in the colon tissues of the mice. CONCLUSIONS TCT can alleviate AAD in mice by modulating gut microbiota composition, regulating the EGFR/PI3K/Akt signaling pathway, and reducing TNF‑α and IL-6 expressions.
Animals ; Gastrointestinal Microbiome/drug effects* ; Signal Transduction/drug effects* ; Mice ; ErbB Receptors/metabolism* ; Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-akt/metabolism* ; Diarrhea/drug therapy* ; Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinases/metabolism* ; Anti-Bacterial Agents/adverse effects* ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/therapeutic use* ; Molecular Docking Simulation

OBJECTIVES: The presence of multi-scale skin lesion regions and image noise interference and limited resources of auxiliary diagnostic equipment affect the accuracy of skin disease detection in skin disease detection tasks. To solve these problems, we propose a highly efficient and lightweight skin disease detection model using an improved RT-DETR model. METHODS: A lightweight FasterNet was introduced as the backbone network and the FasterNetBlock module was parametrically refined. A Convolutional and Attention Fusion Module (CAFM) was used to replace the multi-head self-attention mechanism in the neck network to enhance the ability of the AIFI-CAFM module for capturing global dependencies and local detail information. The DRB-HSFPN feature pyramid network was designed to replace the Cross-Scale Feature Fusion Module (CCFM) to allow the integration of contextual information across different scales to improve the semantic feature expression capacity of the neck network. Finally, combining the advantages of Inner-IoU and EIoU, the Inner-EIoU was used to replace the original loss function GIOU to further enhance the model's inference accuracy and convergence speed. RESULTS: The experimental results on the HAM10000 dataset showed that the improved RT-DETR model, as compared with the original model, had increased mAP@50 and mAP@50:95 by 4.5% and 2.8%, respectively, with a detection speed of 59.1 frames per second (FPS). The improved model had a parameter count of 10.9 M and a computational load of 19.3 GFLOPs, which were reduced by 46.0% and 67.2% compared to those of the original model, validating the effectiveness of the improved model. CONCLUSIONS The proposed SD-DETR model significantly improves the performance of skin disease detection tasks by effectively extracting and integrating multi-scale features while reducing both parameter count and computational load.
Humans ; Skin Diseases/diagnosis* ; Skin/pathology* ; Neural Networks, Computer ; Algorithms

OBJECTIVE To study the chemical constituents in the root bark of Schisandra sphenanthera and their cytotoxic activ-ities.METHODS The compounds were isolated and purified by silica,Sephadex LH-20 and semi preparative-HPLC and the chem-ical structures were identified by 1 H-NMR,13 C-NMR and MS data analysis.The cytotoxic activities of the compounds were deter-mined by MTT method.RESULTS Twenty lignans were isolated and deduced as:Matairesinol(1),2-Hydroxy-2-(3′,4′-di-hydroxyphenyl)methyl-3-(3″,4″-dimethoxyphenyl)methyl-gamma-butyrolactone(2),(+)-Nortrachelogenin(3),2-Hydroxy-2-(4′-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-3′-hydroxyphenyl)methyl-3-(3″,4″-dimethoxyphenyl)methyl-γ-butyrolactone(4),Nortracheloside(5),Burselignan(6),(+)-Cycloolivil(7),5-Methoxy-(+)-isolariciresinol(8),(-)-Isolariciresinol 3α-O-β-D-glucopyranoside(9),(+)-9-O-β-D-Glucopyranosyl lyoniresinol(10),(-)-Secoisolariciresinol(11),Licarin A(12),Cedrusin(13),Mataires-inol 4′-O-β-D-glucopyranoside(14),Pregomisin(15),Meso-dihydroguaiaretic acid(16),7S,8R-Erythro-4,9,9′-trihydroxy-3,3′-dimethoxy-8-O-4′-neolignan-7-O-β-D-glucopyranoside(17),Gomisin M2(18),Gomisin M3(19),Pinoresinol(20).Com-pounds 1-3,12,15,16,18 and 19 showed cytotoxic activity against A549,HCT116 and SW620 cell lines with IC50 values ranging from 1.4 to 22.9 μmol·L-1.CONCLUSION Compounds 1-4,6-12,14,17-19 are isolated from the plant for the first time,com-pounds 1-3,12,15,16,18 and 19 exhibit cytotoxic activities.

The MGF300-4L protein of African swine fever virus(ASFV),a virulence-associated fac-tor,degrades IKKβ through the chaperone-mediated autophagy and enhances the stability of IKBαto suppress the generation of IL-1β and TNF-α regulated by the NF-κB signaling pathway.To iden-tify the host proteins interacting with MGF300-4L,PK-15 cells were transfected with the eukary-otic plasmid expressing MGF300-4L and analyzed using immunoprecipitation-mass spectrometry(IP-MS)to identify the host proteins that interact with MGF300-4L.Additionally,gene ontology(GO)and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses were conducted.Furthermore,molecular docking a-nalysis,co-immunoprecipitation,and laser confocal microscopy assays were performed to validate the host proteins interacting with MGF300-4L.The IP-MS analysis identified 145 host proteins that potentially interact with MGF300-4L.Subsequent GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analy-ses revealed that these proteins are predominantly involved in metabolic,cellular,and innate immune responses.Through molecular docking prediction,co-immunoprecipitation assay,and laser confocal microscopy,we identified the interaction between MGF300-4L and STAT1.This study provides critical insights into the mechanisms underlying the interactions between MGF300-4L and the host proteins.

Objective To construct the performance evaluation index system of specialist cooperation alliance in hos-pital-community in order to scientifically evaluate the effect of the construction of the specialist cooperation alliance.Methods By searching literature related to the construction of specialized league,sort out national and local policy documents,and the"structure-process-result"model was adopted to initially construct the index system.The ex-pert letter consultation form of the indicator system was formed through the discussion of the special group,two rounds of Delphi expert consultation were carried out to determine the evaluation indicator system,and the weight coefficient of each indicator was determined by the simultaneous application of analytic hierarchy process.Results The effective recovery rates of the two rounds of questionnaire were 84.62％and 100.00％,respectively.The positive de-gree of experts was high,and the average authority degree of experts was 0.864.The importance,operability,sen-sitivity Kendall's W coefficient and x2 test value of all indexes were P＜0.05.Finally,an evaluation index system covering 9 first-level indicators and 25 second-level indicators was established.Conclusion The constructed perfor-mance evaluation index is scientific and reliable.The practical application shows that it can be used as a tool to evalu-ate the effect of integrated,continuous and collaborative health service delivery in hospital-community.

ObjectiveTo investigate the therapeutic effect of sequential administration of Dihuang Baoyuan granules （DHBY， the prescription for consolidating body resistance） and Fuling Yunhua granules （FLYH， the prescription for treating symptoms） on spontaneous type 2 diabetes mellitus （T2DM） in mice. MethodsAccording to the fasting blood glucose （FBG） level， 12-week-old db/db mice were randomized into six groups： model， DHBY （18.02 g·kg^-1）， FLYH （14.80 g·kg^-1）， sequential administration 1 （SEQ-1， DHBY 18.02 g·kg^-1+FLYH 14.80 g·kg^-1）， sequential administration 2 （SEQ-2， FLYH 14.80 g·kg^-1+DHBY 18.02 g·kg^-1）， and dapagliflozin （Dapa， 1.3 mg·kg^-1）. The m/m mice in the same litter were selected as the normal group. The mice were administrated with corresponding drugs by gavage for 8 consecutive weeks. During the 8 weeks of drug administration and 2 weeks after withdrawal， the retinal thickness， FBG， hemoglobin A1c （HbA1c）， and insulin were determined， and histopathological changes of the pancreas， liver， kidney， and retina were observed by hematoxylin-eosin （HE） staining. ResultsCompared with the model group， SEQ-1 for 4 weeks lowered the FBG level （P<0.05）， raised the insulin level， decreased the triglyceride （TG） level （P<0.05）， increased the number of optic ganglion cells and diminished vacuolar degeneration of pancreatic islet and liver. SEQ-2 lowered FBG and HbA1c levels （P<0.05）， rose the insulin level， increased the retinal thickness and the number of optic ganglion cells （P<0.05）， and alleviated vacuolar degeneration of pancreatic islet and liver. Two weeks after drug withdrawal， Dapa tended to increase FBG and HbA1c compared with those at the time of drug withdrawal. However， the levels of FBG and HbA1c in the SEQ-2 group remained decreasing （P<0.05）. ConclusionSEQ-1 and SEQ-2 can lower the blood glucose level and ameliorate diabetic retinopathy， and SEQ-2 outperformed DHBY and FLYH in lowering the blood glucose level. Moreover， SEQ-2 can maintain the blood glucose-lowering effect after drug withdrawal.

ObjectiveTo investigate the therapeutic effect of sequential administration of Dihuang Baoyuan granules （DHBY， the prescription for consolidating body resistance） and Fuling Yunhua granules （FLYH， the prescription for treating symptoms） on spontaneous type 2 diabetes mellitus （T2DM） in mice. MethodsAccording to the fasting blood glucose （FBG） level， 12-week-old db/db mice were randomized into six groups： model， DHBY （18.02 g·kg^-1）， FLYH （14.80 g·kg^-1）， sequential administration 1 （SEQ-1， DHBY 18.02 g·kg^-1+FLYH 14.80 g·kg^-1）， sequential administration 2 （SEQ-2， FLYH 14.80 g·kg^-1+DHBY 18.02 g·kg^-1）， and dapagliflozin （Dapa， 1.3 mg·kg^-1）. The m/m mice in the same litter were selected as the normal group. The mice were administrated with corresponding drugs by gavage for 8 consecutive weeks. During the 8 weeks of drug administration and 2 weeks after withdrawal， the retinal thickness， FBG， hemoglobin A1c （HbA1c）， and insulin were determined， and histopathological changes of the pancreas， liver， kidney， and retina were observed by hematoxylin-eosin （HE） staining. ResultsCompared with the model group， SEQ-1 for 4 weeks lowered the FBG level （P<0.05）， raised the insulin level， decreased the triglyceride （TG） level （P<0.05）， increased the number of optic ganglion cells and diminished vacuolar degeneration of pancreatic islet and liver. SEQ-2 lowered FBG and HbA1c levels （P<0.05）， rose the insulin level， increased the retinal thickness and the number of optic ganglion cells （P<0.05）， and alleviated vacuolar degeneration of pancreatic islet and liver. Two weeks after drug withdrawal， Dapa tended to increase FBG and HbA1c compared with those at the time of drug withdrawal. However， the levels of FBG and HbA1c in the SEQ-2 group remained decreasing （P<0.05）. ConclusionSEQ-1 and SEQ-2 can lower the blood glucose level and ameliorate diabetic retinopathy， and SEQ-2 outperformed DHBY and FLYH in lowering the blood glucose level. Moreover， SEQ-2 can maintain the blood glucose-lowering effect after drug withdrawal.

BACKGROUND:As a degradable scaffold material for bone tissue engineering,lactic acid is widely used in tissue regeneration and repair research,and plays an important role in promoting tissue healing,new bone formation and angiogenesis. OBJECTIVE:To observe the effect of lactic acid degradation products on osteoclasts and to investigate the effects of lactic-interfered osteoclast conditioned medium on the proliferation,migration and tube-forming capacity of human umbilical vein endothelial cells. METHODS:(1)The mouse monocyte macrophage cell line RAW264.7 at logarithmic growth period was selected,and adherent cells were cultured in the osteoclast induction medium(DMEM medium with nuclear factor-κB receptor-activating factor ligand and 10%fetal bovine serum)containing different concentrations of lactic acid(0,5,10,20 mmol/L).After 5 days of culture,tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase staining and cytoskeletal fibrillar actin staining were conducted.After 24 hours of culture,RT-PCR was used to detect the mRNA expression of tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase 5.(2)RAW264.7 cells at logarithmic growth period were selected and adherent cells were divided into two groups.Control group was cultured in the osteoclast induction medium,while experimental group was cultured in the osteoclast induction medium containing 10 mmol/L lactic acid.After 5 days of culture,the medium in each group was removed and the cells in the two groups were cultured in the serum-free DMEM medium for another 24 hours.Cell supernatant was then collected and used as the conditioned medium after mixed with an equal volume of DMEM medium containing 10%fetal bovine serum.Human umbilical vein endothelial cells at the logarithmic growth phase were taken and separately co-cultured with the conditioned medium of the control and experimental groups.The proliferation,migration and tube-forming ability of human umbilical vein endothelial cells were observed by cell counting kit-8 assay,migration assay,scratch assay and tube-forming assay.The mRNA and protein expression of angiogenesis-related genes and proteins were observed by RT-PCR and western blot. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase staining and cytoskeletal fibrillar actin staining showed that 5 and 10 mmol/L lactic acid promoted osteoclastic differentiation of RAW264.7 cells and the promoting effect of 10 mmol/L lactate was more significant.RT-PCR results showed that the expression of tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase-5 mRNA of osteoclast-related genes was the highest when the lactic acid concentration was 5,10,and 20 mmol/L(P<0.05),especially 10 mmol/L.Compared with the control group,the proliferation,migration and tube-forming abilities of human umbilical vein endothelial cells were significantly increased in the experimental group(P<0.05).Compared with the control group,the expression levels of vascular endothelial growth factor and angiogenin 1 mRNA and protein were increased in the experimental group(P<0.05).To conclude,lactate-induced osteoclast conditioned medium could promote the angiogenesis of endothelial cells,and the mechanism may be related to the promotion of the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor and angiogenin 1.

This study examined the effect of islet macrophages on β-cell function changes during type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) progression based on the traditional Chinese medicine theory that " moderate fire generating qi, hyperactive fire consuming qi" . T2DM is closely associated with chronic low-grade inflammation, with islet macrophages playing a central role in this process. Under physiological conditions, islet macrophages secrete anti-inflammatory and growth factors to regulate the immune response, promote cell proliferation, and support islet β-cell survival and function, reflecting the concept of " moderate fire generating qi" . However, during the pathological process of T2DM, islet macrophages become over-activated and dysfunctional, secreting large amounts of pro-inflammatory factors that trigger severe inflammatory responses and oxidative stress. This process damages islet β-cells, disrupts the islet microenvironment and blood supply, exacerbates local inflammation and structural damage, and worsens the survival environment of β-cells. Ultimately, this leads to fewer β-cells and function loss, aligning with the " hyperactive fire consuming qi" theory, where excessive fire depletes qi and blood. This study enhances the understanding and application of traditional Chinese medicine theories in modern medicine, offering a new perspective on T2DM prevention and treatment. Regulating islet macrophage function and reducing their pro-inflammatory responses may become key strategies for preserving β-cell function and slowing T2DM progression.