Objective To explore the correlation of CPNE3 expression with long-term prognosis of patients with gastric cancer(GC)and the possible mechanism.Methods We retrospectively collected the data of 104 GC patients undergoing radical surgery in our hospital from February,2013 to October,2017.TCGA database and immunohistochemistry were used to analyze CPNE3 expression level in GC tissues and its effects on tumor progression and long-term prognosis of the patients.GO analysis was performed to predict the biological role of CPNE3 in GC.We also conducted cell experiments with MGC803 cells and observed the effects of CPNE3 knockdown,CPNE3 overexpression and LY294002(a PI3K/AKT inhibitor)treatment on cell apoptosis and cellular expressions of apoptotic proteins using flow cytometry and Western blotting.Results TCGA analysis and immunohistochemistry both showed high expressions of CPNE3 in GC(P<0.05).The patients with high CPNE3 expressions had a reduced 5-year survival(P<0.01),and a high CPNE3 expression,CEA level≥5 μg/L,CA19-9 level≥37 kU/L,T3-T4 stage,and N2-N3 stage were all independent risk factors for a lowered 5-year survival rate after surgery.The sensitivity and specificity of CPNE3 for predicting 5-year mortality was 79.59%and 74.55%,respectively(P<0.05).GO analysis predicted that CPNE3 negatively regulated GC cell apoptosis.In MGC803 cells,CPNE3 knockdown significantly increased cell apoptosis,enhanced Bax and Cleaved Caspase-3 expressions and decreased Bcl-2 expression,while CPNE3 overexpression produced the opposite results(P<0.05).The cellular expressions of p-PI3K and p-AKT were significantly decreased following CPNE3 knockdown and increased following CPNE3 overexpression(P<0.05).Treatment with LY294002 obviously attenuated the inhibitory effect of CPNE3 overexpression on apoptosis of MGC803 cells(P<0.05).Conclusion CPNE3 is highly expressed in GC tissues and affects the long-term prognosis of the patients possibly by inhibiting GC cell apoptosis through activation of PI3K/AKT signaling.

Objective To explore the correlation of CPNE3 expression with long-term prognosis of patients with gastric cancer(GC)and the possible mechanism.Methods We retrospectively collected the data of 104 GC patients undergoing radical surgery in our hospital from February,2013 to October,2017.TCGA database and immunohistochemistry were used to analyze CPNE3 expression level in GC tissues and its effects on tumor progression and long-term prognosis of the patients.GO analysis was performed to predict the biological role of CPNE3 in GC.We also conducted cell experiments with MGC803 cells and observed the effects of CPNE3 knockdown,CPNE3 overexpression and LY294002(a PI3K/AKT inhibitor)treatment on cell apoptosis and cellular expressions of apoptotic proteins using flow cytometry and Western blotting.Results TCGA analysis and immunohistochemistry both showed high expressions of CPNE3 in GC(P<0.05).The patients with high CPNE3 expressions had a reduced 5-year survival(P<0.01),and a high CPNE3 expression,CEA level≥5 μg/L,CA19-9 level≥37 kU/L,T3-T4 stage,and N2-N3 stage were all independent risk factors for a lowered 5-year survival rate after surgery.The sensitivity and specificity of CPNE3 for predicting 5-year mortality was 79.59%and 74.55%,respectively(P<0.05).GO analysis predicted that CPNE3 negatively regulated GC cell apoptosis.In MGC803 cells,CPNE3 knockdown significantly increased cell apoptosis,enhanced Bax and Cleaved Caspase-3 expressions and decreased Bcl-2 expression,while CPNE3 overexpression produced the opposite results(P<0.05).The cellular expressions of p-PI3K and p-AKT were significantly decreased following CPNE3 knockdown and increased following CPNE3 overexpression(P<0.05).Treatment with LY294002 obviously attenuated the inhibitory effect of CPNE3 overexpression on apoptosis of MGC803 cells(P<0.05).Conclusion CPNE3 is highly expressed in GC tissues and affects the long-term prognosis of the patients possibly by inhibiting GC cell apoptosis through activation of PI3K/AKT signaling.

Objective:To screen differentially expressed circular RNA (circRNA) in rat articular chondrocyte injury induced by T-2 toxin, and explore the mechanism of cartilage injury.Methods:Twenty-four SD rats (males, body weight 60 - 80 g) were randomly divided into T-2 toxin group (administrated T-2 toxin 100 ng·g -1·d -1 by gavage) and control group (administrated equal amounts of deionized water by gavage) using a random number table method, 12 rats in each group. After 4 weeks of intervention, the articular cartilage was collected for transcriptome sequencing. Deseq2 software [ P < 0.05 and |log 2(fold change)| > 1, fold change was the multiple of differential expression] was used to identify differentially expressed circRNA. Based on the competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNA) hypothesis, the miRanda software was used to predict the microRNA (miRNA, miR) binding sites of differentially expressed circRNA, and Cytoscape 3.10.0 software was used to plot the circRNA-miRNA interaction network. MiRWalk 3.0, MiRDB, and miRTarBase softwares were used to predict downstream target genes, and Cytoscape 3.10.0 software was used to map the circRNA-miRNA-mRNA interaction network. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) were used to analyze the biological functions and enrichment pathways of target genes. Results:A total of 19 differentially expressed circRNAs were screened (including 10 upregulated and 9 downregulated). A total of 1 320 miRNAs binding sites and 16 target genes were predicted. Target gene enrichment analysis revealed significant enrichment of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and nuclear factor kappa-B (NF-κB) signaling pathway ( P < 0.05). Tumour necrosis factor receptor-associated factor 6 (Traf6) and interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase 1 (Irak1) were enriched in the MAPK and NF-κB signaling pathways, with corresponding miRNA and circRNA of miR-146a-5p and chr2: 94716330|94720889. Conclusion:Nineteen differentially expressed circRNAs in rat articular chondrocyte injury are successfully screened, and chr2: 94716330|94720889 may regulate the MAPK and NF-κB signaling pathways through the miR-146a-5p/Traf6/Irak1 axis, inducing articular chondrocyte injury.

OBJECTIVE: We propose a novel region- level self-supervised contrastive learning method USRegCon (ultrastructural region contrast) based on the semantic similarity of ultrastructures to improve the performance of the model for glomerular ultrastructure segmentation on electron microscope images. METHODS: USRegCon used a large amount of unlabeled data for pre- training of the model in 3 steps: (1) The model encoded and decoded the ultrastructural information in the image and adaptively divided the image into multiple regions based on the semantic similarity of the ultrastructures; (2) Based on the divided regions, the first-order grayscale region representations and deep semantic region representations of each region were extracted by region pooling operation; (3) For the first-order grayscale region representations, a grayscale loss function was proposed to minimize the grayscale difference within regions and maximize the difference between regions. For deep semantic region representations, a semantic loss function was introduced to maximize the similarity of positive region pairs and the difference of negative region pairs in the representation space. These two loss functions were jointly used for pre-training of the model. RESULTS: In the segmentation task for 3 ultrastructures of the glomerular filtration barrier based on the private dataset GlomEM, USRegCon achieved promising segmentation results for basement membrane, endothelial cells, and podocytes, with Dice coefficients of (85.69 ± 0.13)%, (74.59 ± 0.13)%, and (78.57 ± 0.16)%, respectively, demonstrating a good performance of the model superior to many existing image-level, pixel-level, and region-level self-supervised contrastive learning methods and close to the fully- supervised pre-training method based on the large- scale labeled dataset ImageNet. CONCLUSION USRegCon facilitates the model to learn beneficial region representations from large amounts of unlabeled data to overcome the scarcity of labeled data and improves the deep model performance for glomerular ultrastructure recognition and boundary segmentation.
Humans ; Electrons ; Endothelial Cells ; Learning ; Podocytes ; Kidney Diseases

With the recent ongoing autumn/winter 2022 COVID-19 wave and the adjustment of public health control measures, there have been widespread SARS-CoV-2 infections in Chinese mainland. Here we have analyzed 369 viral genomes from recently diagnosed COVID-19 patients in Shanghai, identifying a large number of sublineages of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron family. Phylogenetic analysis, coupled with contact history tracing, revealed simultaneous community transmission of two Omicron sublineages dominating the infections in some areas of China (BA.5.2 mainly in Guangzhou and Shanghai, and BF.7 mainly in Beijing) and two highly infectious sublineages recently imported from abroad (XBB and BQ.1). Publicly available data from August 31 to November 29, 2022 indicated an overall severe/critical case rate of 0.035% nationwide, while analysis of 5706 symptomatic patients treated at the Shanghai Public Health Center between September 1 and December 26, 2022 showed that 20 cases (0.35%) without comorbidities progressed into severe/critical conditions and 153 cases (2.68%) with COVID-19-exacerbated comorbidities progressed into severe/critical conditions. These observations shall alert healthcare providers to place more resources for the treatment of severe/critical cases. Furthermore, mathematical modeling predicts this autumn/winter wave might pass through major cities in China by the end of the year, whereas some middle and western provinces and rural areas would be hit by the upcoming infection wave in mid-to-late January 2023, and the duration and magnitude of upcoming outbreak could be dramatically enhanced by the extensive travels during the Spring Festival (January 21, 2023). Altogether, these preliminary data highlight the needs to allocate resources to early diagnosis and effective treatment of severe cases and the protection of vulnerable population, especially in the rural areas, to ensure the country's smooth exit from the ongoing pandemic and accelerate socio-economic recovery.

AIM: To analyze the clinical characteristics of anticoagulant rat poisoning and vitamin K

Objective:To investigate genetic characteristics of human rhinovirus (HRV) in adult inpatients with pneumonia in autumn and winter in Bengbu, Anhui province, 2021.Methods:The pharyngeal swabs of inpatients with pneumonia in Bengbu were collected for the detection of 14 common respiratory pathogens by Real-time PCR during September to December 2021. VP4/VP2 coding regions of HRV positive samples were amplified by nested PCR and phylogenetic tree was constructed using MEGA7.0.Results:A total of 146 samples were collected from inpatients with pneumonia; 35.62% (52/146) samples were positive with at least one pathogen. The four viruses with high detection rate were HRV, adenovirus, human coronavirus OC43 and influenza B virus. HRV positive samples accounted for 44.23% (23/52) of the positive samples, among which 9 cases (39.13%, 9/23) co-infected with HRV. Phylogenetic analysis found that HRV infection were dominated by HRV-A and HRV-B groups. The analysis based on clinical syndrome found that the white blood cells count and the proportion neutrophils of patients with HRV co-infection were higher that of HRV single infection. The proportion of patients with hypertension, diabetes, mechanical ventilation and poor prognosis in the HRV co-infection group were higher than that of HRV single infection group ( P<0.05). Conclusions:HRV is the predominant pathogen among the adult inpatients with pneumonia in Bengbu. HRV-A and HRV-B groups are common. Patients accompanied by hypertension, diabetes were easily co-infected with HRV. Patients coinfeted with HRV are more likely to be mechanical ventilation and poor prognosis.

Objective:To analyze the clinical characteristics of patients with acute glyphosate herbicide poisoning and the differences in the severity of poisoning.Methods:A retrospective analysis was performed on patients with acute glyphosate herbicide poisoning admitted to the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University from January 2014 to December 2020. The general information, exposure time, poisoning dose, poisoning cause, poisoning route, clinical manifestations, laboratory examination results during hospitalization, treatment measures, hospital stays and prognosis of the patients were collected. The patients were graded according to the poisoning severity scoring standard of Chinese Expert Consensus on Diagnosis and Treatment of Acute Poisoning in 2016. The highest severity score during hospitalization was used as the final grade. According to the final grade, asymptomatic and mild patients were included in the mild group, and moderate, severe and death patients were included in the severe group. The independent sample T test or Mann-Whitney U test was used for measurement data, and χ2 test or Fisher's exact test was used for counting data. The differences of general data and clinical data between the two groups were compared. Results:According to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 83 patients with acute glyphosate herbicide poisoning were selected as the study subjects. All patients survived, mainly mild poisoning (56.6%), with a male to female ratio of 33∶50, and an average age of 39 years. The number of poisoning cases increased yearly (the highest in 2019), and most cases occurred in spring and summer. The main cause of poisoning was suicide (71.1%), direct oral administration (83.1%) was the primary route of poisoning, and the dominating clinical manifestations were digestive symptoms (71.1%). Laboratory tests showed increased white blood cell count (WBC), neutrophil percentage (NEUT %) and D-dimer, and decreased hemoglobin and potassium. Compared with the mild group, patients in the severe group were older [(51±17) years vs. (35±19) years], had a higher proportion of suicide and direct oral administration, a longer hospital stay [8.0 (4.8, 12.0) d vs. 3.0 (2.0, 5.5) d], a higher dose of poisoning [200.0 (50.0, 200.0) mL vs. 30.0 (11.3, 57.5) mL], and higher NEUT % within 24 h of admission [(83.4±10.4) vs. (73.2±12.8)]. The increase of WBC, NEUT %, aspartate aminotransferase, prothrombin time, D-dimer and the decrease of serum potassium were more common in the severe group than the mild group, with statistical significance (all P<0.05). Conclusions:The number of patients with acute glyphosate herbicide poisoning is increasing yearly. Generally, the condition is mild and the prognosis is satisfying. The severity is more serious in the middle-aged and elderly patients andthose with direct oral administration, high toxic dose, and high NEUT % within 24 h of admission. Severe poisoning is more likely to cause changes in laboratory indicators.

Antibodies, Neutralizing/immunology* ; Antibodies, Viral/immunology* ; COVID-19/virology* ; COVID-19 Vaccines/immunology* ; Humans ; SARS-CoV-2/pathogenicity* ; Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus/immunology* ; Vaccines, Inactivated/immunology*

Objective: To investigate the incidence of human rhinovirus (HRV) infection in hospitalized patients in emergency department. Methods: A total of 94 emergency patients admitted to the emergency department from November to December of 2018 were enrolled in this study. The rhinovirus infection and related risk factors were analyzed. Results: HRV infection occurred in 17 out of 94 hospitalized patients in emergency department, the infection rate was 18.09%; Multiple HRV serotypes were prevalent from November to December of 2018, which were A9, A10, A16, A31, A73, B42 and C3. Elderly patients are at high risk of rhinovirus infection; Rhinovirus infection may increase the course of inpatients. Conclusions From November to December of 2018, multiple serotypes of HRV infections in the emergency department of Bengbu, Anhui, and HRV easily infected elderly inpatients.