PrP 106-126 Altered PrP mRNA Gene Expression in Mouse Microglia BV-2 Cells

Prion diseases are infectious and fatal neurodegenerative diseases.The pathogenic agent is an abnormal prion protein aggregate.Microglial activation in the centre nervous system is a characteristic feature of prion disease.In this study,we examined the effect of PrP 106-126 on PrP mRNA gene expression in Mouse microglia cells BV-2 by real-time quantitative PCR.PrP mRNA expression level was found to be significantly increased after 18 h exposure of BV-2 cells to PrP 106-126,with 3-fold increase after 18 h and 4.5-fold increase after 24 h and BV-2 cells proliferating occurred correspondingly.Our results provide the first in vitro evidence of the increase of PrP mRNA levels in microglial cells exposed to PrP 106-126,and indicate that microglial cells might play a critical role in prion pathogenesis.

Criteria-specific long-term survival prediction model for hepatocellular carcinoma patients after liver transplantation

AIM: To establish a model to predict long-term survival of hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC) patients after liver transplantation(MHCAT).METHODS: Two hundred and twenty-three patients with HCC were followed for at least six years to identify independent risk factors for long-term survival after liver transplantation(LT). The criteria for HCC liver transplantation included the Milan, University of California San Francisco, Hangzhou and Shanghai Fudan criteria. The Cox regression model was used to build MHCAT specifying these criteria. A survival analysis was carried out for patients with high or low risk.RESULTS: The one-, three- and five-year cumulativesurvival of HCC patients after LT was 78.9%, 53.2% and 46.4%, respectively. Of the HCC patients, the proportion meeting the Hangzhou and Fudan criteria was significantly higher than the proportion meeting the Milan criteria(64.6% vs 39.5%, 52.0% vs 39.5%, P < 0.05). Moreover, the proportion meeting the Hangzhou criteria was also significantly higher than the proportion meeting other criteria(P < 0.01). Pre-operative alfa-fetoprotein level, intraoperative blood loss and retransplantation were common significant predictors of long-term survival in HCC patients with reference to the Milan, University of California San Francisco and Fudan criteria, whereas in MHCAT based on the Hangzhou criteria, total bilirubin, intraoperative blood loss and retransplantation were independent predictors. The c-statistic for MHCAT was 0.773-0.824, with no statistical difference among these four criteria. According to the MHCAT scoring system, patients with low risk showed a higher five-year survival than those with high risk(P < 0.001).CONCLUSION: MHCAT can effectively predict longterm survival for HCC patients, but needs to be verified by multi-center retrospective or randomized controlled trials.