Multidrug-resistant Tuberculosis Burden among the New Tuberculosis Patients in Zhejiang Province： An Observational Study, 2009-2013

Background：Screening on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis （MDR-TB） has been limited to the serious TB subpopulations excluding the new TB patients.This study aimed to examine MDR-TB burden among the new TB patients.Methods：We conducted a study in Zhejiang Province during 2009-2013 to screen for MDR-TB patients among the low MDR-TB risk patients and five subpopulations of high MDR-TB risk patients.The number,prevalence,and trend of MDR-TB were compared while the logistic regression model was used to examine risk factors related to MDR-TB.Results：A total of 200 and 791 MDR-TB cases were,respectively,identified from the 9830 new TB cases and 2372 high-risk suspects who took MDR-TB screening from 2009 to 2013.The MDR-TB rates went down in both of the new TB patients and five MDR-TB high-risk groups over the study time,but the percentage of MDR-TB patients identified from the new TB patients in all diagnosed MDR-TB cases kept stable from 28.3% in 2011 to 27.0% in 2012 to 26.0% in 2013.Conclusions：The study indicated that MDR-TB burden among new TB patients was high,thus screening for MDR-TB among the new TB patients should be recommended in China as well as in the similar situation worldwide.

Association of CASP9,CASP10 gene polymorphisms and tea drinking with colorectal cancer risk in the Han Chinese population

The initiators caspase-9 （CASP9） and caspase-10 （CASPIO） are two key controllers of apoptosis and play important roles in carcinogenesis. This study aims to explore the association between CASPs gene polymorphisms and colorectal cancer （CRC） susceptibility in a population-based study. A two-stage designed population-based case-control study was carried out, including a testing set with 300 cases and 296 controls and a validation set with 206 cases and 845 controls. A total of eight tag selected single nucleotide polymorphisms （SNPs） in CASP9 and CASPIO were chosen based on HapMap and the National Center of Biotechnology Information （NCBI） datasets and genotyped by restriction fragment length polymorphism （RFLP） assay. Multivariate logistic regression models were applied to evaluate the association of SNPs with CRC risk. In the first stage, from eight tag SNPs, three polymorphisms rs4646077 （odds ratio （OR）AA＋AG： 0.654, 95% confidence interval （CI）： 0.406-1.055; P=0.082）, rs4233532 （ORcc： 1.667, 95% CI： 0.967-2.876; Oacm： 1.435, 95% CI： 0.998-2.063; P=0.077）, and rs2881930 （ORcc： 0.263, 95% CI： 0.095-0.728, P=0.036） showed possible association with CRC risk. However, none of the three SNPs, rs4646077 （ORAA＋AG： 1.233, 95% CI： 0.903-1.683）, rs4233532 （ORcc： 0.892, 95% CI： 0.640-1.243; ORcT： 1.134, 95% CI： 0.897-1.433）, and rs2881930 （ORcc： 1.096, 95% CI： 0.620-1.938; ORcT： 1.009, 95% CI： 0.801-1.271）, remained significant with CRC risk in the validation set, even after stratification for different tumor locations （colon or rectum）. In addition, never tea drinking was associated with a significantly increased risk of CRC in testing set together with validation set （OR： 1.755, 95% CI： 1.319-2.334）. Our results found that polymorphisms of CASP9 and CASPIO genes may not contribute to CRC risk in Chinese population and thereby the large-scale case-control studies might be in consideration. In addition, tea drinking was a protective factor for CRC.