DEC1 nuclear expression:A marker of differentiation grade in hepatocellular carcinoma

AIM: To investigate the expression patterns of human differentiated embryo chondrocyte 1 (DEC1) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and corresponding adjacent non-tumor and the normal liver tissues, the association between DEC1 expression and histopathological variables and the role of DEC1 in hepatocarcinogenesis. METHODS: The expression of DEC1 was detected immunohistochemically in 176 paraffin-embedded sections from 63 patients with HCC and 50 subjects with normal liver tissues. RESULTS: DEC1 protein was persistently expressed in the cytoplasm of hepatocytes in normal liver and HCC tissues. Compared with adjacent non-tumor liver tissues, HCC tissues showed high nuclear expression of DEC1 protein. However, high DEC1 nuclear expression was more frequently detected in well-differentiated (83.3%) than in moderately (27.3%) and poorly differentiated HCC (16.7%). Low DEC1 expression was associated with poor histological differentiation and malignancy progression. A correlation was found between the nuclear expression of DEC1 protein and histological differentiation (r = 0.376, P = 0.024). CONCLUSION: DEC1 is expressed in the cytoplasm of hepatocytes and because nuclear DEC1 expression is decreased with decreasing differentiation status of HCC, nuclear DEC1 might be a marker of HCC differentiation.

Chinese physicians' perceptions of fecal microbiota transplantation

AIM: To explore Chinese physicians' perceptions towards fecal microbiota transplantation(FMT) and to provide information and an assessment of FMT development in China.METHODS: A self-administered questionnaire was developed according to the FMT practice guidelines and was distributed to physicians in hospitals via Internet Research Electronic Data Capture(REDcap) software and electronic mails to assess their attitudes toward and knowledge of FMT. The questionnaire included a brief introduction of FMT that was followed by 20 questions. The participants were required to respond voluntarily, under the condition of anonymity and without compensation. Except for the fill-in-the-blank questions, all of the other questions were required in the REDcap data collection systems, and the emailed questionnaires were completed based on eligibility.RESULTS: Up to December 9, 2014, 844 eligible questionnaires were received out of the 980 distributed questionnaires, with a response rate of 86.1%. Among the participants, 87.3% were from tertiary hospitals, and there were 647(76.7%) gastroenterologists and 197(23.3%) physicians in other departments(nongastroenterologists). Gastroenterologists' awareness of FMT prior to the survey was much higher than non-gastroenterologists'(54.3 vs 16.5%, P < 0.001); however, acceptance of FMT was not statistically different(92.4 vs 87.1%, P = 0.1603). Major concerns of FMT included the following: acceptability to patients(79.2%), absence of guidelines(56.9%), and administration and ethics(46.5%). On the basis of understanding, the FMT indications preferred byphysicians were recurrent Clostridium difficile infection(86.7%), inflammatory bowel disease combined with Clostridium difficile infection(78.6%), refractory ulcerative colitis(70.9%), ulcerative colitis(65.4%), Crohn's disease(59.4%), chronic constipation(43.7%), irritable bowel syndrome(39.1%), obesity(28.1%) and type 2 diabetes(23.9%). For donor selection, the majority of physicians preferred individuals with a similar gut flora environment to the recipients. 76.6% of physicians chose lower gastrointestinal tract as the administration approach. 69.2% of physicians considered FMT a safe treatment. CONCLUSION: Chinese physicians have awareness and a high acceptance of FMT, especially gastroenterologists, which provides the grounds and conditions for the development of this novel treatment in China. Physicians' greatest concerns were patient acceptability and absence of guidelines.

Association between single nucleotide polymorphisms on chromosome 17q and the risk of prostate cancer in a Chinese population

In European populations,7 single nucleotide polymorphisms(SNPs) on chromosome 17q,3 SNPs on 17q12,and 4 SNPs on 17q24.3 were recently identified to be closely related to the risk of prostate cancer by a genome-wide association study.In Japanese populations,the correlation between 2 SNPs on 17q and the risk of prostate cancer and tumor aggressiveness was also confirmed by a large-scale experiment.However,whether 17q is associated with prostate cancer and its clinical manifestations in Chinese populations is still unknown.Therefore,we conducted a case-control study in a northern Chinese population and tested 2 SNPs,rs4430796 and rs1859962,on 17q in 124 prostate cancer patients and 111 controls using polymerase chain reaction-high resolution melting curve(PCR-HRM) combined with sequencing.We analyzed the association of the 2 SNPs with the risk of prostate cancer as well as patients' lifestyles,onset ages,Gleason scores,PSA levels,and pathologic stages.We found a significant difference in the G allele of SNP rs1859962(P = 0.035,OR = 1.51,95% CI = 1.03-2.21) but not in the rs4430796 genotype frequency or allele frequency distribution between prostate cancer patients and the controls(P > 0.05).Neither of the SNPs was significantly associated with the onset age,Gleason score,PSA level,pathologic stage,or other clinical indicators of patients with prostate cancer(P > 0.05).Our results show that polymorphism of the G allele of SNP rs1859962 is associated with the risk of prostate cancer in a Chinese population.

美常安联合美沙拉嗪在UC患者中的应用效果及其对患者SOD、MDA、白细胞介素和TNF-α的影响

目的观察枯草杆菌二联活菌肠溶胶囊联合美沙拉嗪治疗溃疡性结肠炎的疗效及对血清相关因子的影响.方法选取湖州市安吉县人民医院消化内科在2014-08/2016-11收治的溃疡性结肠炎患者86例,按照随机数字表法分为观察组和对照组,各43例,对照组患者给予美沙拉嗪肠溶片口服治疗;观察组在对照组基础上联用枯草杆菌二联活菌肠溶胶囊口服治疗;连续治疗2 mo.观察两组患者临床疗效、症状缓解时间、Rachmitewitz评分、Sutherland评分;检测血清白介素-6(interleukin 6,IL-6)、IL-8、IL-10、肿瘤坏死因子-α(tumor necrosis factorα,TNF-α)炎症因子水平和丙二醛(malondialdehyde,MDA)、超氧化物歧化酶(superoxide dismutase,SOD)、环氧合酶-2(cyclooxygenase-2,COX-2)、核因子-κB(nuclear factor-κB,NF-κB)水平,随访6 mo,记录两组患者复发情况.结果观察组临床总有效率高于对照组(93.02%v s76.74%),差异具有统计学意义(Z=4.440,P=0.035);观察组腹泻缓解时间、腹痛缓解时间、黏液脓血便缓解时间短于对照组,差异显著(P<0.05);治疗后两组患者Rachmitewitz、Sutherland评分与治疗前比较明显下降,观察组评分低于对照组(P<0.05);治疗后,观察组IL-6、IL-8、TNF-α水平低于对照组,IL-10水平高于对照组,差异显著(P<0.05);治疗后观察组MDA、COX-2、NF-κB水平低于对照组,SOD水平高于对照组,差异显著(P<0.05);随访6 mo,观察组复发率为11.63%,对照组复发率为16.28%,比较无统计学差异.结论枯草杆菌二联活菌肠溶胶囊与美沙拉嗪联合治疗溃疡性结肠炎效果优于单一采用美沙拉嗪治疗,能够促进患者临床症状缓解,降低血清炎症因子水平,改善机体氧化应激状态,但对远期复发无明显影响.

Enhancing anti-oxidation and thermal-radiation performance of the repaired borosilicate glass coating on C/C composites by Sm-doping

To repair the damaged SiC coated C/C composites,a double-layer system including a Sm-doped boro-silicate glass external layer and a SieSiC inner layer was prepared by a slurry-based laser cladding technique.Isothermal oxidation experiment and indirect/direct thermal-radiation measurements were performed.The results showed that the absorbance of borosilicate glass to the laser at 900e1200 nm was improved significantly by Sm-doping.Consequently,the repaired coating with a more compact structure and better oxidation resistance was obtained.After oxidation at 1773 K for 10 h,the mass loss of the damaged sample could be reduced by 74.98%with repairing.By increasing laser-absorption and reducing viscosity,the thermal-radiation property of the repaired coating was enhanced to decrease the surface temperature greatly.A repair system with excellent thermal protection performance was achieved.

Influence of cryogenic thermal cycling treatment on the thermophysical properties of carbon/carbon composites between room temperature and 1900℃

Influence of cryogenic thermal cycling treatment （from -120 ℃ to 120 ℃ at 1.3 × 10^-3 Pa） on the thermo- physical properties including thermal conductivity （TC）, thermal diffusivity （TD）, specific heat （SH） and coefficient of thermal expansion （CTE） ranging from room temperature to 1900 ℃ of carbon/carbon （C/C） composites in x-y and z directions were studied. Test results showed that fiber/matrix interracial debonding, fiber pull-out and microcracks occurred after the cryogenic thermal treatment and they increased significantly with the cycle number increasing, while cycled more than 30 times, the space ofmicrodefects reduced obviously due to the accumulation of cyclic thermal stress. TC, TD, SH and CTE of the cryogenic thermal cycling treated C/C composites were first decreased and then increased in both directions （x-y and z directions） with the increase of thermal cycles. A model regarding the heat conduction in cryogenic thermal cycling treated C/C composites was proposed.

Test-Driven Feature Extraction of Web Components

With the growing requirements of web applications,web components are developed to package the implementation of commonly-used features for reuse.In some cases,the developer may want to reuse some features which cannot be customized by the component’s APIs.He/she has to extract the implementation by hand.It is labor-intensive and error-prone.Considering the widely-used test cases which can be useful to specify the software features,a test-driven approach is proposed to extract the implementation of the desired features in web components.The satisfaction of the user^requirements is transformed into the passing rate of user-specified test cases.In this way,the quality of the extraction result can be evaluated automatically.Meanwhile,a record/replay-based GUI test generation method is proposed to ensure that the extraction result has the correct GUI appearance.To extract the feature implementation,a hierarchical genetic algorithm is proposed to find the code snippet that can pass all the tests and has the approximate smallest size.We compare our method with two existing feature extraction methods.The result shows that our method can extract the correct implementation with the minimum size.A human-subject study is conducted to show the effectiveness and weaknesses of our method in helping users extract the features.