Clinical evaluation of HPV DNA test combined with liquid-based cytology in the diagnosis of cervical disease

Objectives: To evaluate the sensitivity and accuracy of the HPV DNA test in conjunction with thin prep cytology test as a screening method of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. To study either the cervical erosion is related to high risk HPV infection or to determine the mean age distribution that is more prone to HPV infection. Material and Methods: The study is a retrospective cohort implemented to determine the real performance of liquid based medium and HPV DNA testing combined in second clinical hospital of Jilin University Changchun, China. The study group included total 150 patients from January 1, 2011 to December 30, 2012. A computerized search identified patients with thin prep test results and high risk HPV DNA testing during a 2-year period was recruited. The patients were chosen after proper speculum examination followed by thin prep cytology (TCT) and HPV DNA test. Cytologic specimens were obtained with endocervical brush, which was rinsed into the vial of Cytyc. The residual samples after the cytology report were taken for reflex HPV DNA test. The manufacture protocol was followed for HPV DNA testing using Hybrid Capture II. Colposcopic biopsy was performed for the diagnosis purpose, in patients who had atypical squamous cells of undeter-mined significance (AUS-US), low grade intraepithelial lesion (LSIL) or high-grade intraepithelial lesion (HSIL) in cytology and with positive results of highrisk HPV DNA. The diagnostic criteria were based on the Bethesda System (TBS). Findings: The high risk HPV positive women with abnormal cytology had a CIN I risk of 73 (86%), whereas 35 (23.3%) high-risk HPV positive women out of 109 (72.7%) normal cytology who underwent histological biopsy had CIN I 16 (10.7%). The risk for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) in women with high-risk HPV positive with normal cytology was higher among women invited for the first time 31 - 40 years of age 12 (8%) than among older women 1 (0.7%). Out of 44 (29.3%) women who had I degree erosion with 6 (14%) positive HPV DNA test 38 (86%) had a normal histology biopsy showing no statically significant between them. Conclusion: The data confirm that HR-HPV DNA testing is much more sensitive than cytology alone and that HPV DNA testing helps in identifying women with high risk of serious cervical disease in an efficient and medically acceptable manner. The other most significant advantage of this cervical cancer screening method is that women who are HPV DNA positive can easily and quickly referred for colposcopic examination (within one year), which could identify the precancerous and cancer stage. And those who are HPV DNA negative can safely have much longer screening intervals saving considerable costs. With mean age being 38 ± 10 years, age older than 30 years should undergo HPV DNA testing with cytology triage in primary screening. But in woman younger than 30 years using HPV DNA assay, as an initial screening step can increase the prevalence of abnormal smears and the positive predictive value of HPV followed by TCT. However, close follow-up is essential if the initial biopsy is negative because a considerable number of women may have HPV infection positive in subsequent studies.

A Fluorescence Ratiometric Probe for Cysteine/Homocysteine and Its Application for Living Cell Imaging

A fluorescence ratiometric probe 1 for cysteine (Cys) and homocysteine (Hcy) has been rationally constructed based on intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) mechanism. Upon treatment with Cys/Hcy, probe 1 exhibited a fluorescence ratiometric response, with the emission wavelength displaying a large shift (from 526 nm to 446 nm). When 90 μM Cys were added, the emission ratios (I446/I526) of the probe changed dramatically from 0.01797 to 4.65472. The detection limit was also measured to be 0.18 μM (S/N = 3). The theoretical calculations have confirmed that the ratiometric response of probe 1 to Cys/Hcy is due to the inhibition of ICT process upon the reaction of probe 1 with Cys/Hcy. Furthermore, the fluorescence imaging experiments in living cell demonstrated that probe 1 was favourable for intracellular Cys/Hcy imaging.

A Fluorescence Ratiometric Probe for Detection of Cyanide in Water Sample and Living Cells

In the present work, Compound 1 has been synthesized as a novel fluorescence ratiometric probe for CN-. Upon treatment with CN-, Probe 1 exhibited a fluorescence ratiometric response, with the emission wavelength shift from 570 nm to 608 nm. When 90 μM CN-?was introduced, the emission ratios (I570/I608) of the probe changed dramatically from 0.52156 to 4.21472. The detection limit was also measured to be 0.24 μM (S/N = 3). In addition, Probe 1 had a selective response to CN-, while other anions caused nearly no interference. The sensing reaction product of Probe 1 with CN-?was characterized by 1H NMR spectra and ESI Mass spectrometry. Furthermore, Probe 1 has been successfully applied to detect CN-?in natural water samples. The fluorescence imaging experiments in living cells also demonstrated that Probe 1 could monitor CN-?in biological samples.

Effect of the electro-acupuncture on senile plaques and its formation in APPD/PS1D double transgenic mice

Alzheimer’s disease(AD)is a progressive neurodegenerative disease and its incidence will increase with age and is aggravating.The senile plaques(SPs)are one of three main pathological features in AD patients,which are formed by amyloid b-protein(Ab)overaccumulation.b-amyloid precursor protein(APP),b-site APP cleavage(BACE1),and insulin degrading enzyme(IDE)proteins participate in the process of Ab production and degradation.At present,the pathogenesis of AD is not yet clear and the current treatment methods can only relief the related symptoms of AD.The electro-acupuncture(EA)is a traditional Chinese medicine treatment combined the acupuncture and electrical stimulation and the treatment effect can also be controlled by transform the electrical frequency.Thus,in this experiment,we carried out behavioral test,immunohistochemistry(IHC),and Western Blot(WB)after different period treatments to the model mice by electro-acupuncturing“Baihui”and“Shenshu”acupoints in APPt/PS1t double transgenic mice.It was found that the EA therapy can improve the ability of learning,memory and spatial exploration,and reduce the deposition of SPs in brain of AD model mice,and reduce the expressions of APP and BACE1,increase the expression of IDE protein.These results prompt that EA can effectively alleviate the pathological process of AD.We speculate that EA may play a comprehensive role in preventing the development of AD,considering the previous data.

Mitsugumin 53 protects the kidney from severe burn injury in mice

Mitsugumin 53 (MG53), a newly identified muscle-specific protein, is an essential component of the cell membrane repair machinery in skeletal and cardiac muscle. However, the role of MG53 after burns in other tissues remains unclear. This study aims to investigate the possible roles of MG53 in the protection of the kidney after severe burn injury, and an animal scalding model of 30% of total body surface area (TBSA) was used. Recombinant human MG53 (rhMG53) or bovine serum albumin (BSA) was injected intravenously via the tail vein. Data showed that the mortality in the MG53-treated group was lower than that in control group. Administration of rhMG53 may alleviate histological alterations in renal tubular epithelial cells after burn injury. Renal tubular injury scores and the average optical density score of kidney injury molecule-1 (KIM-1) immunohistochemical staining in the MG53-treated group were significantly lower than those in control group (P < 0.001). Exogenous rhMG53 was found to be located in renal tubular epithelial cells. Numerous polymerase I and transcript release factor (PTRF) were expressed in the mouse kidney after severe scalding. In conclusion, our data indicate that MG53 protein protects the kidney by involving local PTRF after severe burn injury.

Prefetch-aware fingerprint cache management for data deduplication systems

Data deduplication has been widely utilized in large-scale storage systems, particularly backup systems. Data deduplication systems typically divide data streams into chunks and identify redundant chunks by comparing chunk fingerprints. Maintaining all fingerprints in memory is not cost-effective because fingerprint indexes are typically very large. Many data deduplication systems maintain a fingerprint cache in memory and exploit fingerprint prefetching to accelerate the deduplication process. Although fingerprint prefetching can improve the performance of data deduplication systems by leveraging the locality of workloads, inaccurately prefetched fingerprints may pollute the cache by evicting useful fingerprints. We observed that most of the prefetched fingerprints in a wide variety of applications are never used or used only once, which severely limits the performance of data deduplication systems. We introduce a prefetch-aware fingerprint cache management scheme for data deduplication systems (PreCache) to alleviate prefetch-related cache pollution. We propose three prefetch-aware fingerprint cache replacement policies (PreCache-UNU, PreCache-UOO, and PreCache-MIX) to handle different types of cache pollution. Additionally, we propose an adaptive policy selector to select suitable policies for prefetch requests. We implement PreCache on two representative data deduplication systems (Block Locality Caching and SiLo) and evaluate its performance utilizing three real-world workloads (Kernel, MacOS, and Homes). The experimental results reveal that PreCache improves deduplication throughput by up to 32.22% based on a reduction of on-disk fingerprint index lookups and improvement of the deduplication ratio by mitigating prefetch-related fingerprint cache pollution.

Kinetics of hexavalent chromium reduction by iron metal

The kinetics of Cr(VI)reduction to Cr(III)by metallic iron(Fe0)was studied in batch reactors for a range of reactant concentrations,pH and temperatures.Nearly 86.8%removal efficiency for Cr(VI)was achieved when Fe0 concentration was 6 g/L(using commercial iron powder(<200 mesh)in 120 min).The reduction of hexavalent chro-mium took place on the surface of the iron particles following pseudo-first order kinetics.The rate of Cr(VI)reduction increased with increasing Fe0 addition and temperature but inversely with initial pH.The pseudo-first-order rate coeffi-cients(kobs)were determined as 0.0024,0.010,0.0268 and 0.0628 min−1 when iron powder dosages were 2,6,10 and 14 g/L at 25°C and pH 5.5,respectively.According to the Arrehenius equation,the apparent activation energy of 26.5 kJ/mol and pre-exponential factor of 3330 min−1 were obtained at the temperature range of 288−308 K.Different Fe0 types were compared in this study.The reactivity was in the order starch-stabilized Fe0 nanoparticles>Fe0 nano-particles>Fe0 powder>Fe0 filings.Electrochemical analysis of the reaction process showed that Cr(III)and Fe(III)hydroxides should be the dominant final products.

Enrichment of health-promoting lutein and zeaxanthin in tomato fruit through metabolic engineering

Carotenoids constitute a large group of natural pigments widely distributed in nature.These compounds not only provide fruits and flowers with distinctive colors,but also have significant health benefits for humans.Lutein and zeaxanthin,both oxygen-containing carotenoids,are considered to play vital roles in promoting ocular development and maintaining eye health.However,humans and mammals cannot synthesize these carotenoid derivatives,which can only be taken from certain fruits or vegetables.Here,by introducing four endogenous synthetic genes,SlLCYE,SlLCYB,SlHYDB,and SlHYDE under fruit-specific promoters,we report the metabolic engineering of lutein/zeaxanthin biosynthesis in tomato fruit.Transgenic lines overexpression of one(SlLCYE),two(SlLCYE and SlLCYB;SlLCYB and SlHYDB),and all these four synthetic genes re-established the lutein/zeaxanthin biosynthetic pathways in the ripe tomato fruit and thus resulted in various types of carotenoid riched lines.Metabolic analyses of these engineered tomato fruits showed the strategy involved expression of SlLCYE tends to produceα-carotene and lutein,as well as a higher content of β-carotene and zeaxanthin was detected in lines overexpressing SlLCYB.In addition,the different combinations of engineered tomatoes with riched carotenoids showed higher antioxidant capacity and were associated with a significantly extended shelf life during postharvest storage.This work provides a successful example of accurate metabolic engineering in tomato fruit,suggesting the potential utility for synthetic biology to improve agronomic traits in crops.These biofortified tomato fruits could be also exploited as new research subjects for studying the health benefits of carotenoid derivatives.