Polymorphism in the upstream regulatory region of human papilloma virus type 16 from the cervical cancer biopsies in Xinjiang Uygur women

To investigate the mutations in the upstream regulatory region (URR) of human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV-16) from the cervical cancer biopsies in Xinjiang Uygur women and its relationship to the high incidence of cervical cancer in the southern Xinjiang, the tissue DNA was extracted from the cervical cancer biopsies, and the URR segment of HPV-16 DNA was amplified, sequenced and analyzed. Thereafter, the polymorphism of URR in HPV-16 was then analyzed. It was demonstrated that the positive rate detected for the presence of URR in HPV-16 was 89.47% (17/19). Compared with the previously published sequence in URR of prototype HPV-16, some mutations were detected in the sequence of URR. The mutations in 17 URR fragments of HPV-16 could be divided into 11 patterns (XJU-1 to XJU-11) at nucleic acid level, in which each of XJU-1 and XJU-4 accounted for 23.53% (4/17), and other patterns of mutation accounted for 5.88% (1/17) . In comparison with the URR of prototype HPV-16, the DNA identity of these patterns was 98.50%-99.68% . In these 17 URR fragments, two point mutations occurred at position 7192 (G to T) and position 7520 (G to A) and they appeared to be constant in Xinjiang area. These two mutations were ubiquitous in the Asia-American type and conferred strong infection activity and carcinogenicity of this virus. In addition, the mutations at position 7729 (A to C), position 7843 (A to G) and position 7792 (C to T) could enhance its transcription activity considerably. It is concluded that some mutations occur in URR gene of HPV-16 in the cervical cancer biopsies taken from Uygur women in Xinjiang area, suggesting that certain relationship exists among the mutations in URR of HPV-16, the phylogeny of HPV-16 and the high incidence of cervical cancer in southern part of Xinjiang area.

REGULATORY EFFECTS OF HUMAN RECOMBINANT IL-6 ON NATURAL KILLER CELL ACTIVITY OF HUMAN FETAL SPLEENS

In the present study it was proved first that human recombinant interleukin-6(HrIL-6) significantly augmented natural killer(NK) cell activity derived from human fetal spleens against K562 target cells in a 4 hours 51Cr release assay. The enhancement of NK activity with 24 hours preincubation in HrlL-6 was dose-dependent, and significantly higher than that of fresh NK cells and controls cultured with RPMI-1640 medium alone (P<0.001). We also found that IL-6 was able to augment NK activity from different fetal spleens at 20 to 40 weeks of gestation (up to 2.24 to 2.78 times), and no difference of NK activity of fetal splenocytes treated by HrIL-6 was observed between different fetal age (32.3% to 45.4%, P>0.05). Furthermore, IL-6-augmented NK activity of fetal splenocytes was very similar to adult levels (P>0.05). These finding strongly indicated that IL-6 plays an important role in the development of NK cell function during the gestational period, suggesting that IL-6 may be of importance in the regulation of host defense mechanisms against malignancies and viral diseases.