Chinese Medical Sciences Journal最新文献

Objective

To screen antigen targets for immunotherapy by analyzing over-expressed genes, and to identify significant pathways and molecular mechanisms in esophageal cancer by using bioinformatic methods such as enrichment analysis, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and survival analysis based on the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database.

Methods

By screening with highly expressed genes, we mainly analyzed proteins MUC13 and EPCAM with transmembrane domain and antigen epitope from TMHMM and IEDB websites. Significant genes and pathways associated with the pathogenesis of esophageal cancer were identified using enrichment analysis, PPI network, and survival analysis. Several software and platforms including Prism 8, R language, Cytoscape, DAVID, STRING, and GEPIA platform were used in the search and/or figure creation.

Results

Genes MUC13 and EPCAM were over-expressed with several antigen epitopes in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) tissue. Enrichment analysis revealed that the process of keratinization was focused and a series of genes were related with the development of esophageal cancer. Four genes including ALDH3A1, C2, SLC6A1, and ZBTB7C were screened with significant P value of survival curve.

Conclusions

Genes MUC13 and EPCAM may be promising antigen targets or biomarkers for esophageal cancer. Keratinization may greatly impact the pathogenesis of esophageal cancer. Genes ALDH3A1, C2, SLC6A1, and ZBTB7C may play important roles in the development of esophageal cancer.

Objective

Dexmedetomidine is a highly selective alpha-2 adrenergic receptor agonist with sedative and analgesic properties but without respiratory depression effect and has been widely used in perioperative anesthesia. Here we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate the effect of dexmedetomidine on maintaining perioperative hemodynamic stability in elderly patients.

Methods

PubMed, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and Wanfang Data were searched for randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) on the application of dexmedetomidine in maintaining perioperative hemodynamic stability in elderly patients from their inception to September, 2021. The standardized mean differences (SMD) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were employed to analyze the data. The random-effect model was used for the potential clinical inconsistency.

Results

A total of 12 RCTs with 833 elderly patients (dexmedetomidine group, 546 patients; control group, 287 patients) were included. There was no significant increase in perioperative heart rate (HR), mean arterial pressure (MAP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) in the dexmedetomidine group before and during the operation. In addition, the variations of hemodynamic indexes including HR, MAP, SBP (systolic blood pressure), and DBP were significantly lower in the dexmedetomidine group compared with the control group (HR: SMD = −0.87, 95% CI: −1.13 to −0.62; MAP: SMD = −1.12, 95% CI: −1.60 to −0.63; SBP: SMD = −1.27, 95% CI: −2.26 to −0.27; DBP: SMD = −0.96, 95% CI: −1.33 to −0.59). Subgroup analysis found that with the prolongation of 1.0 μg/kg dexmedetomidine infusion, the patient's heart rate declined in a time-dependent way.

Conclusion

Dexmedetomidine provides more stable hemodynamics during perioperative period in elderly patients. However, further well-conducted trials are required to assess the effective and safer doses of dexmedetomidine in elderly patients.

Electrocardiogram (ECG) is a low-cost, simple, fast, and non-invasive test. It can reflect the heart's electrical activity and provide valuable diagnostic clues about the health of the entire body. Therefore, ECG has been widely used in various biomedical applications such as arrhythmia detection, disease-specific detection, mortality prediction, and biometric recognition. In recent years, ECG-related studies have been carried out using a variety of publicly available datasets, with many differences in the datasets used, data preprocessing methods, targeted challenges, and modeling and analysis techniques. Here we systematically summarize and analyze the ECG-based automatic analysis methods and applications. Specifically, we first reviewed 22 commonly used ECG public datasets and provided an overview of data preprocessing processes. Then we described some of the most widely used applications of ECG signals and analyzed the advanced methods involved in these applications. Finally, we elucidated some of the challenges in ECG analysis and provided suggestions for further research.

A 3-year-old boy presented with bluish patch and scattered blue spots on the left side of his face. After several sessions of laser treatment, the azury patch in the periorbital area became even darker. Histopathology showed many bipolar, pigment-laden dendritic cells scattered in the papillary and upper reticular dermis. Immunohistochemically, these cells were positive for S100, SOX-10, melan-A, P16, and HMB-45. The positive rate of Ki-67 was less than 5%. Finally, the lesion was diagnosed with nevus of Ota concurrent with common blue nevus. Therefore, for cases of the nevus of Ota with poor response to laser treatment, the possible coexisting diseases should be suspected.

Both anti-glomerular basement membrane (GBM) disease and the anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) are common causes of pulmonary-renal syndrome. Organizing pneumonia (OP), a special pattern of interstitial lung disease, is extremely rare either in AAV or anti-GBM disease. We report an old woman presented with OP on a background of co-presentation with both ANCA and anti-GBM antibodies.

We report a case of hemophagocytic syndrome (HPS) secondary to brucellosis, in which typhoidal cells were found in bone marrow, suggesting typhoidal cells present not only in Salmonella typhi infections but also in other bacterial infections. Typhoidal cells in bone marrow can be used to quickly identify the presence of bacterial infection pending the results of bone marrow and/or blood cultures.

Primary aldosteronism (PA) is the most common form of secondary hypertension, with its main manifestations including hypertension and hypokalemia. Early identification of PA is extremely important as PA patients can easily develop cardiovascular complications such as atrial fibrillation, stroke, and myocardial infarction. The past decade has witnessed the rapid advances in the genetics of PA, which has shed new light on PA treatment. While surgery is the first choice for unilateral diseases, bilateral lesions can be treated with mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists (MRAs). The next-generation non-steroidal MRAs are under investigations. New medications including calcium channel blockers, macrophage antibiotics, and aldosterone synthase inhibitors have provided a new perspective for the medical treatment of PA.

Objective

We aimed to investigate whether antagonism of the cannabinoid CB₁ receptor (CB₁R) could affect novel object recognition (NOR) memory in chronically rapid eye movement sleep-deprived (RSD) rats.

Methods

The animals were examined for recognition memory following a 7-day chronic partial RSD paradigm using the multiple platform technique. The CB₁R antagonist rimonabant (1 or 3 mg/kg, i.p.) was administered either at one hour prior to the sample phase for acquisition, or immediately after the sample phase for consolidation, or at one hour before the test phase for retrieval of NOR memory. For the reconsolidation task, rimonabant was administered immediately after the second sample phase.

Results

The RSD episode impaired acquisition, consolidation, and retrieval, but it did not affect the reconsolidation of NOR memory. Rimonabant administration did not affect acquisition, consolidation, and reconsolidation; however, it attenuated impairment of the retrieval of NOR memory induced by chronic RSD.

Conclusions

These findings, along with our previous report, would seem to suggest that RSD may affect different phases of recognition memory based on its duration. Importantly, it seems that the CB₁R may, at least in part, be involved in the adverse effects of chronic RSD on the retrieval, but not in the acquisition, consolidation, and reconsolidation, of NOR memory.