Arch Med Sci
-
Every year over 25 million women worldwide experience menopause symptoms. Menopause leads to the occurrence and intensification of many psychological and somatic disorders including body composition change. Myostatin may play a crucial role in the remodeling of muscle and fat tissue. The aim of the study was to determine the relationship between the level of body fat and the concentration of myostatin protein in serum of peri- or postmenopausal women. ⋯ Decreased level of myostatin is related to higher level of body fat in peri- and postmenopausal women.
-
There is an urgent need to find novel stable cell-free fetal (cff-) RNA in the maternal circulation to facilitate the advance of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) to more effectively avoid birth defects. ⋯ We demonstrated the presence of cff-circRNA in the maternal circulation, which may shed new light on the development of NIPT.
-
Clinical characteristics of COVID-19 in young patients differ from middle-aged and elderly patients.
Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has spread worldwide. The study aimed to understand the clinical characteristics of young COVID-19 patients. ⋯ Young patients have milder clinical manifestations, which may be related to higher education level, higher awareness and higher acceptance of the prevention and control of the COVID-19 epidemic, as well as their good immune function.
-
A single measurement of any biomarker may not reflect its full biological meaning. The kinetics of fibrosis-linked microRNAs and their relationship with extracellular matrix (ECM) fibrosis in dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) have not been explored. ⋯ Regardless of ECM fibrosis status or duration of the disease, 12-month patterns of circulating microRNAs are similar in DCM. Correlations between microRNAs, measured at 3 and 12 months, are lower than expected. In this study, regardless of the time point, circulating microRNAs were not able to differentiate between DCM patients with versus without fibrosis.
-
The precise pathogenesis of Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) is yet to be fully elucidated. The role of epigenetics in the pathogenesis of HT has scarcely been addressed. Tri-methylated histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4me3) is generally regarded as a marker of gene activation. The aim of this study was to explore genome-wide H3K4me3 patterns and global protein levels in primary thyrocytes and thyroids from HT patients. ⋯ This first investigation of genome-wide H3K4me3 distribution in thyroid follicular cells suggested that genes associated with autoimmune thyroiditis showed differential H3K4me3 enrichment, which was partly related to gene expression. Global H3K4me3 changes and increased MLL1 expression were found in thyroid tissues from HT patients.