Int J Med Sci
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Endothelial cell-specific molecule 1 (ESM1) is a major prognostic marker of several tumor types, but its value as a marker for prostate cancer is unknown. The purpose of the present study was to measure the relationship of ESM1 expression with androgen receptor (AR) expression and with Gleason score in human prostate carcinoma tissue. ⋯ ESM1 expression was also greater in prostate tissues with higher Gleason score and Gleason grade (p < 0.001 for both comparisons), and also correlated with AR expression (R = 0.727, p < 0.001). In conclusion, our results demonstrated that ESM1 should be considered as a marker for the diagnosis of prostate cancer.
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Lewis antigens related to the ABO blood group are fucosylated oligosaccharides and are synthesized by specific glycosyltransferases (FUTs). FUTs are involved in various biological processes including cell adhesion and tumor progression. The fucosyltransferase-2 gene (FUT2) encodes alpha (1,2) fucosyltransferase, which is responsible for the addition of the alpha (1,2)-linkage of fucose to glycans. ⋯ The genotypes of FUT2 at four single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs; rs281377, rs1047781, rs601338, and rs602662) were detected by real-time polymerase chain reaction from these samples. Compared with the wild-type genotype at SNP rs1047781, which is homozygous for nucleotides AA, at least one polymorphic T allele (AT or TT) displayed significant association with clinical stage (p = 0.048) and tumor size (p = 0.022). Our study strongly implicates the polymorphic locus rs1047781 of FUT2 as being associated with HCC development.
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Hypertension is a severe threat to human being's health due to its association with many comorbidities. Many research works have explored hypertension's prevalence and treatment. However, few considered impact of patient's socioeconomic status and geographical disparities. ⋯ We found that the demographic and socioeconomic factors, and hospital class and geographical factors would have an enhanced interactive influence on the prevalence of hypertension comorbidities. Our findings can be leveraged by public health policy makers to allocate medical resources more effectively. Healthcare practitioners can also be benefited by our analysis to offer customized disease prevention for populations with different socioeconomic status.
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Congenital heart disease (CHD), the most common form of developmental abnormality in humans, remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in neonates. Genetic defects have been recognized as the predominant causes of CHD. Nevertheless, CHD is of substantial genetic heterogeneity and the genetic defects underlying CHD in most cases remain unclear. ⋯ Functional analyses by using a dual-luciferase reporter assay system showed that the mutant TBX20 lost the ability to transactivate the target gene ANF. Furthermore, the mutation reduced the synergistic activation between TBX20 and NKX2.5 as well as GATA4, two other transcriptional factors previously associated with various CHD, encompassing TOF. This study firstly links TBX20 loss-of-function mutation to familial TOF or sporadic persistent truncus arteriosus, providing novel insight into the molecular pathogenesis of CHD.
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The limited availability of melanoma stem cells is a major challenge for therapeutic reagent screening and study of molecular mechanisms. It has been shown that induced expression of four stem cell factors (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc) changes the phenotype of osteosarcoma and breast cancer cells to osteosarcoma stem cells and breast cancer stem cells, respectively. The present study aimed to explore whether these four factors might change the phenotype of melanoma cells to melanoma stem cells and, if so, to examine the possible molecular signal involved. ⋯ The conclusion was further supported by the observation that the induction of these factors exclusively increased the mRNA of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 which has been reported to play a crucial role in stem cell maintenance. Thus, phenotypic remodeling of melanoma cells following the induction of these four factors provided a simple and optimal means to constantly obtain MSCs for screening new therapeutic reagents. The result also reveals that Stat3 may be a crucial link between the induction of the four factors and the cell remodeling, suggesting its potential role as a target to fight melanoma.