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Objective: Unknown ethiology Background: Parasitic helminths in the esophagus are rare. Here, we report a case of esophageal scab mimicking a parasite. Case Report: A 65-year-old man was admitted to our hospital because after choking on food. Gastroscopy showed 2 foreign bodies adherent to the esophagus wall 28 and 34 cm from the incisor, which appeared to be a fluke. Two flukelike foreign bodies (1.5 and 1.8 cm in length) were removed from the esophageal ulcer with forceps. After fixation with alcohol, the suspected fluke-like foreign bodies were noted to be brown and woody. Under a light microscope, the structure of the foreign body was not apparent, and no typical flatworm tegument structure was demonstrated on pathologic sections, but it had a blood clot-like structure. Administration of albendazole did not expel any helminths. A stool examination showed no eggs of the putative flukes. The genomic DNA of the suspected flukes was extracted and a 700 bp fragment was amplified by universal barcoding primers. The sequencing showed that the homology with human cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene was 98.8%. Conclusions: The scab formed by the esophageal ulcer was identified based on clinical manifestations, anti-helminth and stool examinations, parasite morphology, and molecular biology. Our experience with this case suggests that the universal barcoding technique can be used for identification of foreign bodies suspected to be parasites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combination therapy has prolonged the survival of patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC), an aggressive neoplasm characterized by a high rate of metastasis. In the present study the effect of sequential treatment of ursolic acid chlorophenyl triazole (UACT) followed by 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) on human small cell lung cancer cells was investigated. The results revealed a synergistic effect of the sequential treatment with UACT and 5-FUcombination on cytotoxic activities, NF-κB protein activation, repression of TNF-induced NF-κB-dependent reporter gene expression, and TNF-induced COX-2, MMP-9 and Cyclin D1 activation in H209 cells. The synergism in apoptotic cell death was observed in H209, H69, 87-5,and Lu135 cells. The synergistic effect of UACT and 5-FU was observed at a concentration of 50 nM of UACT and 20 µM of 5-FU. These results indicate that UACT and 5-FU combination can be a promising chemotherapeutic regimen in the treatment of SCLC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prions are associated with neurodegenerative diseases induced by transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. The infectious scrapie form is referred to as PrPSc, which has conformational change from normal prion with predominant α-helical conformation to the abnormal PrPSc that is rich in β-sheet content. Neurodegenerative diseases have been found from both human and bovine sources, but there are no reports about infected by transmissible spongiform encephalopathies from rabbit, canine and horse sources. Here we used coarse-grained Gō model to compare the difference among human, bovine, rabbit, canine, and horse normal (cellular) prion proteins. The denatured state of normal prion has relation with the conversion from normal to abnormal prion protein, so we used all-atom Gō model to investigate the folding pathway and energy landscape for human prion protein. Through using coarse-grained Gō model, the cooperativity of the five prion proteins was characterized in terms of calorimetric criterion, sigmoidal transition, and free-energy profile. The rabbit and horse prion proteins have higher folding free-energy barrier and cooperativity, and canine prion protein has slightly higher folding free-energy barrier comparing with human and bovine prion proteins. The results from all-atom Gō model confirmed the validity of Cα-Gō model. The correlations of our results with previous experimental and theoretical researches were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]