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Background: A novel avian influenza A (H7N9) virus was first found in humans in Shanghai, and infected over 433 patients in China. To date, very little is known about the spatiotemporal variability or environmental drivers of the risk of H7N9 infection. This study explored the spatial and temporal variation of H7N9 infection and assessed the effects of temperature and rainfall on H7N9 incidence. Methods: A Bayesian spatial conditional autoregressive (CAR) model was used to assess the spatiotemporal distribution of the risk of H7N9 infection in Shanghai, by district and fortnight for the period 19th February-14th April 2013. Data on daily laboratory-confirmed H7N9 cases, and weather variability including temperature (°C) and rainfall (mm) were obtained from the Chinese Information System for Diseases Control and Prevention and Chinese Meteorological Data Sharing Service System, respectively, and aggregated by fortnight. Results: High spatial variations in the H7N9 risk were mainly observed in the east and centre of Shanghai municipality. H7N9 incidence rate was significantly associated with fortnightly mean temperature (Relative Risk (RR): 1.54; 95% credible interval (CI): 1.22-1.94) and fortnightly mean rainfall (RR: 2.86; 95% CI: 1.47-5.56). Conclusion: There was a substantial variation in the spatiotemporal distribution of H7N9 infection across different districts in Shanghai. Optimal temperature and rainfall may be one of the driving forces for H7N9.

Background: Dengue fever (DF) outbreaks often arise from imported DF cases in Cairns, Australia. Few studies have incorporated imported DF cases in the estimation of the relationship between weather variability and incidence of autochthonous DF. The study aimed to examine the impact of weather variability on autochthonous DF infection after accounting for imported DF cases and then to explore the possibility of developing an empirical forecast system. Methodology/principal finds: Data on weather variables, notified DF cases (including those acquired locally and overseas), and population size in Cairns were supplied by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Queensland Health, and Australian Bureau of Statistics. A time-series negative-binomial hurdle model was used to assess the effects of imported DF cases and weather variability on autochthonous DF incidence. Our results showed that monthly autochthonous DF incidences were significantly associated with monthly imported DF cases (Relative Risk (RR):1.52; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.01-2.28), monthly minimum temperature (°C) (RR: 2.28; 95% CI: 1.77-2.93), monthly relative humidity (%) (RR: 1.21; 95% CI: 1.06-1.37), monthly rainfall (mm) (RR: 0.50; 95% CI: 0.31-0.81) and monthly standard deviation of daily relative humidity (%) (RR: 1.27; 95% CI: 1.08-1.50). In the zero hurdle component, the occurrence of monthly autochthonous DF cases was significantly associated with monthly minimum temperature (Odds Ratio (OR): 1.64; 95% CI: 1.01-2.67). Conclusions/ significance: Our research suggested that incidences of monthly autochthonous DF were strongly positively associated with monthly imported DF cases, local minimum temperature and inter-month relative humidity variability in Cairns. Moreover, DF outbreak in Cairns was driven by imported DF cases only under favourable seasons and weather conditions in the study.

Xia Tian,* Meng Liu,* Xiaodong Huang, Qingxi Zhu, Weijie Liu, Wei Chen, Yanli Zou, Yishan Cai, Shasha Huang, Aifang Chen, Ting Zhan, Min Huang, Xiaoli Chen, Zheng Han, Jie Tan Department of Gastroenterology, Tongren Hospital of Wuhan University (Wuhan Third Hospital), Wuhan, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Zheng Han; Jie Tan Email 422435466@qq.com; 549774892@qq.comBackground: Noscapine is an opium alkaloid that has recently been shown to potentiate anti-cancer therapeutic effects by inducing apoptosis in various malignant cells without any detectable toxicity. However, the mechanism by which noscapine induces apoptosis in colon cancer cells remains unclear.Materials and Methods: In this study, we explored the anti-cancer activity of noscapine in 5-fluorouracil (5-FU)-resistant human colon cancer cell lines HT29/5-FU and LoVo/5-FU and investigated the possible underlying mechanism. The apoptosis and mitochondrial morphology of cells were detected by TUNEL assay and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) was determined using JC-1. The mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP) opening was detected by the calcein-AM/cobalt assay. The levels of glucose, lactic, and ATP in cells were evaluated by ELISA kits. Relative protein expression levels were detected by Western blot.Results: We verified that PTEN was involved in noscapine-induced apoptosis in HT29/5-FU and LoVo/5-FU cells. Noscapine greatly increased mitochondrial damage by altering mitochondrial morphology, inducing mitochondrial membrane potential depolarization, and enabling mitochondrial permeability transition pore opening in HT29/5-FU and LoVo/5-FU cells. In addition, noscapine inhibited the Warburg effect by decreasing the levels of glucose, lactic acid, and ATP and inhibiting the protein expression of glucose transporter 1, lactate dehydrogenase-B, hexokinase 2, and pyruvate kinase M2 in HT2