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Background: The pathogenesis of severe dengue has not been fully elucidated. The inflammatory response plays a critical role in the outcome of dengue disease.Methods: In this study, we investigated the levels of 17 important inflammation mediators in plasma collected from mild or severe adult dengue patients at different time points to understand the contribution of inflammation to disease severity and to seek experimental evidence to optimize the existing clinical treatment strategies. Patients were simply classified as mild and severe dengue according to the 2009 WHO classification. Plasma was collected on day 3-5, 6-7, 8-10 and 14-17 of illness. Levels of 17 inflammation mediators including TNF-α, IL-1α, IFN-γ, IL-6, IFN-α, MIF, IL-10, IL-1RA, IL-8, IP-10, MCP-1, RANTES, GRO, eotaxin-1, sICAM-1 and sVCAM-1 were determined by a multiplex Luminex® system. Different trends of inflammation mediators throughout the disease were compared between mild and severe patients.Results: Inflammation mediators including IL-1α, IFN-γ, IL-10, IL-8, IP-10, MCP-1 and sVCAM-1 displayed significant differences on day 8-10 of illness between mild and severe dengue patients. Their concentrations were higher in severe patients than mild ones at the same time points. Moreover, those cytokines decreased gradually in mild patients but not in severe patients.Conclusion: Our results revealed the coexistence of excessive inflammatory response and slow resolution of inflammation in severe adult dengue patients. Hence suppression and/or pro-resolution of inflammation could be a potential therapeutic approach for treatment of severe dengue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The importance of achieving complete revascularization by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with acute myocardial infarction (MI) on exercise capacity remains unclear.Objective: To compare exercise capacity early after acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), in patients receiving PCI with stenting, between those completely revascularized (CR) and those incompletely revascularized (IR).Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 326 patients [single-vessel disease (SVD) group, 118 patients; multivessel disease (MVD) with CR group, 112 patients; MVD with IR group, 96 patients] who underwent cardiopulmonary exercise testing 7-30 days after STEMI to measure peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak), oxygen uptake at anaerobic threshold (VO2AT), and peak oxygen pulse. Demographic data, presence of concomitant diseases, STEMI characteristics, and echocardiography and angiography findings were evaluated.Results: Most patients were male (89.0%) and mean age was 55.6 ± 11.2 years. Ischemic ST deviation occurred in 7.1%, with no significant difference between groups. VO2peak and VO2AT did not differ significantly between groups, despite a trend to be lower in the CR and IR groups compared with the SVD group. Peak oxygen pulse was significantly higher in the SVD group than in the IR group (p = 0.005). After adjustment for age, gender, body mass index, cardiovascular risk factors, MI characteristics and echocardiography parameters, CR was not an independent predictor of VO2peak (OR = -0.123, 95% confidence interval [CI] -2.986 to 0.232, p = 0.093), VO2AT (OR = 0.002, 95% CI 1.735 to 1.773, p = 0.983), or peak oxygen pulse (OR = -0.102, 95% CI -1.435 to 0.105, p = 0.090).Conclusion: CR in patients with STEMI treated with PCI for multivessel disease might show no benefit on short-term exercise tolerance over IR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Our previous study found that single-pass membrane protein with coiled-coil domains 1 (C3orf43; XM_006248472.3) was significantly upregulated in the proliferative phase during liver regeneration. This indicates that C3orf43 plays a vital role in liver cell proliferation. However, its physiological functions remains unclear., Methods: The expressions of C3orf43 in BRL-3A cells transfected with C3orf43-siRNA (C3-siRNA) or overexpressing the vector plasmid pCDH-C3orf43 (pCDH-C3) were measured via RT-qPCR and western blot. Cell growth and proliferation were determined using MTT and flow cytometry. Cell proliferation-related gene expression was measured using RT-qPCR and western blot., Results: It was found that upregulation of C3orf43 by pCDH-C3 promoted hepatocyte proliferation, and inhibition of C3orf43 by C3-siRNA led to the reduction of cell proliferation. The results of qRT-PCR and western blot assay showed that the C3-siRNA group downregulated the expression of cell proliferation-related genes like JUN, MYC, CCND1 and CCNA2, and the pCDH-C3 group upregulated the expression of those genes., Conclusion: These findings reveal that C3orf43 may contribute to hepatocyte proliferation and may have the potential to promote liver repair and regeneration.

Background: The pathogenesis of severe dengue has not been fully elucidated. The inflammatory response plays a critical role in the outcome of dengue disease., Methods: In this study, we investigated the levels of 17 important inflammation mediators in plasma collected from mild or severe adult dengue patients at different time points to understand the contribution of inflammation to disease severity and to seek experimental evidence to optimize the existing clinical treatment strategies. Patients were simply classified as mild and severe dengue according to the 2009 WHO classification. Plasma was collected on day 3-5, 6-7, 8-10 and 14-17 of illness. Levels of 17 inflammation mediators including TNF-α, IL-1α, IFN-γ, IL-6, IFN-α, MIF, IL-10, IL-1RA, IL-8, IP-10, MCP-1, RANTES, GRO, eotaxin-1, sICAM-1 and sVCAM-1 were determined by a multiplex Luminex® system. Different trends of inflammation mediators throughout the disease were compared between mild and severe patients., Results: Inflammation mediators including IL-1α, IFN-γ, IL-10, IL-8, IP-10, MCP-1 and sVCAM-1 displayed significant differences on day 8-10 of illness between mild and severe dengue patients. Their concentrations were higher in severe patients than mild ones at the same time points. Moreover, those cytokines decreased gradually in mild patients but not in severe patients., Conclusion: Our results revealed the coexistence of excessive inflammatory response and slow resolution of inflammation in severe adult dengue patients. Hence suppression and/or pro-resolution of inflammation could be a potential therapeutic approach for treatment of severe dengue.

Background: Much attention has been given to the potential of halophytes as sources of tolerance traits for introduction into cereals. However, a great deal remains unknown about the diverse mechanisms employed by halophytes to cope with salinity. To characterize salt tolerance mechanisms underlying Karelinia caspica, an Asteraceae halophyte, we performed Large-scale transcriptomic analysis using a high-throughput Illumina sequencing platform. Comparative gene expression analysis was performed to correlate the effects of salt stress and ABA regulation at the molecular level., Results: Total sequence reads generated by pyrosequencing were assembled into 287,185 non-redundant transcripts with an average length of 652 bp. Using the BLAST function in the Swiss-Prot, NCBI nr, GO, KEGG, and KOG databases, a total of 216,416 coding sequences associated with known proteins were annotated. Among these, 35,533 unigenes were classified into 69 gene ontology categories, and 18,378 unigenes were classified into 202 known pathways. Based on the fold changes observed when comparing the salt stress and control samples, 60,127 unigenes were differentially expressed, with 38,122 and 22,005 up- and down-regulated, respectively. Several of the differentially expressed genes are known to be involved in the signaling pathway of the plant hormone ABA, including ABA metabolism, transport, and sensing as well as the ABA signaling cascade., Conclusions: Transcriptome profiling of K. caspica contribute to a comprehensive understanding of K. caspica at the molecular level. Moreover, the global survey of differentially expressed genes in this species under salt stress and analyses of the effects of salt stress and ABA regulation will contribute to the identification and characterization of genes and molecular mechanisms underlying salt stress responses in Asteraceae plants.

Background: Uyghurs are one of the many populations of Central Eurasia that is considered to be genetically related to Eastern and Western Eurasian populations. However, there are some different opinions on the relative importance of the degree of Eastern and Western Eurasian genetic influence. In addition, the genetic diversity of the Uyghur in different geographic locations has not been clearly studied., Results: In this study, we are the first to report on the DNA polymorphism of cytochrome B in the Uyghur population located in Xinjiang in northwest China. We observed a total of 102 mutant sites in the 240 samples that were studied. The average number of mutated nucleotides in the samples was 5.126. A total of 93 different haplotypes were observed. The gene diversity and discrimination power were 0.9480 and 0.9440, respectively. There were founder and bottleneck haplotypes observed in Xinjiang Uyghurs. Xinjiang Uyghurs are more genetically related to Chinese population in genetics than to Caucasians. Moreover, there was genetic diversity between Uyghurs from the southern and northern regions. There was significance in genetic distance between the southern Xinjiang Uyghurs and Chinese population, but not between the northern Xinjiang Uyghurs and Chinese. The European vs. East Asian contribution to the ten regional Uyghur groups varies among the groups and the European contribution to the Uyghur increases from north to south geographically., Conclusion: This study is the first report on DNA polymorphisms of cytochrome B in the Uyghur population. The study also further confirms that there are significant genetic differences among the Uyghurs in different geographical locations.