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Urethral stricture (US) is a challenging problem in urology and its pathogenesis of US is closely related to the fibrotic process. Previous evidence has indicated the downregulation of microRNA (miR)‐486 in injured urethral specimens of rats. This study aimed to explore the effects of miR‐486‐overexpressed bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) on US. BMSCs were identified by detecting their multipotency and surface antigens. Lentivirus virus expressing miR‐486 was transduced into rat BMSCs to overexpress miR‐486. Transforming growth factor (TGF)‐β1 induced fibrotic phenotypes in urethral fibroblasts (UFs) and rat models. Western blotting showed protein levels of collagen I/III and collagen type XIII alpha 1 chain (Col13a1). Real time quantitative polymerase chain reaction was utilized for messenger RNA level evaluation. Hematoxylin‐eosin, Masson's trichrome, and Von Willebrand Factor staining were conducted for histopathological analysis. Immunofluorescence staining was employed for detecting alpha smooth muscle actin (α‐SMA) expression. Luciferase reporter assay verified the interaction between miR‐486 and Col13a1. The results showed that miR‐486‐overexpressed BMSCs suppressed collagen I/III and α‐SMA expression in TGF‐β1‐stimulated UFs. miR‐486‐overexpressed BMSCs alleviated urethral fibrosis, collagen deposition, and epithelial injury in the urethral tissue of US rats. miR‐486 targeted and negatively regulated Col13a1 in US rats. In conclusion, overexpression of miR‐486 in BMSCs targets Col13a1 and attenuates urethral fibrosis in TGF‐β1‐triggered UFs and US rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Cell type‐specific gene expression is critical for the specialized functions within multicellular organisms. In Arabidopsis, SWEET11 and SWEET12 sugar transporters are specifically expressed in phloem parenchyma (PP) cells and are responsible for sucrose efflux from the PP, the first step of a two‐step apoplasmic phloem‐loading strategy that initiates the long‐distance transport of sugar from leaves to nonphotosynthetic sink tissues. However, we know nothing about what determines the PP cell‐specific expression of these SWEETs.Sequence deletions, histochemical β‐glucuronidase (GUS) analysis, cross‐sectioning, live‐cell imaging, and evolutionary analysis were used to elucidate domains responsible for PP specificity, while a Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) sensor‐based transport assay was used to determine whether substrate specificity coevolved with PP specificity.We identified two domains in the Arabidopsis SWEET11 coding sequence that, along with its promoter (including 5′ UTR), regulate PP‐specific expression at the post‐transcriptional level, probably involving RNA‐binding proteins. This mechanism is conserved among vascular plants but independent of transport substrate specificity.We conclude that two evolutionarily duplicated coding sequence domains are essential and individually sufficient for PP‐specific expression of SWEET11. We also provide a crucial experimental tool to study PP physiology and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) has played an important role in recovery management for radical cystectomy with ileal urinary diversion (RC-IUD). This study is to evaluate ERAS compared with the conventional recovery after surgery (CRAS) for RC-IUD. Methods: From October 2014 and July 2016, bladder cancer patients scheduled for curative treatment from 25 centers of Chinese Bladder Cancer Consortium were randomly assigned to either ERAS or CRAS group. Primary endpoint was the 30-day complication rate. Secondary endpoints included recovery of fluid and regular diet, flatus, bowel movement, ambulation, and length of stay (LOS) postoperatively. Follow-up period was 30-day postoperatively. Results: There were 144 ERAS and 145 CRAS patients. Postoperative complications occurred in 25.7 and 30.3% of the ERAS and CRAS patients with 55 complications in each group, respectively ( p = 0.40). There was no significant difference between groups in major complications ( p = 0.82), or type of complications ( p = 0.99). The ERAS group had faster recovery of bowel movements (median 88 versus 100 h, p = 0.01), fluid diet tolerance (68 versus 96 h, p < 0.001), regular diet tolerance (125 versus 168 h, p = 0.004), and ambulation (64 versus 72 h, p = 0.047) than the CRAS group, but similar time to flatus and LOS. Conclusions: ERAS did not increase 30-day complications compared with CRAS after RC. ERAS may be better than CRAS in terms of bowel movement, tolerance of fluid and regular diet, and ambulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant trichomes are specialized epidermal cells that protect plants from insects and pathogens. In Arabidopsis, epidermal hairs decrease as internodes increase in height, with only few epidermal hairs produced on the sepals abaxial surface of the early flowers. TRIPTYCHON (TRY) is known to be a negative regulator of epidermal hair development in Arabidopsis, suppressing the formation of ectopic epidermal hairs in the inflorescence. Here, we reported that the second intron of TRY gene plays a critical role in trichome spatial distribution in Arabidopsis. The expression of TRY rises with the increasing stem nodes and reaches the peak in the inflorescence, while the trichomes distribution decrease. The transgenic plants showed that TRY promoter could only drive the genomic instead of coding sequences combined with GUS reporter gene, which indicates that the regulatory elements of TRY expression in inflorescence could be located in the intron regions. Multiple SPLs and MADS-box binding sites were found in the TRY intron2 sequence. Further genetic and biochemistry assays revealed that the flowering-related genes such as SPL9 could bind to these cis -elements directly, contributing to the TRY spatial expression. Since cotton fiber and Arabidopsis trichomes share similar regulatory mechanism, extended analysis showed that the intron2 of cotton TRY genes also contain the cis -elements. Thus, the introns harboring the transcription element may be the general way to regulate the gene expression in different plants and provides molecular clues for the related crops' traits design. • TRY expresses high in the inflorescence contributing to no trichomes in this part, while TRY promoter could only drive the genomic sequence instead of CDS expressing in the inflorescence. • Transgenic and biochemistry assays showed that the SPL-binding motifs and MADS box exist in the TRY inron2, which could be activated by flower related genes. • The cotton GhTRY genes introns also contain the cis -elements and the growth of trichomes through the introns may be a general way in plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim to assess treatment failure in patients with stage III colon cancer who underwent radical surgery and was analyzed using the nomogram., Methods: Clinical factors and survival outcomes for stage III colon cancer patients registered in the SEER database from 2018 to 2019 were analyzed, with patients split into training and testing cohorts (7:3 ratio). A total of 360 patients from the First Affiliated Hospital of Longyan served as an external validation cohort. Independent predictors of treatment failure were identified using logistic regression analyses. The nomograms was evaluated by concordance index (C-index), calibration curves, and the area under the curve (AUC), decision curve analysis (DCA) and clinical impact curves (CIC) assessed the clinical utility of nomograms versus TNM staging., Results: The study included 4,115 patients with stage III colon cancer. Multivariate logistic analysis age, tumor site, pT stage, pN stage, chemotherapy, pretreatment CEA levels, number of harvested lymph nodes, perineural invasion and marital status were identified as independent risk factors for treatment failure. The C-indices for the training and testing sets were 0.853 and 0.841. Validation by ROC and calibration curves confirmed the stability and reliability of the model. DCA showed that the net clinical effect of the histogram was superior to that of the TNM staging system, while CIC highlighted the potentially large clinical impact of the model., Conclusions: The developed Nomogram provides a powerful and accurate tool for clinicians to assess the risk of treatment failure after radical surgery in patients with stage III colon cancer., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Zeng, Zhong, Liu, Liang, Xue, Yu, Xu, Wang and Lin.)

Background: Accurate staging of prostate cancer (PCa) is the basis for the risk stratification to select targeted treatment. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the diagnostic accuracy rates of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and digital rectal examination (DRE) for preoperative T staging of potentially resectable PCa., Methods: From March 2021 to March 2022, patients with PCa with T staging by prostate biopsy were included. All examinations used postoperative histopathologic T staging as the reference standard. All patients underwent DRE and MRI before the puncture. Two blinded urologists and radiologists independently evaluated DRE and MRI, respectively. Before the examination, patients were then divided into early- (T1, T2) and late-(T3, T4) stage cancer. Analysis of a paired sample sign test was performed to determine differences between DRE and MRI., Results: A total of 136 study participants with PCa were evaluated histopathologically, of whom 71% (97/136) and 29% (39/136) were at the early- and late-stage cancer, respectively. MRI had a significantly higher accuracy (91.9% vs. 76.5%, P < 0.001) compared with DRE. Further, MRI showed a higher sensitivity than DRE to diagnose early PCa (92.8% vs. 74.2%; P < 0.001). However, the specificity was not significantly different between them (89.7% vs. 82.1%; P = 0.375). Area under the curve (receiver operating curve) values were calculated as 0.78 ± 0.038 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.71-0.86), 0.91 ± 0.028 (95% CI, 0.86-0.97), and 0.872 ± 0.028 (95% CI, 0.80-0.92) for DRE-, MRI-, MRI + DRE-based PCa predictions, respectively. The prediction performance of MRI was better than that of DRE (DeLong test, z = 3.632, P = 0.0003) and MRI + DRE (DeLong test, z = 3.715, P = 0.0002)., Conclusion: For resectable PCa, the diagnostic potential of MRI in assessing the T stage was higher than that of DRE. However, DRE is still valuable, especially for patients with locally advanced PCa.

Objective: To comparatively analyze the effect of one-stage nonstented tubularized incised plate urethroplasty (TIP) on operative pain and complication by comparing with urethral catheter and urethral stent drainages., Methods: Between March 2010 and June 2013, 214 cases of distal and mid-shaft hypospadias underwent TIP, and the clinical data were analyzed retrospectively. The patients were divided into 3 groups based on different urinary drainage techniques: indwelling urethral catheter was used in 68 cases (group A), indwelling urethral stent in 70 cases (group B), and nonstented drainage in 76 cases (group C). There was no significant difference in age, hypospadias type, and accompany malformation among 3 groups (P > 0.05). At 2 days after operation, Wong-Banker facial scale (WBS) and Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Pain Scale (CHEOPS) were used for pain and praxiology assessment. The complications after operation also were observed and compared among 3 groups., Results: All patients were followed up 6-25 months (median, 11.8 months). At 2 days after operation, the median WBS scores were 4.0 (0-10), 3.5 (0-10), and 3.0 (0-10) in groups A, B, and C, respectively; median CHEOPS pain scores were 6.0 (1-13), 6.0 (1-13), and 4.0 (1-11), respectively. The WBS pain score and CHEOPS pain score in group C were significantly lower than those in groups A and B (P < 0.05), but there was no significant difference between group A and group B (P > 0.05). The postoperative complication occurred in 27 cases (39.7%) of group A, 29 cases (41.4%) of group B, and 13 cases (17.1%) of group C; two or more than two complications occurred in 14, 15, and 9 cases, respectively. There was significant difference in total incidence of postoperative complication among 3 groups (P < 0.05). The incidences of postoperative overactive bladder, bladder spasms, urinary tract infection, and fistula in group C were significantly lower than those in groups A and B (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in incision infection, acute urinary retention, urinary extravasation, meatal stenosis, and urethral stricture among 3 groups (P > 0.05)., Conclusion: One-stage nonstented TIP is suitable for distal and mid-shaft hypospadias and could reduce postoperative pain and complications compared with the traditional postoperative indwelling urethral catheter and indwelling urethral stent.