THUMPD3-AS1 inhibits ovarian cancer cell apoptosis through the miR-320d/ARF1 axis.

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common gynecologic malignancies that has a poor prognosis. THUMPD3-AS1 is an oncogenic long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) in several cancers. Moreover, miR-320d is downregulated and inhibited proliferation in ovarian cancer cells, whereas ARF1 was upregulated and promoted the malignant progression in epithelial ovarian cancer. Nevertheless, the role of THUMPD3-AS1 in ovarian cancer and the underlying mechanism has yet to be elucidated. Human normal ovarian epithelial cells (IOSE80) and ovarian cancer cell lines (CAVO3, A2780, SKOV3, OVCAR3, and HEY) were adopted for in vitro experiments. The functional roles of THUMPD3-AS1 in cell viability and apoptosis were determined using CCK-8, flow cytometry, and TUNEL assays. Western blot was performed to assess the protein levels of ARF1, Bax, Bcl-2, and caspase 3, whereas RT-qPCR was applied to measure ARF1 mRNA, THUMPD3-AS1, and miR-320d levels. The targeting relationship between miR-320d and THUMPD3-AS1 or ARF1 was validated with dual luciferase assay. THUMPD3-AS1 and ARF1 were highly expressed in ovarian cancer cells, whereas miR-320d level was lowly expressed. THUMPD3-AS1 knockdown was able to repress cell viability and accelerate apoptosis of OVCAR3 and SKOV3 cells. Also, THUMPD3-AS1 acted as a sponge of miR-320d, preventing the degradation of ARF1. MiR-320d downregulation reversed the tumor suppressive function induced by THUMPD3-AS1 depletion. Additionally, miR-320d overexpression inhibited ovarian cancer cell viability and accelerated apoptosis, which was overturned by overexpression of ARF1. THUMPD3-AS1 inhibited ovarian cancer cell apoptosis by modulation of miR-320d/ARF1 axis. The discoveries might provide a prospective target for ovarian cancer treatment.

m6A-modified circASXL1 promotes proliferation and migration of ovarian cancer through the miR-320d/RACGAP1 axis.

Ovarian cancer (OC) is one of the most common malignant tumors in women. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) can potentially regulate the development of OC. Therefore, this study investigated the role of circASXL1 in OC progression. Cell functions were assessed by MTT, colony formation, wound healing, and transwell assays. RIP and dual luciferase reporter assays confirmed the relationship between miR-320d and circASXL1 or RACGAP1. MeRIP was utilized to detect m6A levels. Xenograft tumor was established for in vivo experiments. CircASXL1 and RACGAP1 levels were increased in OC tissues and cells, whereas miR-320d expression was decreased. Upregulation of circASXL1 was associated with poor prognosis in OC patients. CircASXL1 silencing suppressed OC cell proliferation, migration and invasion in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, METTL3/IGF2BP1-mediated m6A modification maintained circASXL1 stability and upregulated its expression. CircASXL1 was a ceRNA that sequestrated miR-320d from RACGAP1, leading to increased RACGAP1 expression. CircASXL1 promoted OC cell proliferation, migration and invasion via the miR-320d/RACGAP1 axis. Therefore, m6A-modified circASXL1 acts as an oncogene in OC by targeting miR-320d and activating RACGAP1/PI3K/Akt pathway, which provides novel promising biomarkers for OC diagnosis.

Endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the rectovaginal septum: A case report. / é˜´é“ç›´è‚ éš”å­å®«å† è†œæ ·è ºç™Œ1例.

Primary endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the rectovaginal septum is rare. Its pathogenesis is not clear and there is no standard treatment. One patient with endometrioid adenocarcinoma of the rectovaginal septum arising from deep infiltrative endometriosis was admitted to Qingdao Municipal Hospital. The patient presented with incessant menstruation and abdominal distension. She had bilateral ovarian endometriotic cystectomy 6 years ago. Imaging findings suggested a pelvic mass which might invade the rectovaginal septum. Pathological results of primary surgery confirmed endometrioid carcinoma of the pelvic mass arising from the rectovaginal septum. Then she had a comprehensive staged surgery. Postoperative chemotherapy was given 6 times. No recurrence or metastasis was found during the 2-year follow-up. The possibility of deep infiltrating endometriosis and its malignant transformation should be considered in the differential diagnosis of a new extragonadal pelvic lesion in a patient with a history of endometriosis, which would avoid misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis.

Cervical heterotopic pregnancy: A case report. / å®«å† å®«é¢ˆå¤åˆå¦Šå¨ 1例.

Heterotopic pregnancies are rare and difficult to be diagnosed early. A patient with combined intrauterine pregnancy and cervical pregnancy was admitted in Qingdao Municipal Hospital in 2019. The patient complained of abnormal vaginal bleeding after menopause and was misdiagnosed as simple intrauterine pregnancy. She underwent artificial abortion and suffered intraoperative hemorrhage. To stop bleeding, she received the treatment of uterine artery embolization immediately. Afterwards, cervical residual pregnancy tissues started necrosis, blood ß-human chorionic gonadotropin level and the cervix appearance gradually returned to normal. This report suggests that cervical heterotopic pregnancy inclines to be mis diagnosed. Correct diagnosis should be made as soon as possible. Selective uterine artery embolization is an effective measure to prevent and treat massive bleeding.

Integrated analysis of HPV-mediated immune alterations in cervical cancer.

OBJECTIVE: Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is the primary cause of cervical cancer. HPV-mediated immune alterations are known to play crucial roles in determining viral persistence and host cell transformation. We sought to thoroughly understand HPV-directed immune alterations in cervical cancer by exploring publically available datasets. METHODS: 130 HPV positive and 7 HPV negative cervical cancer cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas were compared for differences in gene expression levels and functional enrichment. Analyses for copy number variation (CNV) and genetic mutation were conducted for differentially expressed immune genes. Kaplan-Meier analysis was performed to assess survival and relapse differences across cases with or without alterations of the identified immune signature genes. RESULTS: Genes up-regulated in HPV positive cervical cancer were enriched for various gene ontology terms of immune processes (P=1.05E-14~1.00E-05). Integrated analysis of the differentially expressed immune genes identified 9 genes that displayed either CNV, genetic mutation and/or gene expression changes in at least 10% of the cases of HPV positive cervical cancer. Genomic amplification may cause elevated levels of these genes in some HPV positive cases. Finally, patients with alterations in at least one of the nine signature genes overall had earlier relapse compared to those without any alterations. The altered expression of either TFRC or MMP13 may indicate poor survival for a subset of cervical cancer patients (P=1.07E-07). CONCLUSIONS: We identified a novel immune gene signature for HPV positive cervical cancer that is potentially associated with early relapse of cervical cancer.

[Clinical efficacy of NovaSure for 30 patients with adenomyosis].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the efficacy and safety of NovaSure system for dysmenorrhea and abnormal uterine bleeding of adenomyosis.
 METHODS: A retrospective analysis on 30 patients with adenomyosis, who treated by NovaSure, were carried out. We collected related clinical data before operation and collected postoperative information about dyemenorrhea, menstruation, anemia and uterine volume by visiting outpatient or telephone.
 RESULTS: All patients were followed up for 7 to 31 months after the operation. The relief rate of menstrual pain was 83.3%. All patients got obvious improvements in menstruation and anemia (P<0.05). After operation, uterine volume was significantly decreased (P<0.05). Only one case received intervention in 2 years (3.3%).
 CONCLUSION: NovaSure can relieve symptoms of menorrhagia and alleviate dysmenorrhea symptoms. It is a new way for the treatment of uterine adenomyosis.

Mining TCGA database for gene expression in ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma microenvironment.

BACKGROUND: Ovarian cancer is one of the leading causes of female deaths worldwide. Ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma occupies about 90% of it. Effective and accurate biomarkers for diagnosis, outcome prediction and personalized treatment are needed urgently. METHODS: Gene expression profile for OSC patients was obtained from the TCGA database. The ESTIMATE algorithm was used to calculate immune scores and stromal scores of expression data of ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma samples. Survival results between high and low groups of immune and stromal score were compared and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened out by limma package. The Gene Ontology (GO), the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis and the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analysis were performed with the g:Profiler database, the Cytoscape and Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes (STRING-DB). Survival results between high and low immune and stromal score groups were compared. Kaplan-Meier plots based on TCGA follow up information were generated to evaluate patients' overall survival. RESULTS: Eighty-six upregulated DEGs and one downregulated DEG were identified. Three modules, which included 49 nodes were chosen as important networks. Seven DEGs (VSIG4, TGFBI, DCN, F13A1, ALOX5AP, GPX3, SFRP4) were considered to be correlated with poor overall survival. CONCLUSION: Seven DEGs (VSIG4, TGFBI, DCN, F13A1, ALOX5AP, GPX3, SFRP4) were correlated with poor overall survival in our study. This new set of genes can become strong predictor of survival, individually or combined. Further investigation of these genes is needed to validate the conclusion to provide novel understanding of tumor microenvironment with ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma prognosis and treatment.

Selective periesophagogastric devascularization in portal hypertension: results of 56 patients.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Surgery remains the most reliable treatment for bleeding esophageal varices. We propose a new modified procedure as selective periesophogastric devascularization (SPD), in which paracardial spontenous collaterals were preserved and only pericardial collaterals and perforating branches were disconnected. This study aimed to evaluate the results of SPD in variceal bleeding. METHODOLOGY: The results of 56 patients subjected to SPD for bleeding esophageal varices, were retrospectively reviewed. Etiology of portal hypertension was chronic HBV cirrhosis in 80.4% (45/56), alcoholic in 12.5% (7/56) and others 7.1% (4/56). Child-Pugh grading on admission was A: 78.6% (44/56), B: 14.3% (8/56), and C: 7.1% (4/56). Evaluation was made in terms of effectiveness in controlling the acute bleeding, postoperative morbidity and mortality, recurrent bleeding, encephalopathy and 3-year survival rate. RESULTS: Hemorrhage was controlled in all cases with no death rate. Portal vein thrombosis in 3.6% (2/56), and pleurorrhea in 8.9% (5/56) of cases. In-hospital morbidity was 12.5% (7/56). Complete eradication of varices was observed in 87.5% (49/56) patients. Recurrent variceal bleeding was noticed in 8.9% (5/56) of cases. No patient developed encephalopathy until one month postoperatively. 42 patients were followed up postoperatively for three years. The 3-year survival for patients with Child-Pugh A was 100% (32/32), B was 71.4% (5/7), and 33%(1/3) for C. CONCLUSIONS: SPD was safe and effective in control of bleeding varices in portal hypertension.

"Turn-off" fluorescent sensor for highly sensitive and specific simultaneous recognition of 29 famous green teas based on quantum dots combined with chemometrics.

Fluorescent "turn-off" sensors based on water-soluble quantum dots (QDs) have drawn increasing attention owing to their unique properties such as high fluorescence quantum yields, chemical stability and low toxicity. In this work, a novel method based on the fluorescence "turn-off" model with water-soluble CdTe QDs as the fluorescent probes for differentiation of 29 different famous green teas is established. The fluorescence of the QDs can be quenched in different degrees in light of positions and intensities of the fluorescent peaks for the green teas. Subsequently, with aid of classic partial least square discriminant analysis (PLSDA), all the green teas can be discriminated with high sensitivity, specificity and a satisfactory recognition rate of 100% for training set and 98.3% for prediction set, respectively. Especially, the "turn-off" fluorescence PLSDA model based on second-order derivatives (2nd der) with reduced least complexity (LVs = 3) was the most effective one for modeling. Most importantly, we further demonstrated the established "turn-off" fluorescent sensor mode has several significant advantages and appealing properties over the conventional fluorescent method for large-class-number classification (LCNC) of green teas. This work is, to the best of our knowledge, the first report on the rapid and effective identification of so many kinds of famous green teas based on the "turn-off" model of QDs combined with chemometrics, which also implies other potential applications on complex LCNC classification system with weak fluorescence or even without fluorescence to achieve higher detective response and specificity.

Primary functioning hepatic paraganglioma: a case report.

An extra-adrenal pheochromocytoma is known as a paraganglioma. This report describes a patient with a rare primary functioning hepatic paraganglioma that resulted in hypertension. Computed tomography showed a highly vascular lesion located in segment 6 of the liver; it measured 6 x 5.5 cm. A right hemihepatectomy was subsequently performed; this was followed by an uneventful recovery and the disappearance of hypertension. The imaging characteristics and therapeutic principles of this rare tumor were gleaned from a review of the literature. Identification of this malignant tumor or possible recurrence is difficult, so longterm follow-up is recommended.

Value of portal hemodynamics and hypersplenism in cirrhosis staging.

AIM: To determine the correlation between portal hemodynamics and spleen function among different grades of cirrhosis and verify its significance in cirrhosis staging. METHODS: The portal and splenic vein hemodynamics and spleen size were investigated by ultrasonography in consecutive 38 cirrhotic patients with cirrhosis (Child's grades A to C) and 20 normal controls. The differences were compared in portal vein diameter and flow velocity between patients with and without ascites and between patients with mild and severe esophageal varices. The correlation between peripheral blood cell counts and Child's grades was also determined. RESULTS: The portal flow velocity and volume were significantly lower in patients with Child's C (12.25+/-1.67 cm/s vs 788.59+/-234 mm/min, respectively) cirrhosis compared to controls (19.55+/-3.28 cm/s vs 1254.03+/-410 mm/min, respectively) and those with Child's A (18.5+/-3.02 cm/s vs 1358.48+/-384 mm/min, respectively) and Child's B (16.0+/-3.89 cm/s vs 1142.23+/-390 mm/min, respectively) cirrhosis. Patients with ascites had much lower portal flow velocity and volume (13.0+/-1.72 cm/s vs 1078+/-533 mm/min) than those without ascites (18.6+/-2.60 cm/s vs 1394+/-354 mm/min). There was no statistical difference between patients with mild and severe esophageal varices. The portal vein diameter was not significantly different among the above groups. There were significant differences in splenic vein diameter, flow velocity and white blood cell count, but not in spleen size, red blood cell and platelet counts among the various grades of cirrhosis. The spleen size was negatively correlated with red blood cell and platelet counts (r = -0.620 and r = -0.8.34, respectively). CONCLUSION: An optimal system that includes parameters representing the portal hemodynamics and spleen function should be proposed for cirrhosis staging.

Regional portal hypertension diagnosed by ultrasonography: imaging findings and diagnostic values.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: To investigate the diagnostic accuracy of ultrasonography for regional portal hypertension (RPH) and ascertain the best diagnosis method for RPH. METHODOLOGY: Eleven cases of regional portal hypertension diagnosed by ultrasonography were retrospectively studied. Their etiological features, clinical findings, and ultrasonographic diagnosis criteria were analyzed. Other diagnostic approaches were also compared and related literature was reviewed. RESULTS: Eleven patients were all verified by operation. The diagnostic accuracy of color Doppler ultrasonography was 100%. The etiological diagnostic accuracy was 91% (10/11). CONCLUSIONS: Color Doppler ultrasonography should be considered as the first choice to diagnose RPH due to its safety, accuracy, and simplicity. RPH can be classified etiologically into 3 types: pancreatic RPH, splenic RPH, retroperitoneal RPH.

[Spontaneous renal hemorrhage caused by invasive mole: a case report].

Gestational trophoblastic tumors (GTTs) are malignant lesions that often cause abnormal genital bleeding and may present with hemoptysis, intraperitoneal bleeding or acute neurologic deficits. GTTs are generally highly chemosensitive with more favorable outcomes than other comparable malignancies. Here we report a rare case of invasive mole (FIGO stage IV, WHO score16) presenting with renal subcapsular hematoma due to bleeding renal metastasis. The patient had a pretreatment ß-human chorionic gonadotrophin (ß-HCG) level of 462 047 mIU/ml and received combined chemotherapy with etoposide, methotrexate, actinomycin-D, cyclophosphamide and vincristine with also adjuvant surgeries including hysterectomy and nephrectomy. The patient recovered well and the tumor has remained in complete remission for one year and a half.

Angiogenesis effect on rat liver after administration of expression vector encoding vascular endothelial growth factor D.

AIM: To verify the expressing efficiency and angiogenesis effect after administration of expression vector encoding for vascular endothelial growth factor D in normal and ischemic rat liver. METHODS: Ten female S-D rats were administrated with liver tissue dot injection of naked PCHO/hVEGF-D, 50 microg/dot, three dots for each. The same amount of physiological saline was used as control in the neighboring lobe. Fourteen S-D rats, using inflow occlusion of left lateral lobe, were divided into two groups, seven rats in each group. One was ischemic plasmid group, which received naked plasmid PCHO/hVEGF-D injection of 150 microg. The other received the equal amount of natural saline injection and designed as control. The expressions of hVEGF-D in mRNA and protein levels were identified by in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry, respectively. Endothelial cells were labeled by the factor VIII immunohistochemistrically. The average number of peri-sinusoidal capillaries of each group was calculated and compared statistically 8 days after injection. RESULTS: A large amount of hVEGF-D in mRNA level was found in both normal and ischemic plasmid groups and but none in their corresponding control groups. The protein of hVEGF was also highly expressed in both normal and ischemic plasmid groups than in the controls. The mean number of capillaries under microscopy (X200) of the plasmid group and control was 10.2+/-2.78 vs 7.1+/-2.02 (P<0.05), and those of ischemic plasmid group and ischemic control were 7.43+/-1.72 vs 4.71+/-1.11 with statistical difference (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: The naked PCHO/hVEGF-D dot injection to normal, ischemic rat liver can produce comparatively high expression of hVEGF in both protein and mRNA levels, and prominently increase the number of new capillaries around hepatic sinuses. Therefore, it could be another ideal choice for the treatment of ischemic liver diseases.

Expressions of vascular endothelial growth factor in cirrhotic tissues and their relations to proto-oncogene c-fos, c-myc.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the significance of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in the pathogenesis of liver cirrhosis and the correlation between VEGF and proto-oncogene c-fos and c-myc in cirrhotic liver. METHODS: The proteins of VEGF, c-fos, and c-myc were identified immunohistochemically in each tissue section of 53 cases of liver cirrhosis. The correlations between VEGF, c-fos and c-myc were analyzed. The levels of VEGF protein in different Child gradings were also compared. RESULTS: The proteins of VEGF were more highly expressed in Child A and B patients than in Child C patients and controls. The expressions of both c-fos and c-myc were not statistically significant between VEGF positive and negative patients. CONCLUSIONS: The protein level of VEGF can reflect the compensation status of cirrhosis patients and may act as an anti-cirrhotic factor. The proto-oncogene c-fos, c-myc and VEGF may have different mechanisms in the course of cirrhosis or hepatic tumorigenesis.