Effects of quercetin on diabetic retinopathy and its association with NLRP3 inflammasome and autophagy.

AIM: To investigate the effects of quercetin on diabetic retinopathy (DR) and its association with nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-like receptors 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome and autophagy using retinal endothelial cell as an experimental model. METHODS: Human retinal microvascular endothelial cells (HRMECs) were cultured in vitro and assigned into the control group, high-glucose (HG) group, and HG+different concentrations of quercetin groups. Cellular viability, migration, and tube formation in these groups was detected by MTT, transwell and matrigel assay, respectively. Expressions of NLRP3, apoptosis-associated speck-like protein (ASC), cysteiny aspartate-specific protease-1 (Caspase-1) as well as microtubule-related protein 1 light chain 3 (LC3) and Beclin-1 were detected by Western blotting. Expressions of IL-1ß and IL-18 were detected by ELISA and cellular autophagy was detected by Cyto-ID® autophagy detection kit. RESULTS: Under an HG condition, the viability, migration, tube formation of HRMECs, and the protein expressions of NLRP3, ASC, Caspase-1, IL-1ß, IL-18, LC3, and Beclin-1 as well as autophagy were all increased. Quercetin inhibited angiogenesis of HRMECs as well as the expressions of NLRP3, ASC, Caspase-1, IL-1ß, IL-18, LC3, Beclin-1, and autophagy of HRMECs under a HG condition. The inhibitory effects of quercetin on angiogenesis, NLRP3 inflammasome and autophagy increased with the increase of its concentration. CONCLUSION: The therapeutic potential of quercetin in retinal neovascularization of DR, and inhibition of NLRP3 inflammasome and autophagy signaling pathway may be involved.

Mucinous variant of invasive micropapillary carcinoma of breast: report of two cases and literature review.

Invasive micropapillary carcinoma (IMPC) is a rare type of malignant tumor of breast with a poor prognosis. There is controversy in the identification of mucinous variant of IMPC with mucinous carcinoma. In the past, it always be diagnosed as micropapillary variant of mucinous carcinoma, but in this study, the author has a different opinion. Here, we report two cases diagnosed as mucinous variant of IMPC. Histological morphologies were similar in the two cases. In difference from mucinous carcinoma, mucinous variant of the IMPC is characterized by micropapillary structure of the tumor cells, higher nuclear atypia, more frequent HER2/Neu overexpression, high proliferation index of Ki-67, increased lymph node metastasis, and poor prognosis. A distinct feature of the 2 cases was that the tumor cells were present as micropapillary or tubular-solid clusters floating in the extracellular mucin pools and most of the floating tumor cells were surrounded by the hyaline lacunae, which can clearly be appreciated even in the background of mucin. Both patients were managed by the standard chemotherapy and radiotherapy combined with simple mastectomy. Up to the time of preparation of this report, both patients have survived for over 4 years. It is important to differentiate a mucinous variants of IMPC from a pure mucinous carcinoma due to their significantly different prognosis and, thereafter, different choices of patient management.

Myxoid adrenocortical adenoma with a pseudoglandular pattern: a case report and literature review.

Adrenocortical adenoma is a benign neoplasm derived from cells of the adrenal cortex. The myxoid variant of this tumor is extremely rare. To our knowledge, only 23 cases of myxoid adrenocortical adenoma have been reported so far and 19 of them mentioned the pseudoglandular pattern. We reported a new case of 56-year-old Chinese female patient whose left adrenal gland was shown a neoplastic lesion by computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Histopathological study showed that the mass was a myxoid adrenocortical adenoma with a pseudoglandular pattern. Then, we performed immunohistochemistry with 28 biomarkers to make differential diagnosis and found that tumor cells were diffusely positive for vimentin, melan-A, CD56, NSE and USP10, and focally positive for cytokeratin pan, cytokeratin 8/18 and VEGF. The labeling index of Ki-67 and Cyclin D1 were about 1% and 50%, respectively. No immunoreactivity was found for EMA, cytokeratin 7, HMB45, S-100, alpha-inhibin, calretinin, synaptophysin, chromogranin A, P53, EGFR, MMP2, DNA topo II alpha, CA125, E-cadherin, P63, P16 and Her-2. The patient has been followed up for 37 months after tumor resection and no evidence was found to suggest any local recurrence or any metastatic disease. Myxoid adrenocortical adenoma with a pseudoglandular pattern is extremely rare. The accurate diagnosis should be based on combined consideration of clinical characteristics, CT, MR imaging and pathological features, and should be distinguished from other retroperitoneal myxoid tumors.