Thalassaemia in China.

Because of successful thalassaemia prevention programmes in resource-rich countries and it's huge population China now has the greatest number of new cases of thalassaemia globally as well as more people with thalassaemia than any other country. 30 million Chinese have thalassaemia-associated mutations and about 300,000 have thalassaemia major or intermedia requiring medical intervention. Over the past 2 decades there has been tremendous economic growth in China including per capita spending on health care. There is now nation-wide availability and partial or full insurance for prenatal genetic testing, RBC-transfusions, iron-chelating drugs and haematopoietic cell transplants. Prenatal screening and educational programmes have reduced the incidence of new cases. However, substantial challenges remain. For example, regional differences in access to medical care and unequal economic development require innovations to reduce the medical, financial and psychological burdens of Chinese with thalassaemia and their families. In this review we discuss success in preventing and treating thalassaemia in China highlighting remaining challenges. Our discussion has important implications for resource-poor geospaces challenged with preventing and treating thalassaemia.

Isolation and purification of pulmonary surfactant-associated protein A from human amniotic fluid and its bioactivity assessment.

OBJECTIVE: To isolate and purify pulmonary surfactant-associated protein A(SP-A) from human amniotic fluid. METHODS: Human amniotic fluid was collected from 11 parturients and SP-A was isolated by extraction and dialysis followed by purification procedures. The specificity of SP-A was detected by Western blotting and the bioactivity assessed by MTP-1 film balance. RESULTS: An amount of 12 mg (20 ml) purified SP-A was obtained, and the protein presented a single band upon SDS-PAGE with relative molecular mass of 31 000. Western blotting also displayed one specific band. Film balance demonstrated that the minimum surface tension alphamin of Exosurf, an synthetic pulmonary surfactant, was 7.7+/-0.3, significantly higher than alphamin of Exosurf and SP-A mixture(1.5+/-0.22, P<0.05), indicating enhanced bioactivity of the mixture. CONCLUSION: Dialysis can effectively purify SP-A from human amniotic fluid with little damage of its biological activity.