An outbreak associated with Escherichia albertii in a junior high school, China.

Escherichia albertii is an emerging foodborne enteropathogen associated with infectious diarrhoea in humans. In February 2023, an outbreak of acute gastroenteric cases was reported in a junior high school located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China. Twenty-two investigated patients presented diarrhoea (22/22, 100%), abdominal pain (21/22, 95.5%), nausea (6/22, 27.3%), and vomiting (3/22, 13.6%). E. albertii strains were successfully isolated from anal swabs collected from six patients. Each isolate was classified as sequence type ST2686, harboured eae-ß gene, and carried both cdtB-I and cdtB-II subtypes, being serotyped as EAOg32:EAHg4 serotype. A comprehensive whole-genome phylogenetic analysis revealed that the six isolates formed a distinct cluster, separate from other strains. These isolates exhibited minimal genetic variation, differing from one another by 0 to 1 single nucleotide polymorphism, suggesting a common origin from a single clone. To the best of our knowledge, this represented the first reported outbreak of gastroenteritis attributed to E. albertii outside of Japan on a global scale.

Simultaneous and ultrafast detection of pan-SARS-coronaviruses and influenza A/B viruses by a novel multiplex real-time RT-PCR assay.

Here we report an ultrafast quadruplex RT-qPCR assay with robust diagnostic ability to detect and distinguish pan-SARS-CoVs and influenza A/B viruses within 35 min. This quadruplex RT-qPCR assay comprised of one novel RNA-based internal control targeting human ß2-microglobulin (B2M) for process accuracy and three newly-designed primers-probe sets targeting the envelope protein (E) of pan-SARS-CoV, matrix protein (MP) of influenza A virus and non-structural (NS) region of influenza B virus. This quadruplex assay exhibited a sensitivity comparable to its singleplex counterparts and a slightly higher to that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-recommended SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A/B assays. The novel assay showed no false-positive amplifications with other common respiratory viruses, and its 95 % limits of detection for pan-SARS-CoV and influenza A/B virus was 4.26-4.52 copies/reaction. Moreover, the assay was reproducible with less than 1 % coefficient of variation and adaptable testing different clinical and environmental samples. Our ultrafast quadruplex RT-qPCR assay can serve as an attractive tool for effective differentiation of influenza A/B virus and SARS-CoV-2, but more importantly prognose the reemergence/emergence of SARS and novel coronaviruses or influenza viruses from animal spillover.

Phase 2 Study of Preoperative Tislelizumab in Combination with Low-dose Nab-Paclitaxel in Patients with Muscle-invasive Bladder Cancer.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Combinations of immune checkpoint inhibitors and nab-paclitaxel have achieved significant therapeutic effects in the treatment of advanced urothelial carcinoma. Our aim was to assess the efficacy and safety of tislelizumab combined with low-dose nab-paclitaxel in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). METHODS: TRUCE-01 was a single-arm phase 2 study that included 62 patients with T2-4a N0/X M0 MIBC tumors with predominant urothelial carcinoma histology. Eligible patients received three 21-d cycles of intravenous 200 mg tislelizumab on day 1 plus intravenous 200 mg nab-paclitaxel on day 2, followed by surgical assessment. The primary study endpoint was a clinical complete response (cCR). Treatment-related adverse event (TRAE) profiles were recorded according to Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events version 5.0. KEY FINDINGS AND LIMITATIONS: The safety analysis included all 62 patients and the efficacy analysis included 48 patients. The primary efficacy endpoint (cCR) was met by 25 patients (52%) patients. Among the 62 patients in the safety analysis, six (9.7%) had grade ≥3 TRAEs. CONCLUSIONS: Tislelizumab combined with low-dose nab-paclitaxel showed promising antitumor effectiveness and was generally well tolerated, which makes it an excellent preoperative therapy option for MIBC. PATIENT SUMMARY: We found that a combination of the drugs tislelizumab and low-dose nab-paclitaxel had satisfactory efficacy and safety for preoperative treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

Withdrawal notice to: "Pan-cancer analyses of clinical prognosis, immune infiltration, and immunotherapy efficacy for TRPV family using multi-omics data" [Heliyon 9, (2023) 16897].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e16897.].

Development of a universal real-time RT-PCR assay for detection of pan-SARS-coronaviruses with an RNA-based internal control.

The current pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) exemplifies the critical need for rapid diagnostic assays to prompt intensified virological monitoring both in human and wild animal populations. To date, there are no clinical validated assays for pan-SARS-coronavirus (pan-SARS-CoV) detection. Here, we suggest an innovative primer design strategy for the diagnosis of pan-SARS-CoVs targeting the envelope (E) gene using reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Furthermore, we developed a new primer-probe set targeting human ß2-microglobulin (B2M) as an RNA-based internal control for process efficacy. The universal RT-qPCR assay demonstrated no false-positive amplifications with other human coronaviruses or 20 common respiratory viruses, and its limit of detection (LOD) was 159.16 copies/ml at 95% detection probability. In clinical validation, the assay delivered 100% sensitive results in the detection of SARS-CoV-2-positive oropharyngeal samples (n = 120), including three variants of concern (Wuhan, Delta, and Omicron). Taken together, this universal RT-qPCR assay provides a highly sensitive, robust, and rapid detection of SARS-CoV-1, SARS-CoV-2, and animal-derived SARS-related CoVs.

Pan-cancer analyses of clinical prognosis, immune infiltration, and immunotherapy efficacy for TRPV family using multi-omics data.

Background: Transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily V (TRPV) play an essential in cancer initiation, progression, and treatment. TRPV expression alteration are shown relate to multiple cancers prognosis and treatment of cancers but are less-studied in pan-cancer. In this study, we characterize the clinical prediction value of TRPV at pan-cancer level. Methods: Several databases were used to examine the transcript expression difference in tumor vs. normal tissue, copy-number variant (CNV) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) mutation of each TRPV members in pan-cancer, including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and cBioPortal. We performed K-M survival curve and univariate Cox regression analyses to identify survival and prognosis value of TRPV. CellMiner were selected to explore drug sensitivity. We also analyzed association between tumor mutation burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI), tumor immune microenvironment and TRPV family genes expression. Moreover, we investigated the relationship between TRPVs expression and effectiveness of immunotherapy in multiple cohorts, including one melanoma (GSE78220), one renal cell carcinoma (GSE67501), and three bladder cancer cohorts (GSE111636, IMvigor210, GSE176307 and our own sequencing dataset (TRUCE-01)), and further analyzed the changes of TRPVs expression before and after treatment (tislelizumab combined with nab-paclitaxel) of bladder cancer. Next, we made a special effort to investigate and study biological functions of TRPV in bladder cancer using gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), and conducted immune infiltration analysis with TRPVs family genes expression, copy number or somatic mutations of bladder cancer by TIMER 2.0. Finally, real-time PCR and protein expression validation of TRPVs within 10 paired cancer and para-carcinoma tissue samples, were also performed in bladder cancer. Results: Only TRPV2 expression was lower in most cancer types among TRPV family genes. All TRPVs were correlated with survival changes. Amplification was the significant gene alternation in all TRPVs. Next, analysis between TRPVs and clinical traits showed that TRPVs were related to pathologic stage, TNM stage and first course treatment outcome. Moreover, TRPV expression was highly correlated with MSI and TMB. Immunotherapy is a research hotspot at present, our result showed the significant association between TRPVs expression and immune infiltration indicated that TRPV expression alternation could be used to guide prognosis. In addition, we also discovered that the expression level of TRPV1/2/3/4/6 was positively or negatively correlated with objective responses to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 across multiple immunotherapy cohort. Further analysis of drug sensitivity showed the value to treatment. Based on the above analysis, we next focused on TRPV family in bladder cancer. The result demonstrated TRPV also played an important role in bladder cancer. Finally, qPCR assay verified our analysis in bladder cancer. Conclusion: Our study firstly revealed expression and genome alternation of TRPV in pan-cancer. TRPV could be used to predict prognosis or instructing treatment of human cancers, especially bladder cancer.

Enhancing urinary tract infection diagnosis for negative culture patients with metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS).

Background: Metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) is a promising technology that allows unbiased pathogen detection and is increasingly being used for clinical diagnoses. However, its application in urinary tract infection (UTI) is still scarce. Methods: The medical records of 33 patients with suspected UTI who were admitted to the Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University from March 2021 to July 2022 and received urine mNGS were retrospectively analyzed. The performance of mNGS and conventional urine culture in diagnosing infection and identifying causative organisms was compared, and the treatment effects were evaluated in terms of changes in urinalyses and urinary symptoms. Results: In the detection of bacteria and fungi, mNGS detected at least one pathogen in 29 (87.9%) cases, including 19 (57.6%) with positive mNGS but negative culture results and 10 (30.3%) with both mNGS and culture positive results. The remaining 4 (12.1%) patients were negative by both tests. Overall, mNGS performed better than culture (87.9% vs. 30.3%, P < 0.001). Within the 10 double-positive patients, mNGS matched culture results exactly in 5 cases, partially in 4 cases, and not at all in 1 case. In addition, mNGS detected a broader pathogen spectrum, detecting 26 species compared to only 5 species found in culture. The most abundant bacteria detected by mNGS was Escherichia coli, detected in 9 (27.2%) patients. All anaerobic bacteria, Mycobacterium Tuberculosis and all mixed pathogens were detected by mNGS. The final clinical diagnosis of UTI was made in 25 cases, and the sensitivity of mNGS was significantly higher than culture (100.0% vs 40.0%; P < 0.001) when using the diagnosis as a reference standard; the positive predictive value, negative predictive value and specificity were 86.2%, 100% and 50.0%, respectively. Importantly, targeted antibiotic therapy based on mNGS resulted in significant improvement in urinalyses and urinary symptoms in patients. Conclusions: mNGS is a technology that has shown clear advantages over culture, particularly in the context of mixed infections and UTIs that are difficult to diagnose and treat. It helps to improve the detection of pathogens, guide changes in treatment strategies, and is an effective complement to urine culture.

Identification of a dysregulated CircRNA-associated gene signature for predicting prognosis, immune landscape, and drug candidates in bladder cancer.

Increasing evidences have demonstrated that circular RNA (circRNAs) plays a an essential regulatory role in initiation, progression and immunotherapy resistance of various cancers. However, circRNAs have rarely been studied in bladder cancer (BCa). The purpose of this research is to explore new circRNAs and their potential mechanisms in BCa. A novel ceRNA-regulated network, including 87 differentially expressed circRNAs (DE-circRNAs), 126 DE-miRNAs, and 217 DE-mRNAs was constructed to better understanding the biological processes using Cytoscape 3.7.1 based on our previously high-throughput circRNA sequencing and five GEO datasets. Subsequently, five randomly selected circRNAs (upregulated circ_0001681; downregulated circ_0000643, circ_0001798, circ_0006117 and circ_0067900) in 20 pairs of BCa and paracancerous tissues were confirmed using qRT-PCR. Functional analysis results determined that 772 GO functions and 32 KEGG pathways were enriched in the ceRNA network. Ten genes (PFKFB4, EDNRA, GSN, GAS1, PAPPA, DTL, TGFBI, PRSS8, RGS1 and TCF4) were selected for signature construction among the ceRNA network. The Human Protein Atlas (HPA) expression of these genes were consistent with the above sequencing data. Notably, the model was validated in multiple external datasets (GSE13507, GSE31684, GSE48075, IMvigor210 and GSE32894). The immune-infiltration was evaluated by 7 published algorithms (i.e., TIMER, CIBERSORT, CIBERSORT-ABS, QUANTISEQ, MCPCOUNTER, XCELL and EPIC). Next, Correlations between riskscore or risk groups and clinicopathological data, overall survival, recognized immunoregulatory cells or common chemotherapeutic agents of BCa patients were performed using wilcox rank test, chi-square test, cox regression and spearman's correlation analysis; and, these results are significant. According to R package "GSVA" and "clusterProfiler", the most significantly enriched HALLMARK and KEGG pathway was separately the 'Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition' and 'Ecm Receptor Interaction' in the high- vs. low-risk group. Additionally, the functional experiments in vitro also revealed that the overexpression of has_circ_0067900 significantly impaired the proliferation, migration, and invasion capacities of BCa cells. Collectively, the results of the current study provide a novel landscape of circRNA-associated ceRNA-regulated network in BCa. The ceRNA-associated gene model which was constructed presented a high predictive performance for the prognosis, immunotherapeutic responsiveness, and chemotherapeutic sensitivity of BCa. And, has_circ_0067900 was originally proposed as tumor suppressor for patients with BCa.