A Lightweight Anonymous Authentication Protocol with Perfect Forward Secrecy for Wireless Sensor Networks.

Due to their frequent use in unattended and hostile deployment environments, the security in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has attracted much interest in the past two decades. However, it remains a challenge to design a lightweight authentication protocol for WSNs because the designers are confronted with a series of desirable security requirements, e.g., user anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, resistance to de-synchronization attack. Recently, the authors presented two authentication schemes that attempt to provide user anonymity and to resist various known attacks. Unfortunately, in this work we shall show that user anonymity of the two schemes is achieved at the price of an impractical search operation-the gateway node may search for every possible value. Besides this defect, they are also prone to smart card loss attacks and have no provision for perfect forward secrecy. As our main contribution, a lightweight anonymous authentication scheme with perfect forward secrecy is designed, and what we believe the most interesting feature is that user anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, and resistance to de-synchronization attack can be achieved at the same time. As far as we know, it is extremely difficult to meet these security features simultaneously only using the lightweight operations, such as symmetric encryption/decryption and hash functions.

Upregulation of miR-494 Inhibits Cell Growth and Invasion and Induces Cell Apoptosis by Targeting Cleft Lip and Palate Transmembrane 1-Like in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

BACKGROUND: Potential target genes of microRNA (miR)-494 have been reported in many types of cancers. However, the role of miR-494 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remains unknown. AIM: This study focused on the expression and biological function of miR-494 in ESCC. METHODS: Using bioinformatics analyses, we found that cleft lip and palate transmembrane 1-like (CLPTM1L) was a potential target of miR-494. We performed quantitative real-time (qRT) PCR assays in 37 ESCC tumor tissues to determine the expression of miR-494 and CLPTM1L mRNA, and we analyzed the correlation between both of these factors and clinical characteristics. The cell counting kit-8 and colony formation assays were used to evaluate the effects of miR-494 expression on the proliferation of ESCC cells. The transwell migration assay and flow cytometric apoptosis assay were performed to study the influence of miR-494 on the invasion and apoptosis of ESCC cells. Western blotting, luciferase assays, and CLPTM1L knockdown experiments were used to determine whether CLPTM1L was a target of miR-494. RESULTS: The qRT-PCR assays showed significant downregulation of miR-494 (P < 0.05) and upregulation of CLPTM1L mRNA (P < 0.05), both of which were significantly associated with lymph node metastases (P < 0.05). High expression of miR-494 inhibited cell proliferation and invasion and promoted cell apoptosis (P < 0.05). The results also showed that CLPTM1L was a target of miR-494. CONCLUSION: These results show that the expression of miR-494, which can regulate cell growth, invasion and apoptosis of ESCC cells by targeting CLPTM1L, is downregulated in ESCC tumor tissues. The miR-494-CLPTM1L pathway could be further exploited to develop a new approach to treat ESCC.

[Cost-effectiveness analysis of esophageal cancer once-in-a-lifetime endoscopic screening in high-risk areas of rural China].

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the cost-effectiveness of esophageal cancer endoscopic screening once-in-a-lifetime and to predict the optimal screening age for people in high-risk areas of rural China. METHODS: A Markov model was constructed to predict and compare the effect of four esophageal cancer endoscopic screening modalities which varied with different screening ages. Long-term epidemiological effectiveness and cost-effectiveness were predicted by simulation of the model. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, strategies starting at 40, 45, 50 and 55 year-old had saved life-years of 629.51, 769.88, 738.98 and 533.21 years per 100 000 people, respectively, of which the strategy starting at 45 year-old saved the maximum life years. All strategies were cost-effective and starting at 40 year-old cost the most per life-year saved. Among all alternatives, strategies starting age at 45 year-old and 50 year-old were incremental cost-effective, and the incremental cost-effective ratios were 34 962.87 and 3 346.43 RMB per life year saved, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The strategy starting at 40 year-old implemented at present and other strategies were cost-effective in high-risk areas of rural China. However, the 45-year-old group is more aligned with the principle of cost-effectiveness. Considering the cost-effectiveness of different strategies and social economic status, 45 year-old is regarded as the optimal starting age of esophageal cancer once-in-a-lifetime endoscopic screening and is recommended in areas lacking health resources. The strategy of starting age at 40 year-old which could obtain better screening effects would be preferable in wealthy regions.

Genotypic variants at 2q33 and risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in China: a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies.

Genome-wide association studies have identified susceptibility loci for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). We conducted a meta-analysis of all single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that showed nominally significant P-values in two previously published genome-wide scans that included a total of 2961 ESCC cases and 3400 controls. The meta-analysis revealed five SNPs at 2q33 with P< 5 × 10(-8), and the strongest signal was rs13016963, with a combined odds ratio (95% confidence interval) of 1.29 (1.19-1.40) and P= 7.63 × 10(-10). An imputation analysis of 4304 SNPs at 2q33 suggested a single association signal, and the strongest imputed SNP associations were similar to those from the genotyped SNPs. We conducted an ancestral recombination graph analysis with 53 SNPs to identify one or more haplotypes that harbor the variants directly responsible for the detected association signal. This showed that the five SNPs exist in a single haplotype along with 45 imputed SNPs in strong linkage disequilibrium, and the strongest candidate was rs10201587, one of the genotyped SNPs. Our meta-analysis found genome-wide significant SNPs at 2q33 that map to the CASP8/ALS2CR12/TRAK2 gene region. Variants in CASP8 have been extensively studied across a spectrum of cancers with mixed results. The locus we identified appears to be distinct from the widely studied rs3834129 and rs1045485 SNPs in CASP8. Future studies of esophageal and other cancers should focus on comprehensive sequencing of this 2q33 locus and functional analysis of rs13016963 and rs10201587 and other strongly correlated variants.

Similarity measure and entropy of fuzzy soft sets.

Soft set theory, proposed by Molodtsov, has been regarded as an effective mathematical tool to deal with uncertainties. Recently, uncertainty measures of soft sets and fuzzy soft sets have gained attentions from researchers. This paper is devoted to the study of uncertainty measures of fuzzy soft sets. The axioms for similarity measure and entropy are proposed. A new category of similarity measures and entropies is presented based on fuzzy equivalence. Our approach is general in the sense that by using different fuzzy equivalences one gets different similarity measures and entropies. The relationships among these measures and the other proposals in the literatures are analyzed.

Multi-level feature interaction image super-resolution network based on convolutional nonlinear spiking neural model.

Image super-resolution (ISR) is designed to recover lost detail information from low-resolution images, resulting in high-quality and high-definition high-resolution images. In the existing single ISR (SISR) methods based on convolutional neural networks (CNN), however, most of the models cannot effectively combine global and local information and are also easy to ignore the correlation between different hierarchical feature information. To address these problems, this study proposes a multi-level feature interactive image super-resolution network, which is constructed by the convolutional units inspired by nonlinear spiking mechanism in nonlinear spiking neural P systems, including shallow feature processing, deep feature extraction and fusion, and reconstruction modules. The different omni domain self-attention blocks are introduced to extract global information in the deep feature extraction and fusion stage and formed a feature enhancement module having a Transformer structure using a novel convolutional unit for extracting local information. Furthermore, to adaptively fuse features between different hierarchies, we design a multi-level feature fusion module, which not only can adaptively fuse features between different hierarchies, but also can better interact with contextual information. The proposed model is compared with 16 state-of-the-art or baseline models on five benchmark datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed model not only achieves good reconstruction performance, but also strikes a good balance between model parameters and performance.

Multiple-in-Single-Out Object Detector Leveraging Spiking Neural Membrane Systems and Multiple Transformers.

Most existing multi-scale object detectors depend on multi-level feature maps. The Feature Pyramid Networks (FPN) is a significant architecture for object detection that utilizes these multi-level feature maps. However, the use of FPN also increases the detector's complexity. For object detection methods that only use a single-level feature map, the detection performance is limited to some extent because the single-level feature map cannot balance deep semantic information and shallow detail information. We introduce a novel detector - the Spiking Neural P Multiple-in-Single-out (SNPMiSo) detector to address these challenges. The SNPMiSo detector is constructed based on SNP-like neurons. In SNPMiSo, we employ two kinds of Transformers to boost the important features across different-level feature maps separately. After enhancing the features, we use an incremental upsampling module to upsample and merge the two feature maps. This combined feature map is input into the NAF dilated residual module and the NAF dual-branch detection head. This process allows us to extract multi-scale features and carry out detection tasks. Our tests show promising results: On the COCO dataset, SNPMiSo attains an Average Precision (AP) of 38.7, an improvement of 1.0 AP over YOLOF. In addition, SNPMiSo demonstrates a quicker detection speed, outperforming some advanced multi-level and single-level object detectors.

Multitask Adversarial Networks Based on Extensive Nonlinear Spiking Neuron Models.

Deep learning technology has been successfully used in Chest X-ray (CXR) images of COVID-19 patients. However, due to the characteristics of COVID-19 pneumonia and X-ray imaging, the deep learning methods still face many challenges, such as lower imaging quality, fewer training samples, complex radiological features and irregular shapes. To address these challenges, this study first introduces an extensive NSNP-like neuron model, and then proposes a multitask adversarial network architecture based on ENSNP-like neurons for chest X-ray images of COVID-19, called MAE-Net. The MAE-Net serves two tasks: (i) converting low-quality CXR images to high-quality images; (ii) classifying CXR images of COVID-19. The adversarial architecture of MAE-Net uses two generators and two discriminators, and two new loss functions have been introduced to guide the optimization of the network. The MAE-Net is tested on four benchmark COVID-19 CXR image datasets and compared them with eight deep learning models. The experimental results show that the proposed MAE-Net can enhance the conversion quality and the accuracy of image classification results.

A Parallel Convolutional Network Based on Spiking Neural Systems.

Deep convolutional neural networks have shown advanced performance in accurately segmenting images. In this paper, an SNP-like convolutional neuron structure is introduced, abstracted from the nonlinear mechanism in nonlinear spiking neural P (NSNP) systems. Then, a U-shaped convolutional neural network named SNP-like parallel-convolutional network, or SPC-Net, is constructed for segmentation tasks. The dual-convolution concatenate (DCC) and dual-convolution addition (DCA) network blocks are designed, respectively, in the encoder and decoder stages. The two blocks employ parallel convolution with different kernel sizes to improve feature representation ability and make full use of spatial detail information. Meanwhile, different feature fusion strategies are used to fuse their features to achieve feature complementarity and augmentation. Furthermore, a dual-scale pooling (DSP) module in the bottleneck is designed to improve the feature extraction capability, which can extract multi-scale contextual information and reduce information loss while extracting salient features. The SPC-Net is applied in medical image segmentation tasks and is compared with several recent segmentation methods on the GlaS and CRAG datasets. The proposed SPC-Net achieves 90.77% DICE coefficient, 83.76% IoU score and 83.93% F1 score, 86.33% ObjDice coefficient, 135.60 Obj-Hausdorff distance, respectively. The experimental results show that the proposed model can achieve good segmentation performance.

Multi-omics characterization of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma identifies molecular subtypes and therapeutic targets.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the predominant form of esophageal cancer and is characterized by an unfavorable prognosis. To elucidate the distinct molecular alterations in ESCC and investigate therapeutic targets, we performed a comprehensive analysis of transcriptomics, proteomics, and phosphoproteomics data derived from 60 paired treatment-naive ESCC and adjacent nontumor tissue samples. Additionally, we conducted a correlation analysis to describe the regulatory relationship between transcriptomic and proteomic processes, revealing alterations in key metabolic pathways. Unsupervised clustering analysis of the proteomics data stratified patients with ESCC into 3 subtypes with different molecular characteristics and clinical outcomes. Notably, subtype III exhibited the worst prognosis and enrichment in proteins associated with malignant processes, including glycolysis and DNA repair pathways. Furthermore, translocase of inner mitochondrial membrane domain containing 1 (TIMMDC1) was validated as a potential prognostic molecule for ESCC. Moreover, integrated kinase-substrate network analysis using the phosphoproteome nominated candidate kinases as potential targets. In vitro and in vivo experiments further confirmed casein kinase II subunit α (CSNK2A1) as a potential kinase target for ESCC. These underlying data represent a valuable resource for researchers that may provide better insights into the biology and treatment of ESCC.

[Prediction of temporal trends in gastric cancer mortality in Linzhou city from 1988 to 2010].

OBJECTIVE: To describe the temporal trends in the mortality rate of gastric cancer during the period of 1988 and 2010, and to predict the gastric cancer mortality between 2016 - 2020. METHODS: The data of gastric cancer mortality in Linzhou city between 1988 and 2010 was extracted from the cancer registry, including a total of 11 714 cases, covering 22 447 073 person-years. The mortality rate of gastric cancer of each 5-year period was calculated by sub-site and gender. Age-standardized rate (ASR) was calculated using the Chinese standard population in 1982. Intrinsic estimator (IE) model was used to fit the mortality trend by sub-site and gender, and to predict the mortality of gastric cancer in Linzhou city between 2016 and 2020. RESULTS: From 1988 to 2010, the gastric cancer mortality in Linzhou city was 52.18/100 000 (11 714/22 447 073) with the ASR at 49.23/100 000; the mortality in male was 67.02/100 000 (7678/11 455 512) with ASR at 68.68/100 000 while the mortality in female was 36.72/100 000 (4036/10 991 561) with ASR at 32.12/100 000. The mortality of cardia carcinoma was 27.87/100 000 (6257/22 447 073) with the ASR at 26.37/100 000; while the mortality of non-cardia carcinoma was 24.31/100 000 (5457/22 447 073) with the ASR at 22.86/100 000. The ASR of gastric cancer during 1988 - 1990 was 63.37/100 000 (1653 cases) and decreased by 28.34%, to 45.41/100 000 (2622 cases) during 2006 - 2010. The IE model showed that the birth cohort effect decreased greatly. The mortality risk of cardia carcinoma in population born after 1950s, decreased significantly; and the mortality risk of non-cardia carcinoma in population born in 20 century continually decreased. The death of gastric cancer among the population over 30 years old was predicted to be 3626 cases, increasing by 40.60% compared with the number between 2006 and 2010 (2579 cases). Among them, the mortality of cardia carcinoma increased by 51.89% (predicted number between 2016 and 2020 was 2456 cases, and 1617 cases between 2006 and 2010), and the mortality of non-cardia carcinoma increased by 21.62% (predicted number between 2016 and 2020 was 1170 cases, and 962 cases between 2006 and 2010). CONCLUSION: The mortality rate of gastric cancer in Linzhou city showed a decreasing trend during the period of 1988-2010, being mainly attributed to the cohort effect. However, the mortality will still increase in the future, between 2016 and 2020.

A Prediction Model Based on Gated Nonlinear Spiking Neural Systems.

Nonlinear spiking neural P (NSNP) systems are one of neural-like membrane computing models, abstracted by nonlinear spiking mechanisms of biological neurons. NSNP systems have a nonlinear structure and can show rich nonlinear dynamics. In this paper, we introduce a variant of NSNP systems, called gated nonlinear spiking neural P systems or GNSNP systems. Based on GNSNP systems, a recurrent-like model is investigated, called GNSNP model. Moreover, exchange rate forecasting tasks are used as the application background to verify its ability. For the purpose, we develop a prediction model based on GNSNP model, called ERF-GNSNP model. In ERF-GNSNP model, the GNSNP model is followed by a "dense" layer, which is used to capture the correlation between different sub-series in multivariate time series. To evaluate the prediction performance, nine groups of exchange rate data sets are utilized to compare the proposed ERF-GNSNP model with 25 baseline prediction models. The comparison results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ERF-GNSNP model for exchange rate forecasting tasks.

[Retracted] miRNA­1207­5p is associated with cancer progression by targeting stomatin­like protein 2 in esophageal carcinoma.

Subsequently to the publication of the above article, and a Corrigendum that has already been published with the intention of showing corrected versions of Figs. 3 and 6 (DOI: 10.3892/ijo.2018.4254; published online on January 24, 2018), a concerned reader drew to the Editor's attention that there appeared to be an unexpected overlap of data in a couple of the panels showing flow cytometric data in Fig. 3A; furthermore, strikingly similar data also appeared in a paper that was submitted to the journal Cancer Gene Therapy at around the same time [Zang W, Wang T, Huang J, Li M, Wang Y, Du Y, Chen X and Zhao G: Long noncoding RNA PEG10 regulates proliferation and invasion of esophageal cancer cells. Cancer Gene Ther 22: 138­144, 2015]. Considering the latest discrepancies and concerns that have been raised with another of the figures in this paper, the Editor of International Journal of Oncology has decided that the article should be retracted from the publication. The authors were asked for an explanation to account for these concerns, but the Editorial Office did not receive a reply. The Editor apologizes to the readership of the Journal for any inconvenience caused. [International Journal of Oncology 46: 2163­2171, 2015; DOI: 10.3892/ijo.2015.2900].

Repurposed benzydamine targeting CDK2 suppresses the growth of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide. It is urgent to develop new drugs to improve the prognosis of ESCC patients. Here, we found benzydamine, a locally acting non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, had potent cytotoxic effect on ESCC cells. Benzydamine could suppress ESCC proliferation in vivo and in vitro. In terms of mechanism, CDK2 was identified as a target of benzydamine by molecular docking, pull-down assay and in vitro kinase assay. Specifically, benzydamine inhibited the growth of ESCC cells by inhibiting CDK2 activity and affecting downstream phosphorylation of MCM2, c-Myc and Rb, resulting in cell cycle arrest. Our study illustrates that benzydamine inhibits the growth of ESCC cells by downregulating the CDK2 pathway.

[Time trends in esophageal cancer mortality in Linzhou city in 1986 - 2010 and future prediction].

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the trends in mortality of esophageal cancer and explore the effects of age, period and cohort on esophageal cancer mortality rate in Linzhou city in 1986 - 2010, and predict the mortality of esophageal cancer in 2016 - 2020. METHODS: All of the esophageal cancer-attributed deaths in 1986 - 2010 were drawn from the database in Center of Cancer and Vita Statistics in Henan Province. The numbers of the death cases and population were tabulated into 5-year age groups and 5-year period groups for each sex and linked each other. The age-adjusted mortality rates were calculated by direct standardization to the Chinese population structure in 1982. Intrinsic estimator model (IE model)was used to perform the age-period-cohort analysis and estimate the corresponding parameters. Age effect, period effect and cohort effect on esophageal cancer mortality rate was plotted separately. The mortality of esophageal cancer during 2016 - 2020 was predicted according to the parameters by that model. RESULTS: A total of 15432 cases died from esophageal cancer in Linzhou city in1986 - 2010. The overall crude mortality rate was 63.89 per 100, 000. Among men, the age-adjusted mortality rate was 109.66 per 100, 000 during 1986-1990 and decreased to 60.59 per 100, 000 during 2006 - 2010. For women, the age-adjusted mortality rate decreased from 74.72 per 100, 000 to 39.05 per 100, 000 at the same two calendar periods. The IE model showed that age effect was remarkable, the period effect was stable and the cohort effect decreased greatly. The predicted mortality of over 30-years old population during 2016 - 2020 is 1501 for men and 1083 for women. Compared with 2006 - 2010 period the mortality will be decreased by 6.71% and 11.08%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The mortality rate of esophageal cancer in Linzhou city shows a decreasing trend during the period of 1986 - 2010. This trend is mainly attributed to the cohort effect. The predicted mortality in the future will decrease continually.

[Period survival analysis of esophageal cancer in Linzhou city of Henan province].

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the survival level and variation of esophageal cancer in Linzhou city of Henan province from 1988 to 2004, and evaluate the effects of diagnosis and treatments on esophageal cancer in this area. METHODS: All incidence and death records for esophageal cancer during 1988 to 2004 were collected from Linzhou Tumor Registry. Cases with duplicate information or death certificate only were excluded. A total of 12,160 cases of esophageal cancer were collected, of which, 6914 cases were male, and 5246 cases were female. The sex-specific and age-specific probabilities of survival in 1992, 1997 and 2002 were calculated and linked to the data of incidence and death on esophageal cancer in this area. Five-year observed survival rate and five-year relative survival rate during 1990 to 1994, 1995 to 1999, 2000 to 2004 were calculated respectively using period survival analysis and cohort survival analysis and Z test. RESULTS: The 5-year relative survival rates among the three-episode were 28.24%, 35.24% and 40.76% respectively during 1988 to 2004. This showed an increasing trend by periods (Z values were 3.94 and 3.07, P < 0.05). The 5-year observed survival rates in men among the three-episode were 13.67%, 18.08% and 22.46% respectively, the 5-year relative survival rates were 29.94%, 36.96% and 38.40%. The 5-year observed survival rates in women among the three-episode were 15.56%, 19.29% and 28.01% respectively, the 5-year relative survival rates were 26.78%, 33.12% and 43.70%. During the two former periods, there was no significant difference in the 5-year observed survival rate and relative survival rate between men and women (Z values of observed survival rate were 1.48 and 0.88, P > 0.05. Z values of relative survival rate were 1.27 and 1.50, P > 0.05). In the third period, the 5-year observed survival rate and relative survival rate in women was higher than that in men (observed survival rate Z = 3.56, P < 0.05; relative survival rate Z = 2.09, P < 0.05). The relative survival rate that calculated using period method (respectively 35.24% and 40.76%) was higher than that using cohort method (respectively 28.77% and 33.35%) from 1995 to 1999, and from 2000 to 2004. CONCLUSION: The survival rate on esophageal cancer in Linzhou city was increasing in the three different periods. This indicated a rising status in the secondary prevention and clinical diagnosis and treatments on esophageal cancer.

[Corrigendum] miRNA-1207-5p is associated with cancer progression by targeting stomatin-like protein 2 in esophageal carcinoma.

An interested reader drew to our attention that, in the above-mentioned article, there were two figures where identity in certain of the data was shared between panels within the same figure. First, in Fig. 3B, the data shown for the EC9706 cell line/negative control (NC) experiment were derived from the same original source as those for the EC-1/Blank control experiment. Secondly, in Fig. 6B the Bcl-2 bands for the two different cell lines, EC9706 and EC-1, were inadvertently duplicated (the data shown for the EC9706 cell line were correct). We have reviewed the original files and the individual figures for the submitted composite figures, and realize that the errors occurred when we produced the composite figures. The same images were accidentally inserted twice in Figs. 3 and 6 without us being fully aware of the error. We have identified all the original images, and the corrected versions of Figs. 3 and 6 are shown opposite. We regret that these errors went unnoticed prior to publication, and thank the Editor for affording us the opportunity to publish this Corrigendum. We also regret any inconvenience caused to the readership of the journal. [the original article was published in the International Journal of Oncology 46: 2163-2171, 2015; DOI: 10.3892/ijo.2015.2900].

[Descriptive analysis of incidence and time trends of esophageal and gastric cancers in Linzhou city].

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the incidence and time trends of esophageal and gastric cancers in Linzhou city bassed on the data of Linxian Tumor Registry, and to provide valid reference data for research and effective estimation of cancer control in this area. METHODS: All incidence records for the both cancers during 1988-2003 were drawn from Linzhou Tumor Registry and grouped by sex, age, year and then linked to corresponding population data. The incidence rates of those two topographic site cancers were calculated and the age-adjusted rates were calculated by direct standardization to the world population. A joinpoint model was used to get the annual percentage change (APC) of the age-adjusted rates, and to estimate the epidemiological trends of both cancers in population of Linzhou city. RESULTS: In the year 2003 the age-adjusted incidence rates of esophageal and gastric cancers were 81.78 per 100 000 and 77.08 per 100 000, respectively, in the population of Linzhou city. The incidence rate of both cancers showed a decreasing trend from 1988 to 2003. The APC of the incidence rates of esophageal cancer was - 2.6% and that of gastric cancer was - 1.8%, and both indexes were statistically significant (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The incidence rates of esophageal and gastric cancers have presented a decreasing trends in the population of Linzhou city. This trend will continue along with the development of social economy, elevation of living standard and improvement in living habit and environment.

[The trends on the mortality for esophagus and stomach cancers in Linzhou city from 1988 to 2003].

OBJECTIVE: Using the data on death for esophagus and stomach cancers in Linzhou cancer registration system, the mortality was described as well as the changing trend was analyzed. METHODS: 18 240 death recorders for the both cancers during 1988 to 2003 were drawn from Linzhou cancer registration system. Of which, 10138 cases were esophageal cancer and 8102 cases were gastric cancer. Then data were stratified by sex, age, year and then linked to demographic classifications. The mortalities of two topographic site cancers were calculated and the age-adjusted rates were calculated by direct standardization to the world population. The Joinpoint model was used to get the estimated annual percent change (EAPC) of the age-adjusted rates, so to estimate the death rate change trends of both cancers in population of Linzhou city. RESULTS: In 2003, the age-adjusted mortalities of esophageal cancer and gastric cancer were 68.47 per 100,000 and 57.01 per 100,000 respectively of Linzhou city. From 1988 to 2003 the death rates for both of cancers had showed the decline trends. The EAPC of the mortality for esophageal cancer was -3.82 (-4.81 - -2.82, P < 0.001) and that for gastric cancer was -2.95 (-4.16 - -1.73, P < 0.001) respectively. CONCLUSION: The declining trend in was observed the mortality of esophageal and gastric cancer in Linzhou by this study.

miRNA-1207-5p is associated with cancer progression by targeting stomatin-like protein 2 in esophageal carcinoma.

Newly discovered intrinsic regulators, the miRNAs regulate gene expression by binding to the 3'-untranslated regions of the genome. Accumulating studies have indicated that miRNAs are aberrantly expressed in various human cancers. We found that miRNA-1207-5p (miR­1207-5p) was markedly downregulated in esophageal carcinoma (EC) tissues, and was correlated with EC differentiation, pathological stage and lymph node metastasis. Rates of apoptosis were increased and cell invasion ability was decreased in EC9706 and EC-1 cells transfected with a miR­1207-5p mimic. Stomatin-like protein 2 (STOML-2) was predicted to be a potential target of miR­1207-5p by bioinformatics analysis and this was confirmed by luciferase assay and western blotting. Our study showed that STOML-2 was negatively regulated by miR­1207-5p. Furthermore, overexpression of STOML-2 abolished the miR­1207-5p anti-invasion function. Based on these results, we proposed that miR­1207-5p might act as a potential therapeutic target in the treatment of EC.