Association of cesarean section with risk of childhood leukemia: A meta-analysis from an observational study.

Recent studies suggest that children born via cesarean section (CS) are predisposed to immune-mediated diseases later in life. The association between CS and childhood leukemia was investigated in this meta-analysis of observational studies. Two researchers independently searched PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, and Cochrane Library for literature on the association between CS and childhood leukemia before February 2022. And pooled odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to determine the link between CS and childhood leukemia. The preliminary search resulted in 1321 articles and 16 articles were finally included after screening. The primary outcome was the risk of leukemia in children born via CS versus those born vaginally. The results revealed that having a CS was associated with an increased risk of childhood leukemia compared to having vaginal section (VS) (OR = 1.07, 95% CI: 1.02-1.13, p = 0.01), especially for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) (OR = 1.09, 95% CI: 1.03-1.16, p = 0.004). Children delivered via elective CS had a higher risk of ALL (OR = 1.18, 95% CI: 1.07-1.31, p = 0.001), but emergency CS did not. It is worth noting that neither emergency CS nor elective CS were found to be associated with acute myeloid leukemia. Compared to VS, CS increased the risk of leukemia in children, with elective CS significantly increasing ALL risk.

How Does Public Health Investment Affect Subjective Well-Being? Empirical Evidence from China.

Maximizing or improving residents' subjective well-being is one of the basic purposes of public expenditure. As an important component of public expenditure, the impact of public health investment on residents' subjective well-being receives considerable attention. Regarding the empirical evidence, this paper measures residents' subjective well-being from the perspectives of overall cognitive happiness, life satisfaction, positive emotions and negative emotions, on the basis of a multi-level structural model of subjective well-being. Factor analysis is used to estimate the subjective well-being of residents at the province level in China, based on the China Family Panel Studies of 2018. In addition, structural equation modeling is employed to explore the impact of public health investment and its regional disparity on the subjective well-being of residents. The empirical results show that public health investment has a significant positive effect on residents' subjective well-being. Moreover, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the regional disparity of public health investment and residents' subjective well-being. Further study illustrates that the effects of public health investment and its regional disparity on residents' subjective well-being are heterogeneous by group. Public health investment has a greater impact on the well-being of low- and middle-income, eastern and urban residents than high-income, midwest and rural residents.

Population Aging, Health Investment and Economic Growth: Based on a Cross-Country Panel Data Analysis.

With the economic development of various countries and the deepening of population aging, health plays an increasingly important role in the macro-economy. How to meet the growing health needs as well as promote the economy has captured the attention of the world. Therefore, whether health investment can promote economic growth is an important theoretical and practical issue. An extended Mankiw-Romer-Weil model (MRW) with human health capital and population aging is employed to examine the impact on economic growth from population aging and health investment. On the basis of the theoretical model, this paper uses the LSDV and TSLS methods to carry out an empirical study based on cross-country panel data during the period 2000-2016. The empirical results show that health investment plays a significant role in promoting economic growth, and there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between population aging and economic growth. The impacts on economic growth from health investment and population aging can weaken each other. In addition, this paper also finds that health investment structure and the proportion of government health investment to total government spending can affect economic growth.

The efficacy and safety of the addition of poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors to therapy for ovarian cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to explore the efficacy and tolerability of poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors in patients with ovarian cancer. METHODS: The meta-analysis searched the PubMed, Web of Science, EBSCO, and Cochrane libraries from inception to February 2020 to identify relevant studies. And the main results of this study were long-term prognosis and treatment-related adverse events. RESULTS: The results showed that the addition of PARP inhibitors could significantly prolong progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) for patients with ovarian cancer (HR 0.44, 95% CI 0.34-0.53, p < 0.001; HR, 0.79, 95% CI 0.65-0.94, p < 0.001, respectively). In the BRCA 1/2 mutation patients, the HR of PFS was 0.29 (p < 0.001), and the HR was 0.51 (p < 0.001) in the no BRCA 1/2 mutation patients. The HR of PFS was 0.40 (p < 0.001) in the homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) mutation patients, while the HR was 0.80 (p < 0.001) in the no HRD mutation patients. Moreover, the analysis found that the use of PARP inhibitors did not significantly increase the risk of all grade adverse events (AEs) (RR = 1.04, p = 0.16). But the incidence of grade 3 or higher AEs was increased (RR = 1.87, p = 0.002). In general, the AEs were mainly manifested in the blood system. CONCLUSIONS: PARP inhibitors can improve the prognosis of ovarian cancer patients with and without genetic mutations (BRCA 1/2 or HRD). Furthermore, PARP inhibitors were tolerable to patients when added to their current therapy, although it inevitably adds the grade 3 and higher AEs.

Expression of CCL18 gene in ovarian cancer and its impact on the biologic function of ovarian cancer cells.

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the expression of the chemokine ligand 18 (CCL18) gene in ovarian cancer and to investigate the effects of its overexpression or suppression on growth, invasion, and metastasis in an ovarian carcinoma cell line (SKOV3) in vitro. CCL18 mRNA expression in epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC), benign ovarian tumor and normal ovarian tissues was measured by fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction. A CCL18 restructuring plasmid was constructed, and SKOV3 cells were transfected with the plasmid DNA in vitro. A restructuring interference vector was also transfected into CCL18-positive SKOV3 cells. The growth curves, cell cycle distribution, and invasive, migrative and adhesive capacities of SKOV3 cells following overexpression and suppression of CCL18 were evaluated by MTT assay, flow cytometry, Transwell assay, migration assay, and the fibronectin adhesion method, respectively. The positive expression rate of CCL18 in EOC was significantly higher than in benign ovarian tumor (P = 0.002) and normal ovarian tissues (P = 0.003). However, there was no statistical significance in the expression of CCL18 with regard to clinical pathology (including histological classification, pathological grade and surgical pathological stage), and the median survival times of CCL18-positive and CCL18-negative patients did not differ significantly. The invasive, migrative, and adhesive capacities of SKOV3-CCL18 cells were significantly higher than those of SKOV3 and SKOV3-vector cells (P < 0.05). However, there was no significant difference in cell proliferation between the SKOV3-CCL18 and negative control cells. The invasive, migrative, and adhesive capacities of the pSilencer4.1-CCL18-small interfering RNA127 group were significantly lower than those of non-transfected pSilencer4.1-negative and pSilencer4.1 groups (P < 0.05). In conclusion, the overexpression and silencing of CCL18 affected invasion, adhesion, and migration in EOC cells; thus CCL18 may have potential as a clinical marker for early diagnosis of malignant ovarian tumors, and as a target molecule in the treatment of ovarian cancer.

[Study of growth, invasion and metastasis on ovarian epithelial cancer cell line with CCL18 over-expression by mediated in vitro].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of growth, invasion and metastasis on ovarian cancer cell line SKOV3 with chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 18 (CCL18) over-expression by mediated in vitro. METHODS: The restructuring plasmid of CCL18 expression was constructed and SKOV3 cells was transfected with plasmid DNA in vitro. The growth curve, cell cycle, cell migration, invasion and adhesion capacity in SKOV3-CCL18 cells and control cells were detected by methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay, flow cytometry, transwell chamber, migration invasion and fibronectin adhesion method, respectively. RESULTS: (1) CCL18-pEGFP-N1 plasmid was successfully constructed and transmitted to the SKOV3 cells, the stable growth of the subculture SKOV3-CCL18 cells was screening and completed. (2) Compared with SKOV3-CCL18 cells and SKOV3 or SKOV3-pEGFP-N1 cells, there was not differences statistically significant in growth curve (all P > 0.05); but the rate of the SKOV3-CCL18 cells in a proliferative field (S+G2+M) was significantly higher than that in SKOV3 or SKOV3-pEGFP-N1 cells (32.80% versus 27.06%, 32.80% versus 26.98%, respectively; all P < 0.05). (3) The invasion, migration and adhesion capacity of SKOV3-CCL18 cells (being 0.49 ± 0.18, 1.16 ± 0.25 and 0.39 ± 0.10, respectively) in vitro were significantly higher than those in SKOV3 (being 0.23 ± 0.13, 0.36 ± 0.10 and 0.16 ± 0.03, respectively) or SKOV3-pEGFP-N1 cells (being 0.19 ± 0.05, 0.38 ± 0.23 and 0.13 ± 0.11, respectively; all P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The CCL18 over-expression in epithelial ovarian cancer SKOV3 cells could lead to strengthen ability of invasion, migration and adhesion in vitro.