Endovascular Interventional Procedure is a Significant Risk Factor of Postsurgical Gout: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

INTRODUCTION: Surgery is a risk factor for flares in people with gout. However, gout flares after endovascular interventional procedures are not well understood. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical features and risk factors for gout flare that develop during the postsurgical period including endovascular procedures. METHODS: We enrolled 222 patients with gout who developed postsurgical gout and 196 controls who had histories of gout but did not develop gout flares after surgery within 20 days. Clinical characteristics of patients who developed a postsurgical gout flare were compared with the controls. RESULTS: The rate of endovascular interventional procedures was higher (38.74% vs. 13.48%, P < 0.001) in the flare group than in the no-flare group and lower in orthopedic surgery (13.96% vs. 41.84%, P < 0.001). The Cox model showed that endovascular interventional procedures (HR, hazard ratio 1.752; 95% CI, confidence interval 1.126-2.724, P = 0.013) and presurgical uric acid levels of ≥ 7 mg/dl (HR 1.489; 95% CI 1.081-2.051, P = 0.015) were significantly associated with increased risks of postsurgical gout flare, and taking colchicine before surgery were significantly associated with decreased risk of postsurgical gout flare (HR 0.264; 95% CI 0.090-0.774, P = 0.015). There was no significant difference in the types of endovascular interventional procedures between the flare group and the no-flare group. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with a history of gout should be more alert to recurrence gout flares after endovascular interventional procedures. Adequate presurgical control of serum uric acid levels and/or prophylactic treatment with colchicine will help prevent gout flares during the postsurgical period.

Primary tumor resection improves survival benefit of stage IVB cervical carcinoma: a new perspective.

PURPOSE: Recent studies have revealed that primary tumor resection (PTR) surgery could improve prognosis in some solid tumors. Thus, we aimed to investigate whether patients with stage IVB cervical carcinoma can benefit from PTR surgery and who can benefit. METHODS: We extracted and obtained data on patients with stage IVB cervical carcinoma from the SEER database from 2010 to 2017 and classified them into two groups: the surgery and the non-surgery group. The overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) of the two groups were compared before and after propensity score matching (PSM). The independent prognostic variables were identified using univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses. Then, the model was established to select the optimal patients to receive PTR surgery using multivariate logistic regression. RESULTS: After PSM, the study included 476 cervical carcinoma (stage IVB) patients, of whom 238 underwent PTR surgery. Compared to the non-surgery group, the surgery group's median OS and median CSS were both longer (median OS: 27 months vs. 13 months, P < 0.001; median CSS: 52 months vs. 21 months, P < 0.001). The model showed no organ metastasis, adenocarcinoma, G1/2, and chemotherapy were more supportive of performing PTR surgery. The calibration curves and DCA showed that the model had high predictive accuracy and excellent clinical applicability. Finally, the "surgery benefit" group had the OS that was approximately four times better than "surgery non-benefit" group. CONCLUSION: PTR surgery can potentially improve the prognosis of patients with cervical carcinoma at stage IVB. The model could probably select optimal candidates and provide a new perspective on individualized treatment.

Febuxostat Therapy for Patients with Gout and Stage 2-4 CKD: a Retrospective Study.

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this study is to explore the efficacy and renal safety of febuxostat in gout and stage 2-4 chronic kidney disease (CKD) and factors that correlated with target serum urate (SU). METHODS: A single-center retrospective study including male patients with gout and CKD was conducted. SU, the rate of SU < 360 µmol/L (RAT), and renal safety were analyzed in subjects who received febuxostat over 44 weeks. Factors that correlated with target SU were also explored. RESULTS: Between January 2017 and March 2021, 102 patients (stage 2 CKD: n = 27; stage 3 CKD: n = 70; stage 4 CKD: n = 5) were enrolled. The SU level reduced significantly over 44 weeks (600.76 ± 95.42 versus 405.52 ± 111.93 µmol/L; P < 0.05), and RAT increased to 39.20%. The overall estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) level improved over 44 weeks (52.05 ± 11.68 versus 55.46 ± 14.49 mL/min/1.73 cm2, P < 0.05). An obvious improvement of eGFR was observed in stage 3 CKD, in patients with ≤ 1 risk factor (hypertension, diabetic mellitus, hyperlipidemia, or usage of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), and in patients with terminal SU < 360 µmol/L (P < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis indicated that baseline SU level and body weight were correlated with RAT. Further analysis revealed that patients with SU < 600 µmol/L and body weight ≤ 70 kg reached higher RAT (56.7%). CONCLUSIONS: Febuxostat demonstrated efficacy and renal safety in patients with gout and CKD in clinical practice. Achieving the target SU could obviously improve renal function. Baseline SU level and body weight could affect the achievement of target SU.

Quantification and evolution of mitochondrial genome rearrangement in Amphibians.

BACKGROUND: Rearrangement is an important topic in the research of amphibian mitochondrial genomes ("mitogenomes" hereafter), whose causes and mechanisms remain enigmatic. Globally examining mitogenome rearrangements and uncovering their characteristics can contribute to a better understanding of mitogenome evolution. RESULTS: Here we systematically investigated mitogenome arrangements of 232 amphibians including four newly sequenced Dicroglossidae mitogenomes. The results showed that our new sequenced mitogenomes all possessed a trnM tandem duplication, which was not exclusive to Dicroglossidae. By merging the same arrangements, the mitogenomes of ~ 80% species belonged to the four major patterns, the major two of which were typical vertebrate arrangement and typical neobatrachian arrangement. Using qMGR for calculating rearrangement frequency (RF) (%), we found that the control region (CR) (RF = 45.04) and trnL2 (RF = 38.79) were the two most frequently rearranged components. Forty-seven point eight percentage of amphibians possessed rearranged mitogenomes including all neobatrachians and their distribution was significantly clustered in the phylogenetic trees (p < 0.001). In addition, we argued that the typical neobatrachian arrangement may have appeared in the Late Jurassic according to possible occurrence time estimation. CONCLUSION: It was the first global census of amphibian mitogenome arrangements from the perspective of quantity statistics, which helped us to systematically understand the type, distribution, frequency and phylogenetic characteristics of these rearrangements.

Identification of significant genes signatures and prognostic biomarkers in cervical squamous carcinoma via bioinformatic data.

BACKGROUND: Cervical squamous cancer (CESC) is an intractable gynecological malignancy because of its high mortality rate and difficulty in early diagnosis. Several biomarkers have been found to predict the prognose of CESC using bioinformatics methods, but they still lack clinical effectiveness. Most of the existing bioinformatic studies only focus on the changes of oncogenes but neglect the differences on the protein level and molecular biology validation are rarely conducted. METHODS: Gene set data from the NCBI-GEO database were used in this study to compare the differences of gene and protein levels between normal and cancer tissues through significant pathway selection and core gene signature analysis to screen potential clinical biomarkers of CESC. Subsequently, the molecular and protein levels of clinical samples were verified by quantitative transcription PCR, western blot and immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: Three differentially expressed genes (RFC4, MCM2, TOP2A) were found to have a significant survival (P < 0.05) and highly expressed in CESC tissues. Molecular biological verification using quantitative reverse transcribed PCR, western blotting and immunohistochemistry assays exhibited significant differences in the expression of RFC4 between CESC and para-cancerous tissues (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: This study identified three potential biomarkers (RFC4, MCM2, TOP2A) of CESC which may be useful to clarify the underlying mechanisms of CESC and predict the prognosis of CESC patients.

Development and Validation of an RNA-Binding Protein-Based Prognostic Model for Ovarian Serous Cystadenocarcinoma.

Ribonucleic acid-binding proteins (RBPs) are reportedly involved in tumor progression and recurrence; however, the functions and mechanisms of action of RBPs in ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma (OSC) are not known. To address these issues, gene expression profiles of OSC tissues from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and normal tissues from the Genotype-Tissue Expression database were compared in order to identify RBPs that are differentially expressed in OSC. We also analyzed the biological functions of these RBPs and their relationship to clinical outcome. There were 190 RBPs that were differentially expressed between OSC and normal tissues, including 93 that were upregulated and 97 that were downregulated. Five of the RBPs were used to construct a prediction model that was evaluated by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses. TCGA data were randomly divided into training and test cohorts, and further categorized into high- and low-risk groups according to risk score in the model. The overall survival (OS) of the high-risk group was shorter than that of the low-risk group (training cohort P = 0.0007596; test cohort P = 0.002219). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the training and test cohorts was 0.701 and 0.638, respectively, demonstrating that the model had good predictive power. A nomogram was established to quantitatively describe the relationship between the five prognostic RBPs and OS in OSC, which can be useful for developing individualized management strategies for patients.

qMGR: A new approach for quantifying mitochondrial genome rearrangement.

Rearrangement is one of the most studied features in the animal mitochondrial genomes. The progress in high-throughput sequencing and comparative genomics has brought opportunities for systematic studies of mitochondrial genome rearrangements. However, there are few reports on globally examining mitogenome rearrangement and distinguishing the rearrangement frequency of each gene, which could contribute to a better understanding of its models and evolution. We presented qMGR, a new approach for large-scale quantifying mitogenome rearrangements considering a single gene as a structural unit. Compared to a reference arrangement, qMGR accumulates the changes of two nearest neighbor genes to calculate rearrangement score (RS) and rearrangement frequency (RF) of each single gene in the mitogenomes of a given taxonomic group. By accumulating RS of all genes in one genome, qMGR was developed to calculate each mitogenome rearrangement score, which can be used as a quantitative feature of the mitogenome rearrangement. Based on the frequency of rearrangement of each gene, qMGR can further detect the conserved gene set and high frequency rearrangement segments within the taxon. They may facilitate the assessment of rearrangement distances and understanding rearrangement mechanisms. qMGR web service is freely available at http://qmgr.hnnu.edu.cn/. The source code is available under GNU GPL at https://github.com/zhanglab2019/qMGR.