Correlation of Claudin18.2 expression with clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis in gastric cancer.

OBJECTIVES: Claudin18.2 (Cldn18.2) is a tight junction protein expressed in gastric epithelial cells and is an emerging target for gastric cancer (GC). This study aimed to analyze the correlation between Cldn18.2 and clinicopathological parameters in GC patients undergoing radical surgery. METHODS AND RESULTS: This study included 426 GC patients who underwent radical gastrectomy. The expression of Cldn18.2 was analyzed by immunohistochemical staining and grading. The statistical results indicated that the expression of Cldn18.2 was correlated with T stage, TNM stage, Lauren classification, and the expression level of Mucin-2 (MUC2), Mucin-5AC (MUC5AC), Mucin-6 (MUC6), human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), P53 and trefoil factor 2 (TFF2). In addition, through data mining of the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, it is suggested that Cldn18.2 expression level is significantly correlated with the expression level of MUC5AC, MUC6, and TFF2. Besides, Cldn18.2 is related to tumor immune infiltration, programmed cell death protein 1 (PD 1) pathway, cell cycle and Wnt signaling pathway. CONCLUSIONS: The expression of Cldn18.2 was closely related to gastric-type GC, so gastric-type GC patients may benefit more from targeted drugs targeting Cldn18.2. In GC cells, depletion of Cldn18.2 may influence cell cycle and immune response by affecting Wnt signaling pathway and PD 1 pathway.

Performance evaluation model of transportation infrastructure: Perspective of COVID-19.

The transportation systems are facing major challenges due to changes social environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. How to construct a suitable evaluation criterion system and suitable assessment method to evaluate the status of the urban transportation resilience has become a predicament nowadays. Firstly, the criteria for evaluating the current state of transportation resilience involve many aspects. New features of transportation resilience under epidemic normalization are exposed, and previous summaries focusing on resilience characteristics under natural disasters can hardly reflect the current state of urban transportation resilience comprehensively. Based on this, this paper attempts to incorporate the new criteria (Dynamicity, Synergy, Policy) into the evaluation system. Secondly, the assessment of urban transportation resilience involves numerous indicators, which make it difficult to obtain quantitative figures for the criteria. With this background, a comprehensive multi-criteria assessment model based on q-rung orthopair 2-tuple linguistic sets is constructed to evaluate the status of transportation infrastructure from perspective on the COVID-19. Then, an example of urban transportation resilience is given to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach. Subsequently, sensitivity analysis about parameters and global robust sensitivity analysis are conducted, and comparative analysis of existing method is given. The results reveal that the proposed method is sensitive to global criteria weights, so it is suggested that more attention should be paid to the rationality of the weight of criteria to avoid the influence on the results when solving MCDM problems. Finally, the policy implications regarding transport infrastructure resilience and appropriate model development are given.

Plumbagin inhibits tumor angiogenesis of gastric carcinoma in mice by modulating nuclear factor-kappa B pathway.

BACKGROUND: We aimed to determine the mechanism of plumbagin on tumor growth of gastric carcinoma. METHODS: Sixty BALB/c mice were treated with 200 µL SGC-7901 cells to establish gastric carcinoma xenograft and randomly divided into four groups: model group, low dose of plumbagin group (2 mg/kg), medium dose of plumbagin group (4 mg/kg) and high dose of plumbagin group (6 mg/kg). The tumor volume and weight were measured every week, and the ratio of anti-tumor was analyzed. The contents of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), VEGF receptor-2 (VEGFR2) in serum and tumor tissues were tested by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), immunohistochemistry and Western blot, respectively. The microvessel density (MVD) in tumor tissues was evaluated by immunohistochemistry and Western blot. The levels of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) p-p65/NF-κB p65, p-inhibitor of NF-κB (IκB)α/IKBα, p-IκB kinase (IKK)/IKK in tumor tissues were also analyzed by Western blot. RESULTS: Compared with model group, plumbagin treatment significantly suppressed the growth of tumor (P<0.05). The inhibition rate was 50.32% in high dose group (6 mg/kg). Furthermore, we found that the expressions of VEGF, VEGRF2 and MVD were obviously decreased in plumbagin treatment groups when compared to model group (P<0.05). Importantly, plumbagin treatment could down-regulate the levels of NF-κB p-p65/NF-κB p65, p-IKK/IKK and p-IKBα/IKBα in tumor tissues. CONCLUSIONS: Our study indicated that plumbagin might be an effective drug in inhibiting the tumor angiogenesis of gastric cancer and the mechanism of anti-tumor may be associated with NF-κB pathway.

Study on the adult physique with the Heath-Carter anthropometric somatotype in the Han of Xi'an, China.

The study of somatotypes has important significance for medical and physical anthropology as well as sports science. The aim of this study was to understand the somatotype components of the Han population in Xi'an and compare the somatotypes of the Han and five other nationalities in China. The study sample consisted of 429 people of Han nationality (207 males, 222 females) from Xi'an, China, aged ≥20 years old. The Heath-Carter anthropometric method was employed. We evaluated the differences in age and sex by one-way ANOVA and t test. A comparison of somatotypes between the Han and other nationalities was made using the U test. The results showed that the male and female samples all could be classified as having a mesomorphic endomorph profile. The difference in endomorphy was strongest between sexes in all age groups (P < 0.01). There were prominent differences in mesomorphy and ectomorphy between males and females in the 50-59- and ≥60-year-old age groups. In females, the differences in somatotype components appeared to be distinguished between ages (P < 0.01 or P < 0.05). However, in males, there were prominent differences in somatotype components between the 20-29 year olds and all other age groups (P < 0.01 or P < 0.05) except for between those 20-29 and ≥60 years old in endomorphy. Compared with the other five nationalities, there were prominent differences in somatotype components between males and females. These results suggest that the somatotype of the Han population in Xi'an, China, has a predominantly mesomorphic endomorph profile. The endomorphic component shows distinct differences between ages and genders, respectively. Additionally, there are distinct differences in the somatotype components between Xi'an Han and five other nationalities in China in males and females.

The traits of five types of tongue movement in Han of Shaanxi, China.

The study sample consisting of 429 people (207 males, 222 females) of Han nationality in Shaanxi, China. Five types of tongue movements were investigated, including tongue rolling, tongue folding, tongue twisting, pointed tongue and clover-leaf tongue. The results revealed that the frequencies of tongue rolling, tongue folding, tongue twisting, pointed tongue and clover-leaf tongue were 63.6, 14.0, 12.6, 54.8 and 0 %, respectively. There were no significant gender differences except with pointed tongue. Compared with other nationalities, tongue rolling, tongue folding, and pointed tongue of Han in Shaanxi had an average frequency. Tongue twisting and clover-leaf tongue had low frequencies. There were significant differences in frequency of clover-leaf tongue between Han and another seven nationalities of China (P < 0.01). Furthermore, only three pairs of trait correlations were exhibited among ten pairs of types of tongue movement combination traits when analyzed using Pearson's correlation coefficient. The data indicated that the correlations of tongue movement were between tongue rolling and tongue folding, between pointed tongue and tongue rolling, and also between tongue folding and pointed tongue, respectively. Additionally, there were significant differences in frequency of tongue movements with age. The possible mechanism of variations of tongue movements with aging may involve the degradation of tongue function, and differential gene activation and modulation, or protein translation.