ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic disease and one of the most disabling diseases for patients. The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) issued a new guideline in 2015 for the treatment of RA based on the treat-to-target strategy to achieve better outcomes. This study will focus on the real-world rates of remission and low disease activity of patients with early RA in China, who will be treated according to the 2015 ACR guideline. Additionally, factors influencing treat-to-target outcomes will be analysed, and long-term prognosis and quality of life will be assessed. METHOD AND ANALYSIS: Two-hundred patients with early RA will be enrolled, treated and followed up once every 3 months for 48 months. These patients should fulfil the 2010 RA classification criteria of the ACR/European League Against Rheumatism with a disease course of no more than 6 months and should also fulfil other eligibility criteria. The patients will be treated following the 2015 ACR guideline. Their disease activity will be assessed, and they will be instructed to complete several questionnaires once every 3 months. The primary outcomes are the Disease Activity Score on 28 joints and Health Assessment Questionnaire Disability Index. The secondary outcome variables are the Simplified Disease Activity Index, Clinical Disease Activity Index and Routine Assessment of Patient Index Data 3 results, imaging data and personal medical costs. The data will be analysed using appropriate statistical analyses. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This research was approved by the Nanfang Hospital Ethics Committee (NFEC-2017-192). The results of the study will be published in international peer-reviewed journals. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT03508713; Pre-results.
Subject(s)
Antirheumatic Agents/therapeutic use , Arthritis, Rheumatoid/drug therapy , Practice Guidelines as Topic , Quality of Life , Arthritis, Rheumatoid/physiopathology , China , Early Medical Intervention , Humans , Patient Care Planning , Prognosis , Prospective Studies , Rheumatology , Severity of Illness Index , Societies, MedicalABSTRACT
A number of short noncoding microRNAs (miRs) have been demonstrated to be highly expressed in many kidney diseases such as renal cancer and lupus nephritis (LN); however, these results have not been extensively investigated. The aim of the present study was to investigate the expression and function of miR198 in LN based on the previous studies. miR198 expression level in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients was determined to determine its clinicopathological significance and effect on glomerular cell proliferation. It was demonstrated that higher expression of miR198 was observed in patients with SLE, and was correlated with disease activity. Bioinformatics prediction and luciferase assays were used to demonstrate that miR198 could directly bind to the phosphatase and tensin homology deleted on chromosome ten (PTEN) 3'untranslated region. Furthermore, miR198 overexpression reduced PTEN expression levels, while miR198 silencing increased its expression at both the mRNA and protein level. Furthermore, there was a negative association between miR198 and PTEN in the patients with active SLE. Thus, miR198 may promote proliferation and contribute to SLE progression by targeting PTEN.
Subject(s)
Kidney Glomerulus/metabolism , Lupus Nephritis/genetics , MicroRNAs/genetics , PTEN Phosphohydrolase/genetics , 3' Untranslated Regions , Animals , Antagomirs/genetics , Antagomirs/metabolism , Base Sequence , Binding Sites , Cell Proliferation , Computational Biology/methods , Disease Progression , Gene Expression Regulation , Genes, Reporter , HEK293 Cells , Humans , Kidney Glomerulus/pathology , Luciferases/genetics , Luciferases/metabolism , Lupus Nephritis/metabolism , Lupus Nephritis/pathology , Mesangial Cells/cytology , Mesangial Cells/metabolism , Mice , MicroRNAs/antagonists & inhibitors , MicroRNAs/metabolism , PTEN Phosphohydrolase/metabolism , Signal TransductionABSTRACT
An accurate edge extraction method for the ultrasound breast tumor image is useful for classifying tumors as benign or malignant. This paper refers to a fast technique to extract edge of breast tumor from ultrasound image. This method uses the triangular fuzzy number to build up a fuzzy number plane whose basic unit is the marching square. It is possible to visualize at once the results obtained using different presumption levels. Experiments of benign and malignant breast tumor in ultrasound images have shown that our method can extract the breast tumor edge faster than many conventional methods can do separately, and the results are reliable and credible. Our experiments demonstrate that it can be efficiently used to extract the edge of breast tumor from the ultrasound image.
Subject(s)
Breast Neoplasms/diagnostic imaging , Ultrasonography, Mammary/methods , Female , Fuzzy Logic , HumansABSTRACT
Staurosporine, an inhibitor of protein kinase C, is a potential antitumor drug and its derivatives are used as anticancer drugs in clinical trials. Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) is implicated in all forms of Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), primary effusion lymphoma (PEL), and multicentric Castleman's disease (MCD), indicating it to be a DNA tumor virus. It is difficult to culture cell lines derived from KS patients; we therefore used a cell line derived from PEL (BCBL-1) to investigate whether staurosporine affects the HHV-8-related tumors. Our results show that staurosporine treatment reduces the cell viability of BCBL-1 cells and causes cell cycle arrest in the G2/M phase. The G2/M arrest was associated with the decrease in the expression of Cdc2 and cyclin B. Furthermore, the induction of the HHV-8 lytic cycle was not observed under the staurosporine treatment.
