RESUMO
The plum rain season is a special climatic phenomenon in east Asia, which is characterized by persistent rainfall, a high temperature, and humidity, providing suitable environmental conditions for certain pathogenic bacteria, thus increasing the incidence of respiratory, gastrointestinal, and urinary diseases. However, studies on human opportunistic pathogenic bacteria communities during the plum rain season are still limited. In this study, the characteristics of human opportunistic pathogenic bacterial communities on daily necessities during the non-plum and plum rain seasons were investigated using high-throughput sequencing technology. The results revealed that the relative abundance of human opportunistic pathogenic bacteria was higher in the plum rain season (cotton cloth: 2.469%, electric bicycles: 0.724%, rice: 3.737%, and washbasins: 5.005%) than in the non-plum rain season (cotton cloth: 1.425%, electric bicycles: 0.601%, rice: 2.426%, and washbasins: 4.801%). Both temperature and relative humidity affected human opportunistic pathogenic bacterial communities. Stochastic processes dominated the assembly process of human opportunistic pathogenic bacterial communities, and undominated processes prevailed. The stability of the co-occurrence network was higher in the non-plum rain season than that in the plum rain season. In addition, the proportion of deterministic processes showed the same trend as the complexity of the co-occurrence network.
RESUMO
Sorafenib is the standard therapeutic strategy for recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) following hepatectomy. However, only few patients truly benefit from this therapy. Thus, new strategies combined with sorafenib are urgently required. We herein present the case of a patient with hepatic and extrahepatic HCC recurrence following hepatectomy, who was treated by combined sorafenib, focused ultrasound knife and DRibbles-pulsed dendritic cell (DC) vaccine. Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSpot assay (ELISPOT) and intracellular staining (ICS) analysis were used to detect the secretion of interferon (IFN)-γ by T cells at different timepoints of the vaccine in order to evaluate the patient's specific T-cell response to SMMC-7721-derived DRibbles vaccine. The α-fetoprotein level decreased from 103,295 to 5 ng/ml and the patient displayed improved liver function, an Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status score of 0, remission of liver metastases and disappearance of the lung metastases 8 months post-combination therapy. The computed tomography scan revealed the disappearance of liver metastases 2 years post-combination therapy. The ELISPOT data revealed a low antigen-specific T-cell response 4 weeks after the first vaccine cycle and the response decreased to nearly zero prior to the second cycle. However, high antigen-specific T-cell response was observed 2 weeks after the second vaccine cycle and did not decrease, even after 10 months, which was consistent with the result of the ICS analysis, which demonstrated that most of the secreted IFN-γ was produced by CD4+ T cells, whereas a low CD8+ T-cell response was observed (0.429 vs. 0.0665%, respectively). Our results demonstrated that antigen-specific T-cell response aimed to treat recurrent HCC may be induced through stimulation by the DC-DRibbles vaccine. The success of the treatment supports the combination of sorafenib, focused ultrasound knife and DC-DRibbles vaccine as a therapeutic strategy for patients with HCC recurrence following hepatectomy.
