Clinical Manifestation, mNGS Based Diagnosis and Treatment of Pulmonary Mucormycosis with Rhizopus delemar in a Diabetic Patient.

Pulmonary mucormycosis is a severe and often fatal disease that commonly affects patients with underlying conditions, such as diabetes. Early diagnosis and appropriate treatment are crucial for improving survival rates. However, clinical diagnosis remains challenging due to difficulty in obtaining etiological evidence. In this particular case, the patient presented with a cough-producing bloody sputum, and a chest CT revealed lesions in the right upper lobe of the lung. The patient was ultimately diagnosed with pulmonary mucormycosis caused by Rhizopus delemar through clinical bronchoscopy biopsy and metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) analysis of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid sample. Subsequently, antifungal therapy using the less toxic Amphotericin B cholesterol Organosulfate complex was initiated, improving the patient's condition. In conclusion, our findings underscore the potential of mNGS to provide an accurate and rapid etiological diagnosis of pulmonary mucormycosis, offering a foundation for treatment.

Furosemide improves the stone clearance rate of extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy for kidney stones but not ureteral stones: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Introduction: We conducted a meta-analysis (MA) to investigate the effects of furosemide on the prognosis of extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy (SWL) therapy to remove renal (RS) and ureteric stones (US). Methods: We screened scientific databases including PubMed, Clinicalkey, Google Scholar, Medline, Embase, and Cochrane, from the date of establishment until March 2022, to search for randomized controlled trials evaluating SWL, in combination with furosemide (experimental group) or with SWL alone (control group), in treating RS or US. Our search terms included furosemide, extracorporeal SWL, and urolithiasis. For this MA, we employed the Cochrane Collaboration's RevMan version 5.3.0. Results: Six trials, involving 1344 participants, with RS (n = 1097) and/or US (n = 247), met our predefined criteria. This included 137 proximal ureteral stones (PUSs), 35 mid-ureteral stones (MUS), and 75 distal ureteral stones (DUS). In case of RS, the experimental group exhibited significantly enhanced clearance, relative to controls (risk ratio [RR] = 1.16, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.07-1.25, p = 0.0002), yet there was no obvious difference in the PUS, MUS, and DUS (RR = 1.14, 95% CI = 0.97-1.33, p = 0.10; odds ratio [OR] = 1.26, 95% CI = 1.40-3.95, p = 0.69; RR = 1.21, 95% CI = 0.99-1.49, p = 0.06). There was also no marked difference between fragmentations in either group. Only reports of SWL treatment of RS provided adequate data on shocks, sessions, and complications for our analysis. Unfortunately, there was no significant alteration between the two groups. Conclusion: According to our analysis, furosemide strongly accelerates the clearance rate of SWL-treated RS. However, it does not enhance the fragmentation rate. Given this evidence, we propose that furosemide does not significantly improve the efficacy of SWL therapy in removing US. Registration: Our work is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42020204780).

Image-based promoter prediction: a promoter prediction method based on evolutionarily generated patterns.

Prediction of promoter regions is crucial for studying gene function and regulation. The well-accepted position weight matrix method for this purpose relies on predefined motifs, which would hinder application across different species. Here, we introduce image-based promoter prediction (IBPP) as a method that creates an "image" from training promoter sequences using an evolutionary approach and predicts promoters by matching with the "image". We used Escherichia coli σ70 promoter sequences to test the performance of IBPP and the combination of IBPP and a support vector machine algorithm (IBPP-SVM). The "images" generated with IBPP could effectively distinguish promoter from non-promoter sequences. Compared with IBPP, IBPP-SVM showed a substantial improvement in sensitivity. Furthermore, both methods showed good performance for sequences of up to 2,000 nt in length. The performances of IBPP and IBPP-SVM were largely affected by the threshold and dimension of vectors, respectively. The source code and documentation are freely available at https://github.com/hahatcdg/IBPP .

Knockdown of S-phase kinase-associated protein-2 expression in MCF-7 inhibits cell growth and enhances the cytotoxic effects of epirubicin.

S-phase kinase-associated protein-2 (Skp2) plays a key role in ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, resulting in the progression of cells from a quiescent to a proliferative state. Skp2 is overexpressed in a variety of tumors and inversely correlated with p27 expression, including breast cancer. In this study, we used small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) to inhibit Skp2 expression in human breast cancer MCF-7 cells and thereby investigate if knockdown of Skp2 by RNA interference (RNAi) would inhibit breast cancer cell growth and influence the effects of epirubicin on MCF-7 cells. Three Skp2 siRNA constructs were recombined and transiently transfected human breast cancer MCF-7 cells. Down-regulation of Skp2 was confirmed by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and Western blot analysis. We showed that Skp2 siRNA transfection decreased Skp2 protein and induced the accumulation of p27 protein in MCF-7 cells. Skp2 siRNA inhibited the cell proliferation both in vitro and in vivo. Knockdown of Skp2 by RNAi increased cellular apoptosis in vitro. Treatment with Skp2 siRNA followed by treatment with epirubicin further inhibited the proliferation of cancer cell lines, compared with control siRNA followed by epirubicin. Therefore, knockdown of Skp2 expression by RNAi inhibits breast cancer cell growth and enhances the effect of epirubicin. siRNA-mediated gene silencing of Skp2 could be a novel cancer gene therapy for the suppression of p27 down regulation.