A gold nanorod (GNR)−photosensitizer complex was developed for noninvasive near-infrared fluorescence imaging and cancer therapy. We showed that (a) fluorescence emission and singlet oxygen ...generation by AlPcS4 were quenched after complex formation with GNRs; (b) 4-fold greater intracellular uptake and better in vitro phototoxicity were observed in GNR−AlPcS4-treated cells than in free AlPcS4-treated cells; and (c) after intravenous injection of the GNR−AlPcS4 complex, tumor sites were clearly identified on near-infrared fluorescence images as early as 1 h after injection. The tumor-to-background ratio increased over time and was 3.7 at 24 h; tumor growth reduced by 79% with photodynamic therapy (PDT) alone and by 95% with dual photothermal therapy (PTT) and PDT. This novel multifunctional nanomedicine may be useful for near-infrared fluorescence imaging and PTT/PDT in various cancers.
The risk of depression has risen in the general population during the COVID-19 epidemic. This study was conducted to explore risk and protective factors associated with depression among the general ...population uninfected by COVID-19.
A cross-sectional study was conducted with 1,500 representative South Korean citizens aged 19-65 years through an anonymous online survey. Depression was defined as a Patient Health Questionnaire-9 score of 10 or higher. Other questionnaires included one measuring psycho-behavioural and social changes, and stress, due to COVID-19, a six-item version of the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6), and a three-item version of the UCLA loneliness scale.
Of the 1492 participants not infected by COVID-19, 312 (20.9%) exhibited depression. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that depression was positively associated with COVID-19-related stress and psycho-behavioural variables such as disturbances in eating and sleeping, younger age, smoking, underlying mental illness, and loneliness scale scores. In contrast, exercise three or more times per week and GQ-6 scale scores were inversely associated with depression.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining daily routines including eating, sleeping, and regular exercise and focusing on gratitude may be important for the prevention of depression. In addition, more attention should be paid to vulnerable populations, including young people, those with mental illnesses, and smokers, who might be more susceptible to depression.
Although several somatic single nucleotide variations in histone H3.3 have been investigated as cancer drivers, other types of aberration have not been well studied. Here, we demonstrate that ...overexpression of H3F3A, encoding H3.3, is associated with lung cancer progression and promotes lung cancer cell migration by activating metastasis-related genes. H3.3 globally activates gene expression through the occupation of intronic regions in lung cancer cells. Moreover, H3.3 binding regions show characteristics of regulatory DNA elements. We show that H3.3 is deposited at a specific intronic region of GPR87, where it modifies the chromatin status and directly activates GPR87 transcription. The expression levels of H3F3A and GPR87, either alone or in combination, are robust prognostic markers for early-stage lung cancer, and may indicate potential for the development of treatments involving GPR87 antagonists. In summary, our results demonstrate that intronic regulation by H3F3A may be a target for the development of novel therapeutic strategies.
The dramatic changes in people's daily lives caused by the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have had a huge impact on their emotions and behaviors. This study aimed to examine psychosocial ...responses to COVID-19 using network analysis. A total of 1,500 urban residents of South Korea, selected from an online public panel, were surveyed using self-rating questionnaires addressing daily life changes, fear of infection, and distress related to COVID-19. Participants also completed a 10-item Perceived Stress Scale survey. We constructed regularized partial correlation networks, estimated global and local network metrics, tested network accuracy and stability, and compared the estimated networks between men and women. The network of the psychosocial responses consisted of 24 nodes that were classified into five groups: 'fear of infection', 'difficulty with outside activities', 'economic loss', 'altered eating and sleeping', and 'adaptive stress'. The node centralities indicated that 'distress in obtaining daily necessities' and 'concern about harming others' were the most important issues in people's responses to COVID-19. These nodes were connected by a negative edge, reflecting individual- and community-level issues, respectively. The overall level of perceived stress was linked to the network by the connection node 'anger toward others or society', which was associated with economic problems in men, but with distress from changes in daily activities in women. The results suggest that two contrasting feelings-personal insecurity regarding basic needs and a collectivistic orientation-play roles in the response to unusual experiences and distress due to COVID-19. This study also showed that public anger could arise from the psychological stress under the conditions imposed by COVID-19.
Interferons (IFNs) are a crucial component in the innate immune response. Especially the IFN-β signaling operates in most cell types and plays a key role in the first line of defense upon pathogen ...intrusion. The induction of IFN-β should be tightly controlled, because its hyperactivation can lead to tissue damage or autoimmune diseases. Activation of the IFN-β promoter needs Interferon Regulatory Factor 3 (IRF3), together with Nuclear Factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB) and Activator Protein 1 (AP-1). Here we report that a human noncoding RNA, nc886, is a novel suppressor for the IFN-β signaling and inflammation. Upon treatment with several pathogen-associated molecular patterns and viruses, nc886 suppresses the activation of IRF3 and also inhibits NF-κB and AP-1 via inhibiting Protein Kinase R (PKR). These events lead to decreased expression of IFN-β and resultantly IFN-stimulated genes. nc886's role might be to restrict the IFN-β signaling from hyperactivation. Since nc886 expression is regulated by epigenetic and environmental factors, nc886 might explain why innate immune responses to pathogens are variable depending on biological settings.
Sulfatide, a major lipid component of myelin sheath, participates in diverse cellular events of the CNS, and its cellular level has recently been implicated in many inflammation-associated neuronal ...diseases. Herein, we report that sulfatide alone can trigger pathological inflammatory responses in glia, brain-resident immune cells. We show that sulfatide changed the morphology of primary microglia to their activated form, and it significantly induced the production of various inflammatory mediators in primary microglia and astrocytes. Moreover, sulfatide rapidly triggered the phosphorylation of p38, ERK, and JNK within 30 min, and it markedly enhanced the NF binding activity to NF-kappaB and AP-1 binding elements. However, nonsulfated galactocerebroside, another major lipid component of myelin, had no effect on activation of glia. We further reveal that CD1d did not contribute to sulfatide-stimulated activation of MAPKs, although its expression was enhanced by sulfatide and sulfatide-treated microglial cells actually stimulated type II NKT cells. Sulfatide significantly stimulated the phosphorylation of MAPKs in glia from CD1d-deficient mice, and the phosphorylation levels were similar to those in wild-type littermates. Sulfatide-triggered inflammatory events appear to occur at least in part through an L-selectin-dependent mechanism. L-selectin was dramatically down-regulated upon exposure to sulfatide, and inhibition of L-selectin resulted in suppression of sulfatide-triggered responses. Collectively, these results show that abnormally released sulfatide at demyelinated regions may act as an endogenous stimulator in the brain immune system, thus causing and further exacerbating pathological conditions in the brain.
•The prevalence of MeS was higher in cancer survivors by 1.56-fold compared to controls without chronic disease.•The prevalence of MeS was lower than that in controls with chronic disease.•The ...prevalence was higher in colorectal, breast, cervical, lung, thyroid, prostate, and bladder cancer survivors.
To compare the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MeS) in cancer survivors returning to the community to that of non-cancer controls.
We used baseline data from a nationwide cohort study. 5274 cancer survivors and 20,703 and 21,096 gender- and age-matched controls without and with chronic disease was included.
The prevalence of MeS was higher in cancer survivors compared to controls without chronic disease, but was lower than that in controls with chronic disease (25.7%, 18.8%, and 32.0%, respectively). The prevalence was 1.56-fold higher in cancer survivors (95% confidence interval = 1.45–1.69) than in controls without chronic disease. The prevalence of each MeS component was significantly higher in cancer survivors compared to controls without chronic disease. Compared to controls, the prevalence was higher in colorectal, breast, cervical, lung, thyroid, prostate, and bladder cancer survivors (OR range = 1.63–2.24, P-value < 0.05), but not in gastric and liver cancer survivors.
MeS was generally more prevalent among cancer survivors than in controls without chronic disease, but with heterogeneities in cancer type. Because long-term care and comorbidity prevention are emerging issues in cancer survivors, MeS among those returning to normal life is concerning, and tailored management programs should be developed for specific cancer types.
Inflammation is closely related to the extent of damage following cerebral ischaemia, and the targeting of this inflammation has emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy. Here, we present that ...hypoxia-induced glial T-cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain protein (TIM)-3 can function as a modulator that links inflammation and subsequent brain damage after ischaemia. We find that TIM-3 is highly expressed in hypoxic brain regions of a mouse cerebral hypoxia-ischaemia (H/I) model. TIM-3 is distinctively upregulated in activated microglia and astrocytes, brain resident immune cells, in a hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-1-dependent manner. Notably, blockade of TIM-3 markedly reduces infarct size, neuronal cell death, oedema formation and neutrophil infiltration in H/I mice. Hypoxia-triggered neutrophil migration and infarction are also decreased in HIF-1α-deficient mice. Moreover, functional neurological deficits after H/I are significantly improved in both anti-TIM-3-treated mice and myeloid-specific HIF-1α-deficient mice. Further understanding of these insights could serve as the basis for broadening the therapeutic scope against hypoxia-associated brain diseases.
This study aimed to compare psychosocial distress in areas in Korea with different prevalence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) after validating a questionnaire on psychological experiences and ...stress associated with the disease outbreak.
Using an online-based survey, psychosocial distress associated with COVID-19 was investigated in three regions, which were selected according to their prevalence of COVID-19. A total of 1,500 people from an online public panel in the three regions participated in the study. The questionnaire included sociodemographic information, psychosocial experience and stress related to COVID-19, and the perceived stress scale (PSS), patient health questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and generalized anxiety disorder-7 (GAD-7). Those questionnaires and scales were compared by level of prevalence of COVID-19 after validating the questionnaire on psychosocial distress associated with COVID-19.
The 19 items on psychosocial experience associated with COVID-19 comprised 5 subscales, with favorable Cronbach's α ranging from 0.69 to 0.88. Six stress items related to COVID-19 had a Cronbach's α of 0.79. Disturbance in eating and sleeping, difficulty with outside activities, stress from COVID-19, and PSS scores were greater in the areas where COVID-19 was highly prevalent. Economic problems, daily activity changes, and anger toward society were higher in the higher-prevalence regions.
Psychosocial distress associated with COVID-19 was closely related to the prevalence of the disease in the areas where participants lived. Psychosocial interventions for distress associated with COVID-19 should be developed and prepared for people during this lengthy pandemic.
FX: an RNA-Seq analysis tool on the cloud DONGWAN HONG; RHIE, Arang; CHONG, Hyonyong ...
Bioinformatics (Oxford, England),
03/2012, Letnik:
28, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
FX is an RNA-Seq analysis tool, which runs in parallel on cloud computing infrastructure, for the estimation of gene expression levels and genomic variant calling. In the mapping of short RNA-Seq ...reads, FX uses a transcriptome-based reference primarily, generated from ~160 000 mRNA sequences from RefSeq, UCSC and Ensembl databases. This approach reduces the misalignment of reads originating from splicing junctions. Unmapped reads not aligned on known transcripts are then mapped on the human genome reference. FX allows analysis of RNA-Seq data on cloud computing infrastructures, supporting access through a user-friendly web interface.
FX is freely available on the web at (http://fx.gmi.ac.kr), and can be installed on local Hadoop clusters. Guidance for the installation and operation of FX can be found under the 'Documentation' menu on the website.
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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