Global road traffic injury statistics: Challenges, mechanisms and solutions / 中华创伤杂志(英文版)

High-quality data are the foundation to monitor the progress and evaluate the effects of road traffic injury prevention measures. Unfortunately, official road traffic injury statistics delivered by governments worldwide, are often believed somewhat unreliable and invalid. We summarized the reported problems concerning the road traffic injury statistics through systematically searching and reviewing the literature. The problems include absence of regular data, under-reporting, low specificity, distorted cause spectrum of road traffic injury, inconsistency, inaccessibility, and delay of data release. We also explored the mechanisms behind the problematic data and proposed the solutions to the addressed challenges for road traffic statistics.

Left-turning vehicle-pedestrian conflicts at signalized intersections with traffic lights: Benefit or harm? A two-stage study / 中华创伤杂志(英文版)

PURPOSE@#Vehicle-pedestrian conflicts are common at road intersections when traffic lights change. However, the impact of traffic light on transportation safety and efficiency remains poorly understood.@*METHODS@#A two-stage study was used to survey the proportion of intersections with conflicting traffic lights and the related transportation efficiency and safety were evaluated as well. First, a cross-sectional study estimated the proportion of signalized intersections with conflicting left-turning vehicle-pedestrian traffic lights in Changsha city, China. Second, a natural experiment compared transportation efficiency and safety between intersections with and without conflicting left-turning vehicle-pedestrian traffic lights. Risky conflicts, where motor vehicles violated laws and failed to yield to pedestrians in crosswalk were used as a surrogate for transportation safety. The number of motor vehicles and pedestrians passing through the intersections per second and per meter were used to estimate transportation efficiency. Data were collected and analyzed in 2015 (from March to December). A search of online news from domestic media sources was also conducted to collect pedestrian injury data occurring at the intersections.@*RESULTS@#About one-fourth (57/216) intersections had conflicting left-turning traffic lights (95% CI: 20.5%, 32.3%). Risky vehicle-pedestrian conflicts were more frequently observed at intersections with conflicting lights compared to those without (incidence rate ratio (IRR) = 3.13; pedestrians: IRR = 4.02), after adjusting for type of day (weekday vs. weekend), the time period of observation, and motor vehicles traffic flow. Intersections without conflicting vehicle-pedestrian traffic lights had similar transportation efficiency to those with conflicting lights after controlling for covariates (p > 0.05). The systematic review of news media reports yielded 10 left-turning vehicle-pedestrian crash events between 2011 and 2017, involving 11 moderate or severe pedestrian injuries and 3 fatal pedestrian injuries.@*CONCLUSION@#Over one-fourth of road intersections in Changsha city, China have conflicting left-turning traffic lights. Conflicting traffic lights cannot improve transportation efficiency, but increase risky conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians.

Expression of long non-coding RNA H19 in serum in patients with acute pancreatitis and its clinical significance / 临床肝胆病杂志

Objective To investigate the expression of the long non-coding RNA (IncRNA) H19 in the serum of patients with acute pancreatitis and its clinical significance.Methods A total of 82 patients who were diagnosed with acute pancreatitis in Emergency Department and Department of General Surgery in Shenyang Emergency Center from January 2013 to December 2015 were enrolled,and 20 healthy subjects were enrolled as normal controls.Peripheral blood samples were collected from the patients with acute pancreatitis and healthy subjects,the serum was separated,and RNA was extracted.Real-time PCR was used to measure the expression of lncRNA H19,and the correlation between the expression of H19 and other clinical and pathological parameters was analyzed.The t-test was used for comparison of continuous data between groups,and the chi-square test was used for comparison of categorical data between groups.The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the value of lncRNA H19 in the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis.Results The acute pancreatitis group had a significantly higher H19 expression level in serum than the healthy control group (t =2.364,P =0.020).The severe acute pancreatitis group had higher expression of lncRNA H19 than the mild acute pancreatitis group (t =2.111,P =0.037),and the patients with a Balthazar CT grade above grade C had significantly higher relative expression of lncRNA H19 than those with CT grade ≤ C (t =2.312,P =0.022).The ROC curve showed that H19 measurement helped with the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis with an area under the ROC curve of 0.752 (95％ CI:0.636-0.867,P ＜ 0.01).Conclusion Patients with acute pancreatitis have increased expression of IncRNA H19 in serum,and therefore,H19 has certain clinical significance in the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis and the evaluation of disease severity.

Correlations of β-catenin, Ki67 and Her-2/neu with gastric cancer

OBJECTIVE@#To study the clinical pathologic characteristics of β-catenin, Ki67 and Her-2/neu in gastric cancer and the correlation of β-catenin and Ki67 to the protein expression and gene conditions of Her-2/Neu.@*METHODS@#The protein expression of β-catenin, Ki67 and Her-2/Neu was detected by immunohistochemistry in 101 cases of gastric cancer and the gene conditions of Her-2/Neu by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH).@*RESULTS@#The protein expression of β-catenin, Ki67 and Her-2/Neu had close relationship with the clinical pathologic characteristics of gastric cancer. The β-catenin and Ki67 had obvious correlation to the differentiation, infiltration and lymphatic metastasis of the gastric cancer (P<0.05). The Ki67 had close relationship with the tumor-node-metastasis staging staging of gastric cancer (P<0.05). Her-2/Neu had close relationship with the differentiation and tumor-node-metastasis staging of gastric cancer (P<0.05) but had no relationship with the infiltration and lymphatic metastasis of the gastric cancer (P<0.05). The protein expression of Ki67 had significantly positive correlation to the protein expression and gene amplification conditions of Her-2/Neu (r=0.567, P<0.05 for protein; r=0.304, P<0.05 for gene).@*CONCLUSIONS@#Combined detection of β-catenin, Ki67 and Her-2/Neu can be used as a reliable method to help the observation of biological behavior, diagnosis and prognosis of gastric cancer, and Ki67 can be used to serve the preliminary screening of Her-2/Neu gene state.

Synergistic apoptotic effect of the combination of diosgenin and TRAIL on non-small-cell lung cancer cell line A549 evaluated with the Chou-Talalay method / 药学学报

This study is to investigate the apoptotic induction effect of the combination of diosgenin and TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) on non-small-cell lung cancer cell line A549 by using the Chou-Talalay method, and observe the mechanism of the combination. The apoptotic effect of diosgenin or TRAIL alone and their combination on A549 and normal cell line 293T proliferation was measured by MTT assay. Chou-Talalay method was used to evaluate the combination effect. Apoptosis was examined by Hoechst 33342 staining and flow cytometry assay. Western blotting detects the expression of apoptosis-associated proteins. Diosgenin or TRAIL alone can inhibit proliferation ofA549 in a concentration-dependent manner. According to the Chou-Talalay method, when f(a) = 0.1, CI > 1, when f(a) > 0.1, CI < 1. Combined with TRAIL, the IC50 of diosgenin decreases from 21.864 to 14.810 micromol x L(-1) (P < 0.05) on A549 cells. But for 293T cells, IC50 of diosgenin does not change significantly. As with Hoechst 33342 staining and flow cytometry assay, the apoptosis ratios also increased in the combination group. At protein expression level, combination-treated group displays increased Caspase-8, Caspase-9, Bid, Caspase-3 activation and PARP cleavage, significantly decreased Bcl-2 and increased Bax expression, and MAPK pathways were activated. The combination of diosgenin and TRAIL has synergistic effect on A549 cells.

The Associations between Visual Attention and Facial Expression Identification in Patients with Schizophrenia

OBJECTIVE: Visual search is an important attention process that precedes the information processing. Visual search also mediates the relationship between cognition function (attention) and social cognition (such as facial expression identification). However, the association between visual attention and social cognition in patients with schizophrenia remains unknown. The purposes of this study were to examine the differences in visual search performance and facial expression identification between patients with schizophrenia and normal controls, and to explore the relationship between visual search performance and facial expression identification in patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: Fourteen patients with schizophrenia (mean age=46.36+/-6.74) and 15 normal controls (mean age=40.87+/-9.33) participated this study. The visual search task, including feature search and conjunction search, and Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expression of Emotion were administered. RESULTS: Patients with schizophrenia had worse visual search performance both in feature search and conjunction search than normal controls, as well as had worse facial expression identification, especially in surprised and sadness. In addition, there were negative associations between visual search performance and facial expression identification in patients with schizophrenia, especially in surprised and sadness. However, this phenomenon was not showed in normal controls. CONCLUSION: Patients with schizophrenia who had visual search deficits had the impairment on facial expression identification. Increasing ability of visual search and facial expression identification may improve their social function and interpersonal relationship.

LiCl suppresses tumor growth and inhibits DNA replication in prostate cancer / 中华病理学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To assess the effects of LiCl on prostate cancer growth and to explore the underlying mechanisms.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Effects of LiCl on cell growth in vitro and in vivo were determined by cell counting and xenografts of prostate cancer cells. Alterations in cell proliferation and the expression of DNA replication-related protein were determined by MTT assay, BrdU incorporation and Western blot.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Compared to PBS control group, the number of prostate cancer cells (PC-3) were lower treated with 10 mmol/L LiCl, the number was 1.9×10(5), 4.8×10(5) and the difference was significant (P < 0.05). The inhibition rate of cellular proliferation were 50%, 95% and 98%, respectively, in LiCl group, NaCl and KCl control group, the difference was significant (P < 0.05). The A-Value of BrdU incorporation was 1.5, 1.3 treated with 10 mmol/L, 30 mmol/L LiCl, while the A-value of BrdU incorporation was 4 in PBS control group, the difference was significant (P < 0.05). On the protein level, LiCl downregulates expression of cdc 6, cyclins A and cyclins E, and cdc 25C, and upregulates expression of the CDK inhibitor p21(CIP1). The mean volume and weight of xenograft tumor were 50 mm(3) and 296 mg after LiCl intraperitoneal injection, But PBS control group were 180 mm(3) and 957 mg, the difference was significant (P < 0.05).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>LiCl disrupts DNA replication and suppresses tumor growth of prostate cancer cells in vitro and in vivo.</p>