Progress on the association between respiratory viral infections during early-life and asthma attack in later childhood / 国际儿科学杂志

Respiratory viral infections are the most common cause of infantile wheezing, as well as one of the major inducents of acute exacebarbations of chronic childhood asthma. Recent studies focus on the mechanism of virus-induced airway inflammatory response which is still not completely clear. Many new pathophysiologic mechanisms such as epigenetics are advanced to explain the association between viral respiratory infections and asthma attack. In the present reports, recent data on the role of early-life viral infections in the development and progression of childhood asthma are reviewed.

Five cases of childhood primary Sjogren's syndrome and literature review / 中华风湿病学杂志

ObjectiveTo further understand the clinic manifestations of childhood primary Sjogren's Syndrome(pSS) and enhance early diagnosis. MethodsFive cases of pSS from Renji Hospital, Shanghai, were reported and their clinical features were analysoed. And literatures from Medline database and Weipu database were reviewed and discussed. Results①Childhood pSS had various clinic presentations that were non-specific and sicca symptoms were absent or occur late in most cases. ② The most common presentations were recurrent parotiditis and cutaneous manifestations with various locations and forms. ③ American-European Criteria for SS were not suitable for the diagnosis of childhood pSS. ConclusionRecurrent parotiditis and cutaneous manifestations in children can be used as clues for the diagnosis of childhood pSS but needs to be further confirmed by the positive results of salivary gland biopsy and autoantibodies examination, particularly SSA/SSB.

Building-up and verification of the differential gene expression profile of peripheral blood leukocytes in Beh(c)et's disease / 中华风湿病学杂志

Objective To explore the pathogenic genes relevant to Behcet's disease (BD) by building the differentail gene expression profiles of peripheral blood leukocytes in BD. Methods Oligonucleotide gene array from Affymetrix Company was applied to study the differed expression levels of whole genome between three age and sex matched BD patients and normal controls. Four genes, BCL6, LRAP, ICOSLG and MME, were selected to be tested for gene expression levels by real-time PCR in the groups of BD, normol controls (NC), Lupus and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) peticnts. Results ① Differential gene expression profile of BD compared to that of normal controls was built up. It contained 89 up-regulated and 57 down-regulated genes. ② Four genes mentioned above had significantly higher expression levels in active BD patients than those in NC but had lower exoression levels in stable BD patients. The expression levels of BCL6 and MME were also proved to be increased significantly in BD than in RA and SLE patients. Conclusion ① Our work shed some light on further research of the etiopathogenesis of BD. ② The expression levels of the four genes are proved to be relevant to BD the first time by us. Further analysis showes that TNF-α and IFN-γ can up-regulate the expression levels of BCL6, LRAP and ICOSLG which may be novel to BD. The MME gene is expressed on the surface of cells, which is convenient for test and may potentially be a marker for the diagnosis of BD.

Improved PCR-based subtractive hybridization, a new strategy on cloning differential expression genes in apoptotic MCF-7 cells / 细胞与分子免疫学杂志

Aim To clone apoptosis-related genes from human MCF-7 breast cancer cells and to analyze the character of the method used in the process. Methods A poptotic cell model of MCF-7 cells was established with the apoptotic tumor cells induced by the all-trans-retinoic acid. The apoptotic gene was cloned from the model by improved PCR-based subtractive hybridization. Results 5 clones were identified to be related to apoptosis by reverse dot blot, 4 of them were known genes, and 3 were related to apoptosis. A novel gene， named apmcf-1, coded for 47 amino acid was identified. This gene was accepted by Genbank, the accession number was AF141882. Conclusion This improved PCR-based subtractive hybridization may be an efficient way in cloning differential expression gene.