Risk factors for cow's milk protein allergy in infants: a multicenter survey / 中国当代儿科杂志

OBJECTIVE@#To investigate the risk factors for cow's milk protein allergy (CMPA) among infants through a multicenter clinical study.@*METHODS@#A total of 1 829 infants, aged 1-12 months, who attended the outpatient service of the pediatric department in six hospitals in Shenzhen, China from June 2016 to May 2017 were enrolled as subjects. A questionnaire survey was performed to screen out suspected cases of CMPA. Food avoidance and oral food challenge tests were used to make a confirmed diagnosis of CMPA CMPA. A multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the risk factors for CMPA.@*RESULTS@#Among the 1 829 infants, 82 (4.48%) were diagnosed with CMPA. The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that maternal food allergy (OR=4.91, 95%CI: 2.24-10.76, P6 months (OR=0.38, 95%CI: 0.17-0.86, P<0.05) were protective factors.@*CONCLUSIONS@#The introduction of complementary food at an age of <4 months, maternal food allergy, and antibiotic exposure during pregnancy are risk factors for CMPA in infants.

Impact of sperm midpiece morphology on embryo development following intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection / 南方医科大学学报

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To evaluate the impact of sperm midpiece morphology observed under high-power microscope on embryo development following intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Morphologically normal sperms from 57 patients undergoing intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) for male-factor infertility were selected microscopically (magnification of ×200 or 400) and subjected to motile sperm organellar morphology examination (MSOME) at high magnification of ×6000. According to the morphology of sperm medpiece, the sperms were divided into 3 groups, namely group A with a/b of 1-1.2, group B with a/b≥1.5, and group C with irregular morphology. The sperms in the 3 groups were intracytoplasmically injected in oocytes and the outcomes of the embryos were compared.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Groups A, B, and C showed significant differences in the rate of ET-D3 top quality embryo (79.7% vs 55.6 % vs 33.3%) and implantation rate (43.2% vs 11.1% vs 0%), but not in the fertilization rate (73.3% vs 80.4% vs 63.5%), blastocyst formation rate (23.2% vs 22.2% vs 9.09%), cryopreservation rate (29.2% vs 25.0 % vs 13.0%), or D3 top quality embryo rate (35.3% vs 37.8% vs 18.8%).</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>In ICSI cycle, selecting morphologically normal sperms for intracytoplasic injection can increase the normal fertilization rate and top quality embryo rate on the transfer day and improve the implantation rate of the embryo.</p>

Progress in researches on the sperm centrosome / 中华男科学杂志

In humans and most mammals, the sperm centrosome is primarily responsible for nucleating and organizing the sperm astar, which pushes the sperm head toward the oocyte center and guides the migration of the female pronucleus, completing the fertilization process. There are about 200 kinds of protein in the human sperm centrosome. Currently, most of the researches focus on the centrin protein. Further studies on the functions of different human sperm centrosomal proteins may contribute to the understanding of the causes of the failures in assisted reproductive technology (ART). And in ART, morphological observation of the sperm neck integrity is the only way for primary evaluation of the function of the sperm centrosome.