Expression of the interleukin-21 and phosphorylated extracellular signal regulated kinase 1/2 in Kimura disease.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the expressions of interleukin (IL)-21 and phosphorylated extracellular signal regulated kinase 1/2 (pERK1/2) in Kimura disease (KD) and to correlate the findings with clinical and prognostic variables. METHODS: Immunohistochemical analysis of IL-21 and pERK1/2 was performed in 18 cases of KD and five gender- and age-matched control samples. Clinical data were extracted and patients followed up for a mean period of 32.1 months. RESULTS: After a mean follow-up period of 32.1 months (range 1-102 months), recurrence was diagnosed as the end point for seven patients-that is, a 44% (7/16) cumulative recurrence rate. In comparison with gender- and age-matched controls, patients showed strong in situ expressions of IL-21 and pERK1/2, respectively (p<0.05). Patients with strong IL-21 staining intensity and overexpression of pERK1/2 had a lower recurrence rate than those with moderate staining intensity (p=0.049, p=0.019, respectively). However, differences were not statistically significant by gender, age, eosinophils, location, multiplicity, laterality, size, duration and primary outbreak. pERK1/2 was the independent prognostic factor (p=0.020), while age, gender, eosinophils, multiplicity, laterality, size, duration, primary outbreak and expression of IL-21 were not. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that the IL-21/pERK1/2 pathway is activated in KD, and pERK1/2 might be considered as a potential prognostic indicator in KD.

Analysis of the multi-copied genes and the impact of the redundant protein coding sequences on gene annotation in prokaryotic genomes.

The important roles of duplicated genes in evolutional process have been recognized in bacteria, archaebacteria and eukaryotes, while there is very little study on the multi-copied protein coding genes that share sequence identity of 100%. In this paper, the multi-copied protein coding genes in a number of prokaryotic genomes are comprehensively analyzed firstly. The results show that 0-15.93% of the protein coding genes in each genome are multi-copied genes and 0-16.49% of the protein coding genes in each genome are highly similar with the sequence identity ≥ 80%. Function and COG (Clusters of Orthologous Groups of proteins) analysis shows that 64.64% of multi-copied genes concentrate on the function of transposase and 86.28% of the COG assigned multi-copied genes concentrate on the COG code of 'L'. Furthermore, the impact of redundant protein coding sequences on the gene prediction results is studied. The results show that the problem of protein coding sequence redundancies cannot be ignored and the consistency of the gene annotation results before and after excluding the redundant sequences is negatively related with the sequences redundancy degree of the protein coding sequences in the training set.

Kimura's disease: risk factors of recurrence and prognosis.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate risk factors for recurrence and prognosis of Kimura's disease. METHODS: In this study, 32 patients received surgery alone, surgery followed by steroids orally and surgery followed by radiotherapy respectively from 2003 to 2015 (male/female: 27/5, ages: 6-64 years). Retrieval of clinical data and follow-ups have been done. The clinical features used as variables include age, gender, location, multiplicity, laterality, size, duration, primary outbreak, smoking, eosinophils, systemic disease and remedies. Statistical analysis including Kaplan-Meier method, Fisher's exact test, Kruskal-Wallis H test, Mann-Whitney U-test and Cox proportional hazard regression model were performed with the SPSS 17.0. The threshold of statistical significance was set at P=0.05. RESULTS: Median recurrence time was 29 months (2.42 years) after discharged and 56.3% patients relapsed. High recurrence rate was significantly associated with smoking habit (P=0.036). Patients who were diagnosed systemic disease (P=0.027) and were treated with surgery alone (P=0.025) or surgery followed by steroids orally (P=0.025) had short disease-free time. Furthermore, smoking habit (HR=3.383, 95% CI: 1.213-9.433, P=0.02), systemic disease (HR=4.462, 95% CI: 1.443-13.794, P=0.009), surgery alone (HR=4.668, 95% CI: 1.506-14.470, P=0.008) and surgery followed by steroids orally (HR=6.053, 95% CI: 1.330-27.556, P=0.02) were identified as risk factors for the prognosis of Kimura's disease. CONCLUSIONS: Smoking habit, systemic diseases, surgery alone and surgery followed by steroids orally were associated with poor prognosis of Kimura's disease, and they might be prognostic markers of Kimura's disease.

Efficient CT metal artifact reduction based on fractional-order curvature diffusion.

We propose a novel metal artifact reduction method based on a fractional-order curvature driven diffusion model for X-ray computed tomography. Our method treats projection data with metal regions as a damaged image and uses the fractional-order curvature-driven diffusion model to recover the lost information caused by the metal region. The numerical scheme for our method is also analyzed. We use the peak signal-to-noise ratio as a reference measure. The simulation results demonstrate that our method achieves better performance than existing projection interpolation methods, including linear interpolation and total variation.