[Clinical analysis of 10 patients with muscular sarcoidosis presenting muscle mass as initial symptom].

To investigate clinical characteristics of muscular sarcoidosis presenting muscle mass as initial symptom. The clinical data of 10 patients diagnosed with muscular sarcoidosis and admitted in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University School of Medicine from May 2014 to October 2020 were collected and retrospectively analyzed. All patients were female, including 2 patients with unilateral involvement of lower extremities, 7 patients with bilateral involvement of lower extremities, and 1 patient with bilateral involvement of upper and lower extremities. Lung lesions were presented in all patients, and 9 cases had mediastinal lymphadenopathy. Serum angiotensin-converting enzyme (sACE) was 57-118 IU/ml. No specific characteristics were found by ultrasound. Typical "dark-star" sign and "three-stripe" sign were shown in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The pathology of striated muscle was non-necrotizing granulomatous inflammation. Three patients were not treated. In 7 patients treated with prednisone 0.5-1 mg ·kg-¹·d-¹, immunosuppressants were combined in 3 patients at initial and the other 4 patients later on. During the follow-up of 7-62 months, 1 patient was stable, 6 improved and 3 relapsed. Till now, 5 patients are still on the treatment of glucocorticoid and immunosuppressant.

[Predictive value of white blood cell, procalcitonin and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein for the bloodstream infection in the super-elderly critically-ill patients].

Objective: To investigate the ability of white blood cell (WBC), procalcitonin (PCT) and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) in the super-elderly patients with bloodstream infection. Methods: It was a retrospective study. A total of 77 patients (≥85 years) admitted to the ICU of Peking Union Medical College Hospital from June, 2016 to December, 2017 were enrolled. The patients included 67 males and 10 females, with an age of 85-105 years and the average age was (92±5) years. According to the results of blood culture, patients were divided into positive blood culture group (n=50) and negative blood culture group (n=27). The data which obeyed normal distribution were compared with single sample t test between the two groups. Results: There was no significant difference in WBC level between the positive blood culture group and the negative blood culture group[12.4(7.8, 36.6)×10(9)/L vs 10.7(8.5, 18.7)×10(9)/L, U=0.109, P=0.124]. Compared to the positive blood culture group, the PCT level [2.6(0.8, 7.4)µg/L vs 1.5(0.6, 5.3)µg/L, U=3.015, P=0.004] and hs-CRP level [119(62, 220) mg/vs 54 (24, 80) mg/L, U=7.791, P<0.001] were significantly higher in the negative blood culture group. The ROC analysis showed that the area under the curves (AUC) of WBC, PCT and hs-CRP was 0.704(95%CI: 0.586-0.822, P<0.01), 0.896(95%CI: 0.829-0.964, P<0.01) and 0.864(95%CI: 0.778-0.949, P<0.01), respectively. The best cutoff value of PCT for discrimination of positive blood culture was 0.44 µg/L, which resulted in a sensitivity of 70.0% and a specificity of 92.6%. The best cutoff value of hs-CRP was 50.35 mg/L, which resulted in a sensitivity of 62.0% and a specificity of 88.9%. Conclusion: Compared to WBC, both PCT and hs-CRP have a better ability to predict bloodstream infection in the Super-elderly patients.

Conduction Mechanisms on High Retention Annealed MgO-based Resistive Switching Memory Devices.

We report on the conduction mechanisms of novel Ru/MgO/Cu and Ru/MgO/Ta resistive switching memory (RSM) devices. Current-voltage (I-V) measurements revealed Schottky emission (SE) as the dominant conduction mechanism in the high resistance state (HRS), which was validated by varying temperatures and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) results. Retention of more than 10 years at 85 °C was obtained for both Ru/MgO/Ta and Ru/MgO/Cu RSM devices. In addition, annealing processes greatly improved the consistency of HRS and LRS switching paths from cycle to cycle, exhibiting an average ON/OFF ratio of 102. Further TEM studies also highlighted the difference in crystallinity between different materials in Ru/MgO/Cu RSM devices, confirming Cu filament identification which was found to be 10 nm in width.

[Targeting miR155 restores chemotherapy sensitivity in drug-resistant myeloma cell-line RPMI8226/DOX cells].

Objective: To explore the mechanism of abnormal expression of microRNA155 (miR155) in myeloma drug-resistance to probe the possibility of inhibiting miR155 expression to restore chemotherapy sensitivity and its molecular mechanism in drug-resistant myeloma cells. Methods: Drug-resistant myeloma cell-line RPMI8226/DOX was established by culturing RPMI8226 cells with continuous low concentration and intermittent gradually increasing concentration of doxorubicin in vitro; The levels of miR155 mRNA were measured by qRT-PCR, and both proteins FOXO3a and BCL-2 expressions were detected by Western blot in cell-lines RPMI8226/S and RPMI8226/Dox. RPMI8226/DOX cells were transfected by miR155 inhibitor and mimic using gene transfer method, and then CCK-8 was used to measure proliferation and inhibition ratio, the changes of miR155 expression were detected by RT-PCR. Proteins FOXO3a and BCL-2 were detected by Western blot. Results: Comparing with RPMI8226 cells, the level of miR155 mRNA was obviously up-regulated with the relative expression of 26.860±2.340, together with increased expression of Bcl-2 protein but decreased expression of FOXO3a in RPMI8226/DOX cells. After 72 h treatment with miR155 inhibitor, the inhibition rate of transfection was 64.57%, miR155 expression decreased sharply, the level of FOXO3a expression was upregulated while BCL-2 expression decreased, chemotherapy sensitivity was restored on cell-line RPMI8226/DOX with reversed drug-resistance ratio of 2.518. Conclusions: The abnormal expression of miR155 was closely associated with myeloma drug-resistance, targeting inhibition of miR155 expression could restore chemotherapy sensitivity by increasing FOXO3a expression in drug-resistant myeloma cells.

NMR study of the alkaline isomerization of ferricytochrome c.

The pH-induced isomerization of horse heart cytochrome c has been studied by 1H NMR. We find that the transition occurring in D2O with a pKa measured as 9.5 +/- 0.1 is from the native species to a mixture of two basic forms which have very similar NMR spectra. The heme methyl peaks of these two forms have been assigned by 2D exchange NMR. The forward rate constant (native to alkaline cytochrome c) has a value of 4.0 +/- 0.6 s-1 at 27 degrees C and is independent of pH; the reverse rate constant is pH-dependent. The activation parameters are delta H not equal to = 12.8 +/- 0.8 kcal.mol1, delta S not equal to = -12.9 +/- 2.0 e.u. for the forward reaction and delta H not equal to = 6.0 +/- 0.3 kcal.mol-1, delta S not equal to = -35.1 +/- 1.3 e.u. for the reverse reaction (pH* = 9.28). delta H degree and delta S degree for the isomerization are 6.7 +/- 0.6 kcal.mol-1 and 21.9 +/- 1.0 e.u., respectively.