The anti-inflammatory effects of exercise on autoimmune diseases: A 20-year systematic review.

BACKGROUND: The anti-inflammatory effect of exercise may be an underlying factor in improving several autoimmune diseases. The aim of this systematic review was to examine the evidence on the role of exercise training in mitigating inflammation in adolescents and adults with autoimmune disease. METHODS: PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases were systematically reviewed for related studies published between January 1, 2003, and August 31, 2023. All randomized and non-randomized controlled trials of exercise interventions with autoimmune disease study participants that evaluated inflammation-related biomarkers were included. The quality of evidence was assessed using the Tool for the assEssment of Study qualiTy and reporting in EXercise scale and Cochrane bias risk tool. RESULTS: A total of 14,565 records were identified. After screening the titles, abstracts, and full texts, 87 were eligible for the systematic review. These studies were conducted in 25 different countries and included a total of 2779 participants (patients with autoimmune disease, in exercise or control groups). Overall, the evidence suggests that inflammation-related markers such as C-reactive protein, interleukin 6, and tumor necrosis factor α were reduced by regular exercise interventions. Regular exercise interventions combined with multiple exercise modes were associated with greater benefits. CONCLUSION: Regular exercise training by patients with autoimmune disease exerts an anti-inflammatory influence. This systematic review provides support for the promotion and development of clinical exercise intervention programs for patients with autoimmune disease. Most patients with autoimmune disease can safely adopt moderate exercise training protocols, but changes in inflammation biomarkers will be modest at best. Acute exercise interventions are ineffective or even modestly but transiently pro-inflammatory.

CKMT1A is a novel potential prognostic biomarker in patients with endometrial cancer.

PURPOSE: The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage remains the standard staging system for the assessment of endometrial cancer (EC) prognosis. Thus, we aim to identify the significant genes or biomarkers associated with the stage of endometrial cancer, which may also help reveal the mechanism of EC progression and assess the prognosis of patients with EC. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We compared the mRNA expression levels of EC patients with stages I and II as well as stages III and IV in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of EC patients at different stages were selected by volcano plot and Venn analysis. Gene Ontology (GO) and Pathways were applied to analyze the identified genes. Protein protein interaction (PPI) network was employed to identify the correlation. The survival analyses based on TCGA database were conducted for further screening. The Human Protein Atlas, quantitative PCR and immunohistochemistry were utilized to confirm the differences in expression of DEGs in endometrial cancer samples at different FIGO stages. RESULTS: CKMT1A was identified as a candidate gene. Through survival analyses, we found that CKMT1A may be a poor prognostic factor in the overall survival of endometrial cancer patients. GO and Pathways revealed that CKMT1A is closely associated with the metabolic process. More importantly, Human Protein Atlas and quantitative PCR confirmed the differences in expression of CKMT1A in endometrial cancer samples at different FIGO stages. CONCLUSION: In summary, this study shows that CKMT1A is a newly identified essential tumor progression regulator of endometrial cancer, which may give rise to novel therapeutic strategies in the management of endometrial cancer patients to prolong its prognosis and prevent tumor progression.

Profiling of patients with glioma reveals the dominant immunosuppressive axis is refractory to immune function restoration.

In order to prioritize available immune therapeutics, immune profiling across glioma grades was conducted, followed by preclinical determinations of therapeutic effect in immune-competent mice harboring gliomas. T cells and myeloid cells were isolated from the blood of healthy donors and the blood and tumors from patients with glioma and profiled for the expression of immunomodulatory targets with an available therapeutic. Murine glioma models were used to assess therapeutic efficacy of agents targeting the most frequently expressed immune targets. In patients with glioma, the A2aR/CD73/CD39 pathway was most frequently expressed, followed by the PD-1 pathway. CD73 expression was upregulated on immune cells by 2-hydroxyglutarate in IDH1 mutant glioma patients. In murine glioma models, adenosine receptor inhibitors demonstrated a modest therapeutic response; however, the addition of other inhibitors of the adenosine pathway did not further enhance this therapeutic effect. Although adenosine receptor inhibitors could recover immunological effector functions in T cells, immune recovery was impaired in the presence of gliomas, indicating that irreversible immune exhaustion limits the effectiveness of adenosine pathway inhibitors in patients with glioma. This study illustrates vetting steps that should be considered before clinical trial implementation for immunotherapy-resistant cancers, including testing an agent's ability to restore immunological function in the context of intended use.

Higher T cell immunoglobulin mucin-3 (Tim-3) expression in cervical cancer is associated with a satisfactory prognosis.

BACKGROUND: Cervical cancer (CC), which has been increasing in incidence in recent years, is the fourth most common gynecological cancer in the world. Therapy targeting T cell immunoglobulin mucin-3 (Tim-3), known as the immune checkpoint, has been rapidly developing as oncotherapy for various carcinomas. However, few studies focus on Tim-3 in CC in terms of patient prognosis. This study demonstrates that higher Tim-3 mRNA levels in CC are associated with a favorable prognosis, which may due to active immune responses in CC. METHODS: First, the clinical and RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) data of 287 CC patients were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and was subsequently analyzed. Then, based on the Tim-3 mRNA levels, the patients were divided into groups categorized by high and low expression, and the overall survival (OS) among the patients was determined. Next, the correlation between the expression of Tim-3 and clinicopathological variables was investigated. Finally, the Tim-3 function was carried out using Gene Ontology (GO) and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway, and a gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed. RESULTS: In CC, the median OS of patients with high Tim-3 expression and low Tim-3 expression were 634 and 491 days (P=0.01), respectively. We found that the high expression of Tim-3 was closely associated with smoking history (P=0.012), total number of pregnancies (P=0.002), histological type (P<0.0001), M stage (P=0.036), TNM stage (P<0.0001), papillomavirus (P=0.001), hysterectomy type (P<0.0001) and survival status (P<0.0001). Univariate and multivariate logistic regression tests suggested that the level of Tim-3 was an independent prognostic factor for CC patients. In addition, GSEA further showed that Tim-3 expression was associated with macrophage differentiation, regulation of monocyte chemotaxis, positive regulation of substrate adhesion dependent cell spreading, negative regulation of interleukin 2 production, regulation of NF kappa-B signaling, STAT cascade, erk1 and erk2 cascade and regulation of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor signaling pathway. CONCLUSIONS: A higher expression of Tim-3 was associated with a favorable prognosis, which may due to the activation of immune responses in tumor tissues.

Directional virtual backbone based data aggregation scheme for Wireless Visual Sensor Networks.

Data gathering is a fundamental task in Wireless Visual Sensor Networks (WVSNs). Features of directional antennas and the visual data make WVSNs more complex than the conventional Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). The virtual backbone is a technique, which is capable of constructing clusters. The version associating with the aggregation operation is also referred to as the virtual backbone tree. In most of the existing literature, the main focus is on the efficiency brought by the construction of clusters that the existing methods neglect local-balance problems in general. To fill up this gap, Directional Virtual Backbone based Data Aggregation Scheme (DVBDAS) for the WVSNs is proposed in this paper. In addition, a measurement called the energy consumption density is proposed for evaluating the adequacy of results in the cluster-based construction problems. Moreover, the directional virtual backbone construction scheme is proposed by considering the local-balanced factor. Furthermore, the associated network coding mechanism is utilized to construct DVBDAS. Finally, both the theoretical analysis of the proposed DVBDAS and the simulations are given for evaluating the performance. The experimental results prove that the proposed DVBDAS achieves higher performance in terms of both the energy preservation and the network lifetime extension than the existing methods.

Quantitative analysis of trace-level benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene in cellulose acetate tow using headspace heart-cutting multidimensional gas chromatography with mass spectrometry.

This study describes a method for the quantification of trace-level benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene in cellulose acetate tow by heart-cutting multidimensional gas chromatography with mass spectrometry in selected ion monitoring mode. As the major volatile component in cellulose acetate tow samples, acetone would be overloaded when attempting to perform a high-resolution separation to analyze trace benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene. With heart-cutting technology, a larger volume injection was achieved and acetone was easily cut off by employing a capillary column with inner diameter of 0.32 mm in the primary gas chromatography. Only benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene were directed to the secondary column to result in an effective separation. The matrix interference was minimized and the peak shapes were greatly improved. Finally, quantitative analysis of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene was performed using an isotopically labeled internal standard. The headspace multidimensional gas chromatography mass spectrometry system was proved to be a powerful tool for analyzing trace volatile organic compounds in complex samples.

RTVP-1, a tumor suppressor inactivated by methylation in prostate cancer.

We previously identified and characterized a novel p53-regulated gene in mouse prostate cancer cells that was homologous to a human gene that had been identified in brain cancers and termed RTVP-1 or GLIPR. In this report, we document that the human RTVP-1 gene is also regulated by p53 and induces apoptosis in human prostate cancer cell lines. We show that the expression of the human RTVP-1 gene is down-regulated in human prostate cancer specimens compared with normal human prostate tissue at the mRNA and protein levels. We further document epigenetic changes consistent with RTVP-1 being a tumor suppressor in human prostate cancer.