[Epidemiological characteristics of imported malaria cases in Neijiang City, 2013].

OBJECTIVE: To understand the epidemiological characteristics of imported malaria cases in Neijiang City in 2013, so as to provide the references for malaria elimination in the city. METHODS: The epidemiological data of malaria cases were collected from the Parasitic Diseases Information Management System of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and the data were analyzed with the descriptive epidemiological method. RESULTS: Totally 19 cases of imported malaria cases were reported in Neijiang City in 2013, which was increased by 375% comparing to that in 2012 (4 cases) , and all the cases were confirmed by the laboratory. Among these cases, 14 were (73.68%) falciparum malaria cases, 5 (26.32%) were vivax malaria cases; 13 cases (68.42%) were from African countries, and the other 6 (31.58%) were from Southeast Asia. These cases were distributed throughout each quater, which had no significant seasonality. All the cases were male aged from 20-49 years, and the majority of them (16 cases, 84.21%) were farmers and workers. CONCLUSIONS: The prevention and control situation of imported malaria is severe in Neijiang City. The capacity construction of malaria diagnosis and treatment of basic medical institutions as well as the health education and monitoring and management to floating population should be strengthened.

Novel compound PS-101 exhibits selective inhibition in non-small-cell lung cancer cell by blocking the EGFR-driven antiapoptotic pathway.

This study investigated the anticancer effect of a novel compound PS-101 in human lung cancer cells. By phenotype screening, PS-101 exhibited highly selective inhibition in EGFR-overexpressed non-small cell lung cancer cells NCI-H460 and A549 while displaying no obvious toxicity to normal hepatic cell HL-7702, lung fibroblast cell WI-38, liver cancer cell BEL-7404 and gastric cancer cell MCG-803. A combination of cell viability assay, immunoblotting, and RNA interference revealed that PS-101 induced EGFR-dependent inhibition selectivity. Further studies showed that PS-101 caused cell cycle arrest at G1 phase, changed cell size, induced apoptosis and led to cell death by increasing the proportion of sub-G1 cells. Molecular mechanism studies suggested that blocking the EGFR-driven antiapoptotic pathway is essential for PS-101-induced apoptosis. The contribution of blocking the EGFR-driven antiapoptotic pathway was verified through examines abundance of likely candidate proteins and RNA interference. The root cause for increase in BAD and decrease in Bcl-2 which altogether initiated caspase-dependent apoptosis were predominantly due to down-regulation the expression of EGFR after PS-101 treatment. PS-101 strongly down-regulated the EGFR expression to trigger proapototic protein BAD increase and antiproapototic protein Bcl-2 decrease, which altogether actived effector caspase-3/9 to initiate cell apoptisis. Taken together, these results suggest that PS-101 may be a potential candidate for cancer therapy against human lung cancer.