[Study on the association of clinical characteristic, CD4+ and level of HIV viral load among 690 initial HIV-infection].

OBJECTIVE: To understand the correlation between CD4+ cell count, HIV viral load (VL) and clinical characteristics among patients when HIV-1 was tested positive and initial AIDS diagnosis was made. METHODS: 690 HIV-infected cases from Beijing Di-Tan Hospital were included and under a cross sectional study while SPSS statistical method was used. RESULTS: The 690 HIV-infected cases would include 458 males and 232 females with age range from 2-72 years (mean age as 35.3). The modes of transmission showed that: homosexual contact taking up 17.5% while heterosexual was 16.7%. Most of the homosexual-infected ones lived in Beijing and most of them had bachelor or master's degrees. 19.4% of the transmission happened between heterosexual/bisexual couples, suggesting that HIV was transmitted through the "bridge population" while the rest were infected by contaminated blood/plasma. Many of the cases were identified when they lately visited the pre-operation surveillance point in the hospital. Serious immunodeficiency symptoms or signs were discovered as: CD4+ count < 50 cell/microl, serious opportunistic infections including pneumocystosis pulmonary, cerebral toxoplasmosis and cryptococcal meningitis. Higher frequencies of diseases seen were dermotosis, pneumonia, upper respiratory tract infection, hepatitis and digestive tract moniliasis. CONCLUSION: Because of the late identification of the disease, serious immuo-suppression situation often appeared, suggesting that there was an urgent need to improve STD/AIDS knowledge on those HIV (+) people so they might have an early access to accept medical care.

Overexpression of p27(KIP1) induced cell cycle arrest in G(1) phase and subsequent apoptosis in HCC-9204 cell line.

AIM:We have previously reported that inducible over-expression of Bak may prolong cell cycle in G(1) phase and lead to apoptosis in HCC-9204 cells. This study is to investigate whether p27(KIP1) plays an important role in this process.METHODS:In order to elucidate the exact function of p27(KIP1) in this process, a zinc inducible p27(KIP1) stable transfectant and transient p27(KIP1)-GFP fusion transfectant were constructed. The effects of inducible p27(KIP1) on cell growth, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis were examined in the mock, control pMD vector, and pMD-KIP1 transfected HCC-9204 cells.RESULTS:This p27(KIP1)-GFP transfectant may transiently express the fusion gene. The cell growth was reduced by 35% at 48 h of p27(KIP1) induction with zinc treatment as determined by trypan blue exclusion assay. These differences remained the same after 72h of p27(KIP1) expression. p27(KIP1) caused cell cycle arrest after 24 h of induction, with 40% increase in G(1) population. Prolonged p27(KIP1) expression in this cell line induced apoptotic cell death reflected by TUNEL assay. Fourty-eight h and 72 h of p27(KIP1) expression showed a characteristic DNA ladder on agarose gel electrophoresis.CONCLUSION:Bak may induce cell cycle arrest in G(1) phase through upregulating expression of p27(KIP1) and subsequently lead to apoptosis in HCC-9204 cells. The p27(KIP1) -GFP fusion protein can be transiently expre-ssed in HCC-9204 cells. The inducible p27(KIP1)-expressing cell line provides a model to assess p27(KIP1) function.