Indicators of occupational pesticide exposure are associated with psychiatric symptoms.

In southeastern Spain, intensive and highly productive agriculture under plastic also poses a risk to human health, as evidenced by reports on acute pesticide poisoning and its effects on mental health. However, knowledge of chronic exposures and their relationship to psychiatric disorders is still limited. This study analyzed the relationship between occupational exposure to pesticides and psychiatric disorders in farmers from Almería. A cross-sectional study was conducted amongst a coastal population in Almería, where over 32,800 ha of land are dedicated to intensive agriculture in plastic greenhouses. A total of 409 people participated in the study: 203 farmers and 206 control subjects. The highest risk of psychiatric disorders was observed in farmers living in areas of high exposure to pesticides, working in greenhouses (intensive agriculture), without protective goggles and without wearing masks. This study supports previous evidence of an elevated risk of psychiatric disorders among farm workers exposed to pesticides.

LncRNA PCAT-1 plays an oncogenic role in epithelial ovarian cancer by modulating cyclinD1/CDK4 expression.

Epithelial ovarian cancer is one of the most common causes of gynecological cancer deaths. The knockdown of LncRNA PCAT-1 has been reported to suppress tumor growth in various kinds of cancers, including esophageal cancer, breast cancer, bladder cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma. However, its function in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is still unclear. In the present study, the expression of LncRNA PCAT-1 was investigated. The results indicate that the expression of LncRNA PCAT-1 is up-regulated in EOC tissues compared with non-cancer controls by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction analysis (RT-qPCR), and its higher expression is always associated with larger tumor sizes and advanced tumor grades in patients with EOC. In addition, silencing PCAT-1 in the EOC cell lines SKOV3 and OVCAR3 significantly inhibits cell proliferation, migration and invasion, which is also shown by cell cycle assays, as the proportion of cells in G0/G1 phase is dramatically increased after knocking down PCAT1. Finally, it is observed that PCAT-1's knockdown significantly decreased the levels of cyclin D1 and CDK4 protein expression. Taken together, LncRNA PCAT-1's oncogenic role in EOC by mediating cyclin D1/CDK4 is demonstrated, indicating it is a potential target for EOC treatment.

The SOX2OT/miR-194-5p axis regulates cell proliferation and mobility of gastric cancer through suppressing epithelial-mesenchymal transition.

Recent studies reported that long noncoding RNAs (LncRNAs) were involved in tumorigenesis of various human cancer types, including gastric cancer (GC) through targeting microRNAs (miRNAs/miRs). The present study investigated the biological functions of LncRNA SOX2 overlapping transcript (SOX2OT)/miR-194-5p axis and its underlying mechanism in the tumor progression of GC. The results showed that relative expression of LncRNA SOX2OT was highly upregulated while the expression of miR-194-5p was down-regulated in GC tissues and cell lines (MGC-803, SGC-7901, MKN-74). Knockdown of SOX2OT inhibited cell proliferation, invasion and migration of GC cells (MGC803, MKN-74) through reducing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Moreover, miR-194-5p was predicted to be one of the targets of SOX2OT through bioinformatics analysis and was verified by luciferase reporter assay. miR-194-5p expression was negatively regulated by SOX2OT expression in GC cells and miR-194-5p inhibitor was found to counteract the inhibitory effects of SOX2OT short hairpin (sh)RNA on cell proliferation and mobility through enhancing EMT in GC cells. Taken together, the in vitro experiments revealed that knockdown of SOX2OT inhibited cell proliferation and mobility through suppressing EMT via targeting miR-194-5p in GC. In addition, results from in vivo experiments showed that knockdown of SOX2OT suppressed GC tumor growth and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 expression through inhibiting EMT. Besides that, relative expression of miR-194-5p was increased in sh-SOX2OT group compared with sh-NC group. In summary, our study elucidated that the SOX2OT/miR-194-5p axis participated in the tumor progression of GC through regulation of EMT both in vitro and in vivo. Hence, targeting the SOX2OT/miR-194-5p axis may aid in establishing novel strategies for therapy of GC.