Accurate Identification and Early Diagnosis of Osteosarcoma through CRISPR-Cas12a-Based Average Telomerase Activity Detection.

Sensitive and reliable analysis of telomerase activity is important for clinical diagnosis, therapy, and prognosis of osteosarcoma. Telomerase activity is a complicated concept including both the amount of active telomerases and the length of the telomerases extension product. Still, few of the strategies formerly proposed distinguish the two aspects of telomerase activity. Herein, we propose a novel CRISPR-Cas12a-based fluorescent sensing platform that can output signals of both the amounts of telomerase and length of telomerase extension products with the assistance of an elegantly designed stem-loop probe and CRISPR-Cas12a system. On this basis, we induced a novel index, average telomerase activity, for accurate cancer reporting. Through systematic laboratory and clinical experiments, we have demonstrated that average telomerase activity can accurately distinguish cancer cells and has the potential for osteosarcoma staging.

Characteristics of Seasonal Influenza Virus Activity in a Subtropical City in China, 2013-2019.

BACKGROUND: To optimize seasonal influenza vaccination programs in regions with potentially complicated seasonal patterns, the epidemiological characteristics of seasonal influenza activity in a subtropical city of China were explored. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Influenza virus data of patients with influenza-like illness (ILI) during 2013-2019 were collected from two sentinel hospitals in a subtropical region of China, Yichang city. The influenza virus positive rate among sampled ILI cases served as a proxy to estimate influenza seasonal characteristics, including periodicity, duration, peaks, and predominant subtypes/lineages. Epidemiological features of different years, seasons and age groups were analyzed, and vaccine mismatches were identified. RESULTS: In total, 8693 ILI cases were included; 1439 (16.6%) were laboratory-confirmed influenza cases. The influenza A positive rate (10.6%) was higher than the influenza B positive rate (5.9%). There were three influenza circulation patterns in Yichang: (1) annual periodicity (in 2013-2014, 2015-2016 and 2018-2019), (2) semiannual periodicity (in 2014-2015), and (3) year-round periodicity (in 2016-2017 and 2017-2018). Summer epidemics existed in two of the six years and were dominated by influenza A/H3N2. Winter and spring epidemics occurred in five of the six years, and A/H1N1, A/H3N2, B/Victoria, and B/Yamagata were codominant. During the study period, the predominant lineages, B/Victoria in 2015-16 and B/Yamagata in 2017-2018, were both mismatched with the influenza B component of the trivalent vaccine. Children 5-14 years old (26.4%) and individuals over 60 years old (16.9%) had the highest influenza positive rates. CONCLUSIONS: The seasonal epidemic period and the predominant subtype/lineage of influenza viruses in Yichang city are complex. Influenza vaccination timing and strategies need to be optimized according to the local features of influenza virus activity.

Detection of clindamycin by capillary electrophoresis with an end-column electrochemiluminescence of tris(2,2'-bypyridine)ruthenium(II).

Coupled capillary electrophoresis (CE) with end-column electrogenerated chemiluminescence (ECL) was adopted for the quantitative detection of clindamycin. Clindamycin enhanced ECL intensity of tris(2,2'-bypyridine)ruthenium(II) (Ru(bpy)(3)(2+)) as a coreactant. Under the optimized conditions, the ECL intensity was linear with the concentration of clindamycin over the range from 5.0 x 10(-7) to 1.0 x 10(-4)M with a detection limit of 1.4 x 10(-7)M. The proposed CE-ECL was successfully applied for the detection of clindamycin in pharmaceutical and clinic samples. The interaction of clindamycin with hemoglobin was also investigated. The binding constant of clindamycin with hemoglobin was estimated to be 3.6 x 10(3)M(-1).