Seeing Beyond the Surface: Superior performance of Ultrasound elastography over Milan ultrasound criteria in distinguishing fibrosis of ulcerative colitis.

BACKGROUND: Colonic fibrosis has important clinical implications in ulcerative colitis. Ultrasound imaging has emerged as a convenient and reliable tool in diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease. We aimed to explore the potential use of ultrasound to evaluate UC fibrosis. METHODS: Consecutive UC patients who had proctocolectomy from July 2022 to Sep 2023 were enrolled in the study. Patients underwent bowel ultrasound examination and ultrasound elastography imaging prior to surgery. Milan ultrasound criteria (MUC) was calculated and bowel wall stiffness was determined using two mean strain ratios (MSRs). Degree of colonic fibrosis and inflammation was measured upon histological analysis. ROC analysis was used to evaluate the performance of ultrasound-derived parameters to predict fibrosis. RESULTS: Fifty-six patients were enrolled with 112 segments included in analysis. The median fibrosis score was 2 (0-4) and the median Geboes score was 5 (0-13) and these two scores were significantly correlated (p<0.001). The muscularis mucosa thickness was significantly higher in moderate-severe fibrosis than none-mild fibrosis (p=0.003) but bowel wall thickness was not (p=0.082). The strain ratios (p<0.001) and MUC (p=0.010) was significantly higher in involved than non-involved segments. The strain ratios were correlated with fibrosis score (p<0.001) but not MUC (p=0.387). At ROC analysis, MSR1 had an AUC of 0.828 (cutoff value 3.07, 95% CI 0.746-0.893, p<0.001) to predict moderate-severe fibrosis. CONCLUSION: Ultrasound elastography imaging could predict the degree of colonic fibrosis in UC. Application of this technique could help disease monitoring and decision-making of UC patients.

Characterization of PHB in the gonadal development of the swimming crab Portunus trituberculatus.

Prohibitin (PHB) is an evolutionarily conserved multifunctional protein with ubiquitous expression. In this study, we cloned the PHB gene from the testis of the swimming crab Portunus trituberculatus (PtPHB) and analyzed the deduced amino acid sequence. The expression level of phb mRNA in larvae was analyzed using qRT-PCR. The expression level of phb mRNA and PHB protein in different tissues were analyzed using qRT-PCR and Western blot respectively. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay analyses of the PHB protein were conducted with the testis and ovaries from P. trituberculatus specimens at different developmental stages. PHB was localized with mitochondria and ubiquitin in the testis and ovaries. The PtPHB gene was found to contain an open reading frame of 825 bp, encoding a predicted peptide with 275 amino acids, sharing between 65.9% and 96.7% similarity with that of other species. The qRT-PCR and Western blot results showed that the phb gene and PHB protein both expressed less in the testis and ovary than in other tissues, and the phb gene presented the lowest expression in the Z1 stage. Furthermore, the phb gene and PHB protein expression were different in the testis and ovaries at different developmental stages. PHB was mainly found to be co-localized with mitochondria and ubiquitin in cytoplasm and acrosome complex during spermatogenesis and in follicular cells during oogenesis. Interestingly, PHB-mitochondria signals and ubiquitin signal were also found in oocytes. These results indicated that PHB might play important roles during spermatogenesis and oogenesis by regulating mitochondrial activities.