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Introduction: The early and rapid identification of psychosomatic symptoms is crucial to prevent harmful outcomes in patients with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in busy comprehensive clinics. This study aimed to explore the prevalence and rapid screening method of the Diagnostic Criteria for Psychosomatic Research-revised (DCPR) syndromes in patients with HPV infection. Methods: A total of 504 participants underwent a clinical assessment that included DCPR, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5), the Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS), the Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire (SCSQ), fear of disease, sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. The prevalence of DCPR syndromes and DSM-5 diagnoses were compared between the HPV-positive and negative patients using χ2 tests. We explored the rapid screen indicator through multiple logistic regression analyses of the participants' psychosocial factors, sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. Results: The incidence of DCPR syndromes in HPV-positive patients (56.6%) was significantly greater than that in HPV-negative patients (17.3%) and DSM-5 diagnoses (8.5%) in the HPV-positive group. Health anxiety, irritable mood, type A behavior, and demoralization were the most common psychosomatic syndromes in HPV-positive patients. As the degree of fear increased from 0 to 5 to 10, the risk of DCPR increased from 1.27 (95% CI: 0.21–7.63) to 3.24 (score range: 1–5, 95% CI: 1.01–10.39) to 9.91 (score range: 6–10, 95% CI: 3.21–30.62) in the HPV-positive group. Conclusion: The degree of fear, as an independent risk factor, could be used to quickly screen outpatients with a high risk of DCPR syndrome among women with HPV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perinatal depression (PND) is the most common complication of childbirth and negatively affects the mother. Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) NONHSAG045500 inhibits the expression of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) transporter (i.e. serotonin transporter [SERT]) and produces an antidepressant effect. This study aimed to identify a link between the lncRNA NONHSAG045500 and the pathogenesis of PND. Female C57BL/6 J mice were divided into normal control group (control group, n = 15), chronic unpredictable stress (CUS) model group (PND group, n = 15), lncRNA NONHSAG045500-overexpressed group (LNC group, sublingual intravenous injection of NONHSAG045500 overexpression cells for 7 days, n = 15), and escitalopram treatment group (i.e. the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor [SSRI] group, with escitalopram administered from the 10th day after pregnancy to the 10th day after delivery, n = 15). Control group mice were conceived normally, whereas, in the other groups, a CUS model was established before mice were conceived. Depressive-like behaviour was assessed via sucrose preference, forced swimming, and open-field tests. The expression levels of 5-HT, SERT, and cAMP–PKA–CREB pathway-related proteins in the prefrontal cortex were detected on the 10th day after delivery. Mice in the PND group exhibited significant depressive-like behaviours compared with those in the control group, indicating that the PND model was successfully established. The expression of lncRNA NONHSAG045500 was markedly decreased in the PND group compared with that in the control group. After treatment, both LNC and SSRI groups showed a significant improvement in depression-like behaviour, and the expression of 5-HT in the prefrontal cortex was increased in these groups compared with that in the PND group. In addition, the LNC group displayed lower expression of SERT and higher expression of cAMP, PKA, and CREB when in comparison to PND group. NONHSAG045500 mediates the development of PND mainly by activating the cAMP–PKA–CREB pathway, increasing the level of 5-HT, and decreasing the expression of SERT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water scarcity is a major constraint that adversely affects plant development and growth. Abscisic acid (ABA) is a plant stress hormone that is rapidly synthesized and can induce stomatal closure to conserve water, thereby alleviating the drought stress of plants. The Epichloë endophyte enhances the drought tolerance of Achnatherum inebrians (drunken horse grass, DHG). To better understand how the Epichloë endophyte enhances drought tolerance, DHG plants without (EF) and with (EI), an Epichloë endophyte, were grown under 20% and 60% soil water conditions (SWC), and the leaves of the three treatments of EF and EI plants were sprayed with ABA solution (1 mg/L); fluridone (FLU), the ABA biosynthesis inhibitor solution (1 mg/L); and distilled water, respectively. Four-weeks later, the results indicated that the exogenous ABA application promoted plant growth, stomatal conductance, and photosynthetic rate, while the opposite effect occurred with plants sprayed with FLU. The differences between EI and EF plants in tiller number, height, chlorophyll content, stomata conductance, and photosynthetic rate were highest when sprayed with ABA. Thus, it is concluded that ABA might be involved in the moderating effect of Epichloë endophytes on DHG plants exposed to drought by maintaining growth and improving photosynthetic efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Unlike autosomal tumor suppressors, X-linked tumor suppressors can be inactivated by a single hit due to X-chromosome inactivation (XCI). Here, we argue that targeted reactivation of the non-mutated allele from XCI offers a potential therapy for female breast cancers. Methods: Towards this goal, we developed a dual CRISPR interference and activation (CRISPRi/a) approach for simultaneously silencing and reactivating multiple X-linked genes using two orthogonal, nuclease-deficient CRISPR/Cas9 (dCas9) proteins. Results: Using Streptococcus pyogenes dCas9-KRAB for silencing XIST and Staphylococcus aureus dCas9-VPR for activating FOXP3, we achieved CRISPR activation of FOXP3 in various cell lines of human female breast cancers. In human breast cancer HCC202 cells, which express a synonymous heterozygous mutation in the coding region of FOXP3, simultaneous silencing of XIST from XCI led to enhanced and prolonged FOXP3 activation. Also, reactivation of endogenous FOXP3 in breast cancer cells by CRISPRi/a inhibited tumor growth in vitro and in vivo. We further optimized CRISPRa by fusing dCas9 to the demethylase TET1 and observed enhanced FOXP3 activation. Analysis of the conserved CpG-rich region of FOXP3 intron 1 confirmed that CRISPRi/a-mediated simultaneous FOXP3 activation and XIST silencing were accompanied by elevated H4 acetylation, including H4K5ac, H4K8ac, and H4K16ac, and H3K4me3 and lower DNA methylation. This indicates that CRISPRi/a targeting to XIST and FOXP3 loci alters their transcription and their nearby epigenetic modifications. Conclusions: The simultaneous activation and repression of the X-linked, endogenous FOXP3 and XIST from XCI offers a useful research tool and a potential therapeutic for female breast cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sparc/osteonectin, cwcv and kazal-like domain proteoglycan 1 (SPOCK1) has been reported to function as an oncogene in a variety of cancer types. Increasing evidence suggests that SPOCK1 contributes to the metastatic cascade, including invasion, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and micro-metastasis formation. As yet, however, the underlying mechanism is not clearly understood. Here, we evaluated the expression and clinicopathological significance of SPOCK1 in primary pancreatic cancer (PC) specimens and explored the mechanisms underlying SPOCK1-mediated PC cell growth and metastasis. Methods: The clinical relevance of SPOCK1 was evaluated in 81 patients with PC. The effect of SPOCK1 on proliferation, cell cycle progression, EMT and metastasis was examined in vitro and in vivo. The molecular mechanisms involved in SPOCK1-mediated regulation of NF-κB-dependent EMT were assessed in PC cell lines. Results: We found that SPOCK1 expression was increased in PC tissues and was associated with lymph node metastasis. Silencing or exogenous overexpression of SPOCK1 markedly altered the proliferation of PC cells through cell cycle transition. Overexpression of SPOCK1 promoted PC cell migration and invasion by regulating EMT progression. Moreover, we found that SPOCK1 contributes to EMT and metastasis by activating the NF-κB signalling pathway via direct interaction with IκBα. After NF-κB pathway inhibition by BAY11–7082, we found that PC cell motility and EMT induced by SPOCK1 were reversed. Conclusion: From our data we conclude that SPOCK1 promotes PC metastasis via NF-κB-dependent EMT by interacting with IκBα. This newly identified mechanism may provide novel clues for the (targeted) treatment of PC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background WHO stated that nearly one million people commit suicide every year worldly, and 40% of the suicide completer suffered from depression. The primary aim of this study was to explore the association between long noncoding RNAs (lnc RNAs) expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells ( PBMCs) and suicide risk of patients with major depressive disorder ( MDD). Methods Using Human Lnc RNA 3.0 microarray profiling which includes 30,586 human lnc RNAs and RT- PCR, six down-regulated lnc RNAs were identified differentially expressed in MDD patients. According to suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt, the suicide risk of MDD patients was classified into suicidal ideation versus no suicidal ideation groups, and past attempt versus no past attempt groups, respectively. The expression of six lnc RNAs in MDD patients and controls were examined by RT- PCR. Results The expression of six lnc RNAs had significant differences between no suicidal ideation, suicidal ideation, and controls; corresponding lnc RNAs associated with suicidal attempt had remarkable differences between no past attempt, past attempt, and controls. Additionally, only the expression of lnc RNAs in suicidal ideation group and past attempt group markedly declined compared with controls. Conclusions This study indicated that the expression of six down-regulated lnc RNAs had a negative association with suicide risk in MDD patients, and the expression of lnc RNAs in PBMCs could have the potential to help clinician judge the suicide risk of MDD patients to provide timely treatment and prevent suicide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social networks exhibit strong community structure. Many researches have been done to explore the impacts of community structure on information diffusion but few combined with human behaviors together. In this paper, we focus on how the individual interests’ changing behavior impacts the dynamics of information propagation. Firstly, we propose an information dissemination model considering both the community structure and individual interest shift where social reinforcement and time decaying are taken into account. The accuracy of the model is evaluated by comparing the simulation and theoretical results. Further, the numerical results illustrate that both the community structure and the interests changing behavior have effects on the outbreak size of the information dissemination. Specially, lower modularity and higher community connection density will accelerate the speed of information propagation especially when the information maximal lifetime is shorter. In addition, the changes of individual interests in the message have a great impact on the final density of the received through increasing or decreasing the number of satisfied individuals directly. What is more, our findings suggest that when the modularity of the network is higher and the community clustering coefficient is lower individual interest shift behavior will have a heavier effect on the spread scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Drunken horse grass (DHG, Achnatherum inebrians) is a perennial grass widely distributed in the grasslands of northwestern China, forming a symbiosis with the Epichloë endophyte, and has a strong growth advantage in the community. However, the mechanism of its competitive success remains unclear.Epichloë gansuensis-infected (EI) and endophyte-free (EF) DHG were employed in greenhouse experiments. EI plants served as competitive species, while EF plants were the target species. Aggressivity was employed to quantify the competitiveness. The effects of endophyte, plant density, and three different nitrogen levels in the pot on the competitiveness of plants were investigated.This study indicates that under 0.1 mM and 1 mM nitrogen stress, E. gansuensis enhances its competitiveness by improving the growth performance, light utilization capacity, and nitrogen absorption efficiency of the host plant, with a relative increase of 15.0% and 5.2%, 72.0% and 23.0%, 21.5% and 17.2%. Notably, the gain effect of E. gansuensis on the competitiveness of DHG gradually weakened with the decrease in the number of EI plants.The E. gansuensis enhances DHG competitiveness under nitrogen limitation but diminishes as soil nitrogen content increases. These results provide insights into the competitive solid advantage of EI DHG and the high infection rate of DHG in natural grasslands with harsh habitats.Methods: Drunken horse grass (DHG, Achnatherum inebrians) is a perennial grass widely distributed in the grasslands of northwestern China, forming a symbiosis with the Epichloë endophyte, and has a strong growth advantage in the community. However, the mechanism of its competitive success remains unclear.Epichloë gansuensis-infected (EI) and endophyte-free (EF) DHG were employed in greenhouse experiments. EI plants served as competitive species, while EF plants were the target species. Aggressivity was employed to quantify the competitiveness. The effects of endophyte, plant density, and three different nitrogen levels in the pot on the competitiveness of plants were investigated.This study indicates that under 0.1 mM and 1 mM nitrogen stress, E. gansuensis enhances its competitiveness by improving the growth performance, light utilization capacity, and nitrogen absorption efficiency of the host plant, with a relative increase of 15.0% and 5.2%, 72.0% and 23.0%, 21.5% and 17.2%. Notably, the gain effect of E. gansuensis on the competitiveness of DHG gradually weakened with the decrease in the number of EI plants.The E. gansuensis enhances DHG competitiveness under nitrogen limitation but diminishes as soil nitrogen content increases. These results provide insights into the competitive solid advantage of EI DHG and the high infection rate of DHG in natural grasslands with harsh habitats.Results: Drunken horse grass (DHG, Achnatherum inebrians) is a perennial grass widely distributed in the grasslands of northwestern China, forming a symbiosis with the Epichloë endophyte, and has a strong growth advantage in the community. However, the mechanism of its competitive success remains unclear.Epichloë gansuensis-infected (EI) and endophyte-free (EF) DHG were employed in greenhouse experiments. EI plants served as competitive species, while EF plants were the target species. Aggressivity was employed to quantify the competitiveness. The effects of endophyte, plant density, and three different nitrogen levels in the pot on the competitiveness of plants were investigated.This study indicates that under 0.1 mM and 1 mM nitrogen stress, E. gansuensis enhances its competitiveness by improving the growth performance, light utilization capacity, and nitrogen absorption efficiency of the host plant, with a relative increase of 15.0% and 5.2%, 72.0% and 23.0%, 21.5% and 17.2%. Notably, the gain effect of E. gansuensis on the competitiveness of DHG gradually weakened with the decrease in the number of EI plants.The E. gansuensis enhances DHG competitiveness under nitrogen limitation but diminishes as soil nitrogen content increases. These results provide insights into the competitive solid advantage of EI DHG and the high infection rate of DHG in natural grasslands with harsh habitats.Conclusion: Drunken horse grass (DHG, Achnatherum inebrians) is a perennial grass widely distributed in the grasslands of northwestern China, forming a symbiosis with the Epichloë endophyte, and has a strong growth advantage in the community. However, the mechanism of its competitive success remains unclear.Epichloë gansuensis-infected (EI) and endophyte-free (EF) DHG were employed in greenhouse experiments. EI plants served as competitive species, while EF plants were the target species. Aggressivity was employed to quantify the competitiveness. The effects of endophyte, plant density, and three different nitrogen levels in the pot on the competitiveness of plants were investigated.This study indicates that under 0.1 mM and 1 mM nitrogen stress, E. gansuensis enhances its competitiveness by improving the growth performance, light utilization capacity, and nitrogen absorption efficiency of the host plant, with a relative increase of 15.0% and 5.2%, 72.0% and 23.0%, 21.5% and 17.2%. Notably, the gain effect of E. gansuensis on the competitiveness of DHG gradually weakened with the decrease in the number of EI plants.The E. gansuensis enhances DHG competitiveness under nitrogen limitation but diminishes as soil nitrogen content increases. These results provide insights into the competitive solid advantage of EI DHG and the high infection rate of DHG in natural grasslands with harsh habitats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To investigate the clinical significance of protein expression of Six1 in cervical cancer. Methods The immunohistochemical (IHC) staining was applied to detect the expression of Six1 protein in normal cervical tissues (n=32), cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) tissues (n=49) and cervical cancer tissues (n=123). The localization of Six1 protein was detected in vitro cultured HeLa cells using immunofluorescence (IF) staining. Results The positive rate of Six1 was significantly higher in cervical cancer (72.3%) than that of CIN tissues (28.6%) and normal cervical tissues (15.6%, χ²= 13.118 and 10.058 respectively, P < 0.01). There were significance differences in expression levels of Six1 protein between different tumor sizes and metastasis of cervical cancer (P < 0.01). The Six1 protein showed positive signals in cytoplasm and nucleoli in HeLa cells. Conclusion Six1 expression is associated with cervical cancer, which may be a potential biomarker for invasion and metastasis of cervical cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A new corn ears dataset with abnormal diversity for two-pathway CNN was established. • The whole corn ears were screened more effectively in actual seed production factory. • A two-pathway CNN was proposed, which has stronger performance than one-way CNN. Screening corn ear is an important and time-consuming task in the process of corn seed production. Recently, Deep Learning plays a major role in learning image features, which has widely used in image classification tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel high-throughput method to screen corn ear at actual seed production factory based on the two-pathway convolution neural network. The two-pathway convolution neural network combined the advantages of VGG-16 and Resnet-50 can greatly reduce input parameters and improve accuracy. Training of the network was performed with the use of an enlarged corn ears dataset, which was acquired by our high-throughput and easy-to-clean image acquisition device. The dataset contains 17,502 corn images, including 6320 normal corn, 5422 rehusk corn and 5760 abnormal corn. The experiments showed that the average classification accuracy was 97.23%. To ensure the superior performance of the proposed two-pathway convolution neural network, we have carried out the experimental comparison with other one-way networks. Also, we explore the impact of network parameters on the classification results. Comprehensive empirical analyses reveal that the proposed method achieves excellent performance and outperforms existing methods in a non-structural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the risk for acquiring a concordant human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in a genital (or anal) site after an anal (or genital) HPV infection. We collected 3 sets of anogenital specimens at 6-month intervals from 2,309 men and 2,378 women in Liuzhou, China, and tested these specimens for HPV. The risk for sequential anal HPV infection in participants with a previous genital HPV infection was higher than for participants without an infection (hazard ratio [HR] 4.4, 95% CI 3.4-5.8 for women and HR 2.6, 95% CI 1.4-4.6 for men). For sequential genital HPV infection, women with a previous anal infection had a higher risk (HR 1.9, 95% CI 1.2-3.1), but no major difference was found for men (HR 0.7, 95% CI 0.2-1.9). Our study indicates that autoinoculation might play a major role in anogenital HPV transmission, in addition to direct sexual intercourse, especially for anal infection in women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes anogenital warts and cancers in men and women. However, little is known about sex differences regarding the natural history of anogenital HPV infection. Methods Starting in May 2014, an observational cohort study including 2309 men and 2378 women aged 18–55 years was conducted in Liuzhou, China. Samples from anogenital sites were tested for HPV genotypes by multicolor real-time polymerase chain reaction and melting curve analysis biannually for ~1 year. Results The incidence of oncogenic HPV infection was similar in men and women (10.3 and 11.5/1000 person-months; P =.275), whereas the incidence of HPV-6/11 infection was higher in men than in women (2.0 vs 1.1; P =.018). The incidence of both oncogenic HPV and HPV-6/11 infections was significantly higher in women in the 18- to 25-year age group than in the older age groups (P =.006 and.011, respectively), whereas it did not vary by age among men (P =.552 and.425, respectively). Additionally, men were more likely than women to clear oncogenic infections (101.5 vs 58.6/1000 person-months; P <.001), but no significant difference was found in the clearance of HPV-6/11 by sex (111.7 vs 84.8; P =.266). The median time to clearance of oncogenic type and type 6/11 infections was not age dependent for either sex (all P >.05). Conclusions The natural history of oncogenic and nononcogenic HPV infection differs by sex, which implies that sex-specific vaccination strategies should be considered for oncogenic and nononcogenic HPV. Clinical Trials Registration NCT02188004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a heterogeneous disease with higher rates of relapse and decreased overall survival in metastatic tumors. Due to its poor prognosis, it is necessary to identify effective biomarkers that are associated with tumor growth and metastasis. The leucine zipper/EF hand-containing transmembrane-1 (LETM1) protein, which is a mitochondrial inner membrane protein, can reduce mitochondrial biogenesis and ATP production. The expression levels of LETM1 were significantly increased in numerous human malignancies. However, the clinicopathological characteristics and prognostic value of LETM1 overexpression in TNBC remains unclear. LETM1 protein was detected in 107 TNBC, 42 ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and 65 adjacent non-tumor breast tissues using immunohistochemical (IHC) staining. Immunofluorescence (IF) staining was also performed to detect the localization of LETM1 protein in MCF-7 BC cells. The correlations between LETM1 overexpression and clinicopathological features of TNBC were evaluated using Chi-squared test and Fisher's exact tests. The survival rate was calculated using the Kaplan–Meier method. LETM1 protein showed cytoplasmic staining patterns in TNBC. The strongly positive rate of LETM1 in TNBC was 69.2% (74/107), which was significantly higher than in both DCIS 35.7% (15/42) and adjacent non-tumor tissues 12.3% (8/65). High-level expression of LETM1 was positively correlated with late clinical stage, poor differentiation, lymph node metastasis, disease-free survival (DFS) and 10-year overall survival (OS) rates in TNBC. Further analysis showed that high LETM1 expression along with clinical stage emerged as significant independent risk factors in patients with TNBC. In conclusion, LETM1 protein overexpression is associated with TNBC progression, and may be a potential biomarker for poor prognostic evaluation of TNBC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sineoculis homeobox homolog 1 (SIX1) is one of the transcription factors that act as master regulators of development and is frequently dysregulated in cancer. This study explores the roles of SIX1 in tumor progression and as a prognostic determinant of breast cancer. Breast cancer specimens from 262 patients were selected for analysis of SIX1 protein by immunohistochemistry (IHC). The localization of SIX1 protein was detected in MDA-MB468 breast cancer cells using immunofluorescence (IF) staining. The survival rates were calculated by the Kaplan–Meier method, and the relationship between prognostic factors and patient survival was also analyzed by the Cox proportional hazard models. SIX1 protein mainly showed cytoplasmic/perinuclear staining pattern in breast cancer using IHC in paraffin embedded breast cancer tissues and IF in MDA-MB468 cancer cells. The strongly positive rate of SIX1 protein was 61.8% (162/262) in breast cancer and 23.1% (12/52) in ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which was significantly higher than adjacent normal breast tissues (6.7%, 3/45). SIX1 overexpression was positively correlated with clinical stage, lymph node metastasis, Her2 expression status, and disease-free survival (DFS) and 5-year overall survival (OS) rates of patients with breast cancer. Moreover, patients with late stage breast cancer and high SIX1 expression had poorer survival rates than those with low SIX1 expression. Further analysis using a Cox proportional hazard regression model revealed that high SIX1 expression emerged as a significant independent hazard factor for the DFS and OS rates of patients with breast cancers along with Her2 status and clinical stage. SIX1 may potentially be used as an independent biomarker for prognostic evaluation of breast cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]