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Fengping Liu,1 Hongxing Cai,1 Qichun Tang,2 Yeqing Zou,1 Hui Wang,1 Zhiping Xu,1 Zhiming Wei,1 Wei Wang,1 JiaJia Cui1 1Yancheng Medical College, 2No 1 Yancheng Hospital, Jiangsu, People's Republic of China Background: Breathing programs have been reported to have positive effects in alleviating symptoms and optimizing pulmonary function in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). However, patients with stable disease may drop out of such programs if they are not modified to the individual's exercise tolerance level, or if they are not easy to perform in the home. Little is known about the effectiveness of web-based home breathing programs for dyspnea. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an online breathing program which included an animated diagram and video-guided instruction on pulmonary function, exercise capacity, and health-related quality of life in patients with COPD. Methods: Sixty patients with stable COPD were randomized 1:1 to an experimental group (n = 30) or a control group (n = 30). Subjects in the experimental group trained for four months using an online program which included an animated diagram and video-guided instruction while the control group received conventional patient education on discharge from hospital. Forced expiratory volume, forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1)/forced vital capacity (%), peak expiratory volume, six-minute walking distance test, and responses to the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire were assessed before and after the intervention. Results: Patients in the two groups were well matched for demographic and clinical characteristics at baseline. All outcome measures showed significant improvement in the experimental group but not in the control group. Conclusion: The online training program resulted in improved pulmonary function, exercise capacity, and health status. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that patients with stable COPD be trained with such programs. Keywords: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, rehabilitation, adherence, family, nursing intervention, computerized programs

Increasing evidence suggests that Fusobacterium nucleatum is involved in colorectal carcinogenesis. Previous studies have explored whether F. nucleatum may trigger colonic epithelial-mesenchymal transition. The results of the present study demonstrated that F. nucleatum enhances the proliferation and invasion of NCM460 cells compared with that of normal control and DH5α cells. Furthermore, F. nucleatum significantly increased the phosphorylation of p65 (a subunit of nuclear factor-κB), as well as the expression of interleukin (IL)-6, IL-1β and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-13. Additionally, F. nucleatum infection did not affect the expression levels of epithelial (E-)cadherin and β-catenin. E-cadherin knockdown in NCM460 cells did not induce the activation of inflammatory responses in response to F. nucleatum infection, whereas it increased inflammation in response to β-catenin silencing. F. nucleatum infection could not increase the proportion of cells at S phase when E-cadherin was silenced. Nevertheless, F. nucleatum infection enhanced the proportion of NCM460 cells at S phase when transfected with small interfering RNAs to knock down β-catenin expression. In conclusion, the results of the present study demonstrated that F. nucleatum infection interacted with E-cadherin instead of β-catenin, which in turn enhances the malignant phenotype of colorectal cancer cells.

Objective: At present, only the number of metastatic lymph nodes (LNs+) is used for the pN category of AJCC TNM system for colon cancer. Recently, the ratio of metastatic to examined lymph nodes (LNR) has been reported to represent powerful independent predictive capacity in colon cancer. We sought to propose a novel category (nLN) which intergrades LNR and LNs+ into the AJCC staging system for colon cancer., Design: 34476 patients from the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) dataset with stage III colon cancer were reviewed. Harrell's C statistic was used to evaluate the predictive capacity. The Cox proportional hazards model was used to construct a novel category., Results: The LNR category had more predictive capacity than the pN category in whole groups of patients (Harrell's C index: 0.6194 vs 0.6113, p = 0.003). Subgroup analysis showed that the LNR category was not better than pN category in predictive capacity if the number of lymph nodes examined was more than 13. We also found that there was significant survival heterogeneity among different pN categories at the same LNR category (P<0.001). The Harrell's C index for our nLN category which intergrades LNR and LNs+ was 0.6228, which was significant higher than that of the pN category (Harrell's C index: 0.6113, P<0.001) or LNR category (Harrell's C index: 0.6194, P = 0.005), respectively., Conclusion: To evaluate the prognosis of colon cancer, our nLN category which intergrades LNR with LNs+ is more accurate than the pN category or LNR category, respectively.