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Despite full immunoprophylaxis, mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of Hepatitis B Virus still occurs in approximately 2-5% of HBsAg positive mothers. Little is known about the bottleneck of HBV transmission and the evolution of viral quasispecies in the context of MTCT. Here we adopted a newly developed tag linkage deep sequencing method and analyzed the quasispecies of four MTCT pairs that broke through immunoprophylaxis. By assigning unique tags to individual viral sequences, we accurately reconstructed HBV haplotypes in a region of 836 bp, which contains the major immune epitopes and drug resistance mutations. The detection limit of minor viral haplotypes reached 0.1% for individual patient sample. Dominance of "a determinant" polymorphisms were observed in two children, which pre-existed as minor quasispecies in maternal samples. In all four pairs of MTCT samples, we consistently observed a significant overlap of viral haplotypes shared between mother and child. We also demonstrate that the data can be potentially useful to estimate the bottleneck effect during HBV MTCT, which provides information to optimize treatment for reducing the frequency of MTCT.

S100A7 is expressed in many squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs). Our previous study revealed that S100A7 was dramatically induced in several SCC cells and activation of the Hippo pathway significantly promoted S100A7 in epidermoid carcinoma cells. However, whether the Hippo pathway regulates S100A7 expression in SCCs remains largely unknown. Here, we uncover that S100A7 induction by the Hippo-YAP pathway displays different characteristic in cervical and glossopharyngeal SCC. In well differentiated HCC94 cervical cells and FaDu pharyngeal cells, S100A7 is easily induced by both suspension and dense culture, which is accompanied by an increase in YAP phosphorylation and a decrease in nuclear YAP. Strikingly, these correlations of S100A7 and YAP reverse after recovery of cell attachment or relief from dense culture. Further examination finds that S100A7 induction is significantly repressed by nuclear YAP, which is validated by activation or inhibition of the Hippo pathway via loss- and/or gain-of- LATS1 and MST1 function. Subsequently, we prove that TEAD1 is required for YAP transcriptional repression of S100A7. However, S100A7 is hardly induced in poorly differentiated SiHa cervical cells and NCI-H226 pulmonary cells even in suspension or activation of the Hippo pathway. More importantly, cervical and lingual SCC tissues array analyses show that S100A7 expression displays the positive correlation with pYAP-S127 and the negative correlation with nuclear YAP in the majority of well differentiated but not in poorly differentiated tissues. Collectively, our findings demonstrate that the different induction of S100A7 toward activation of the Hippo pathway mainly depends on the degree of cell differentiation in cervical and glossopharyngeal SCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) co-infections contributes to a substantial proportion of liver disease worldwide. The aim of this study was to assess the clinical and virological features of HBV-HCV co-infection. Methods: Demographic data were collected for 3238 high-risk people from an HCV-endemic region in China. Laboratory tests included HCV antibody and HBV serological markers, liver function tests, and routine blood analysis. Anti-HCV positive samples were analyzed for HCV RNA levels and subgenotypes. HBsAg-positive samples were tested for HBV DNA. Results: A total of 1468 patients had chronic HCV and/or HBV infections. Among them, 1200 individuals were classified as HCV mono-infected, 161 were classified as HBV mono-infected, and 107 were classified as co-infected. The HBV-HCV co-infected patients not only had a lower HBV DNA positive rate compared to HBV mono-infected patients (84.1% versus 94.4%, respectively; P<0.001). The median HCV RNA levels in HBV-HCV co-infected patients were significantly lower than those in the HCV mono-infected patients (1.18[Interquartile range (IQR) 0–5.57] versus 5.87[IQR, 3.54–6.71] Log10 IU/mL, respectively; P<0.001). Furthermore, co-infected patients were less likely to have detectable HCV RNA levels than HCV mono-infected patients (23.4% versus 56.5%, respectively; P<0.001). Those HBV-HCV co-infected patients had significantly lower median HBV DNA levels than those mono-infected with HBV (1.97[IQR, 1.3–3.43] versus 3.06[IQR, 2–4.28] Log10 IU/mL, respectively; P<0.001). The HBV-HCV co-infection group had higher ALT, AST, ALP, GGT, APRI and FIB-4 levels, but lower ALB and total platelet compared to the HBV mono-infection group, and similar to that of the HCV mono-infected group. Conclusion: These results suggest that co-infection with HCV and HBV inhibits the replication of both viruses. The serologic results of HBV-HCV co-infection in patients suggests more liver injury compared to HBV mono-infected patients, but is similar to HCV mono-infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]