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Two water-soluble fluorescent probes, T1, based on 5-carboxyl rhodamine and T2, based on 6-carboxyl rhodamine, have been designed and synthesized. The introduction of a carboxyl group to the rhodamine scaffold improves the water-solubility of the probes. In water, T1 shows excellent selectivity for Fe3+ over other common metal ions and good sensitivity with a linear range from 20 to 100 μM (R2 = 0.95725) and a detection limit of 5.2 μM. The cell imaging indicates that T1 is capable of detecting Fe3+ in live cells. Notably, for good water-solubility of T1 only one washing step is needed to clear the extracellular T1 after incubation during cell imaging experiments. Meanwhile, we notice that T2, an isomer of T1, has an unacceptable performance in Fe3+ detection, whether in vitro or in vivo. This kind of phenomenon is quite common and indicates that the 5-position and 6-position substituents at the bottom ring have different effects on the performance of xanthene-based probes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore the relationship between age at menarche and infertility., Study Design: The cross-sectional study investigated 6906 couples from the communities in Sandu Shui Autonomous County of Guizhou Province, China. Face to face interviews were conducted to collect information on age at menarche and time to first pregnancy, as well as demographic characteristics and lifestyle factors. Infertility was defined as being unable to become pregnant after attempting for ≥12 months. Poisson regression was used to assess the relationship between age at menarche and infertility of first attempt., Results: The prevalence rate of infertility for the first pregnancy attempt of the study population was 11.87%. There is an obvious monotonic, almost linear, trend of prevalence rate of infertility with increasing age at menarche (P for trend: <0.001). Compared with wives with age at menarche of 13 years, the prevalence ratios of infertility were 0.71 (95%CI: 0.42, 1.20), 1.33 (95%CI: 1.05, 1.68), 1.47 (95%CI: 1.17, 1.85), 1.57 (95%CI: 1.20, 2.04), 1.41 (95%CI: 1.00, 1.99) and 1.73 (95%CI: 1.18, 2.52) for wives with age at menarche of ≤12, 14, 15, 16, 17 and ≥18 years, respectively, after adjusting for wife's year at birth, age at marriage, ethnic group, education and occupation, and husband's smoking and drinking habits before marriage., Conclusions: The present community-based study indicated that increasing age at menarche was associated with an increased risk of infertility in the study population., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To investigate the gene mutation frequencies and patterns of β-thalassemia (β-thal) in the minority populations of Guizhou province., Methods: Three thousand and five hundred couples in the reproductive age were screened by using automatic hemocyte analyzer and hemoglobin autoanalyzer-variant. The diagnostic criteria for β-thal were: the mean corpuscular volume (MCV) was ≤ 82 fl, and the HbA(2) level was ≥ 3.5%. A total of 194 positive samples were detected and further identified by PCR-reverse dot blot (PCR-RDB) assay for 18 common β -thal mutations in Chinese population. Those subjects with positive phenotypes but without the 18 common β-thal mutations were subjected to DNA sequence analysis of the β-globin gene., Results: One hundred and eighty-nine samples with gene mutations were observed from the 3500 samples, with the incidence of β-thal being 5.4%. A total of 10 different β-thal mutations were identified from the 189 diagnosed samples. The five most common mutations were as the following: CD17 (43.9%), CD41-42 (38.6%), IVS-II-654(10.1%), -28 (2.6%) and CD71-72 (1.6%). In addition, a novel β-globin gene mutation (-CD53) allele was detected. One rare mutation of IntM was observed., Conclusion: The minority population in Guizhou province is of high risk of β-thal. It is recommended that more attention should be paid to detect the carriers of β-thal in the population in reproductive age by hematologic screening and common gene diagnosis in the area with high risk of β-thal.