[Relationship between valve ablation and bladder function in children with posterior urethral valves disorder]

This study is to investigate the effect of valve ablation on bladder function in patients with posterior urethral valves. The clinical data of patients with posterior urethral valves who received urodynamic examination before and after valve ablation were retrospectively analyzed.The bladder compliance improved during urine storage after operation, and the maximum detrusor pressure decreased during micturition. The postoperative urinary system ultrasound showed that the residual urine volume of the group with significantly improved upper urinary tract hydrocephalus was significantly less than that of the group with no improvement. The bladder compliance was significantly higher than that of the group with no improvement, and the maximum urine flow rate was significantly higher than that of the group with no improvement (all P<0.05). Valve ablation has limited effect on improving bladder function in patients with PUV. Valve incision can help improve the maximum bladder volume, residual urine volume and maximum urinary flow rate. It has a certain effect on bladder compliance and maximum detrusor pressure.

Cell-free DNA from bile outperformed plasma as a potential alternative to tissue biopsy in biliary tract cancer

BACKGROUND

Biliary tract cancers (BTCs) are rare and highly heterogenous malignant neoplasms. Because obtaining BTC tissues is challenging, the purpose of this study was to explore the potential roles of bile as a liquid biopsy medium in patients with BTC.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Sixty-nine consecutive patients with suspected BTC were prospectively enrolled in this study. Capture-based targeted sequencing was performed on tumor tissues, whole blood cells, plasma, and bile samples using a large panel consisting of 520 cancer-related genes.

RESULTS

Of the 28 patients enrolled in this cohort, tumor tissues were available in eight patients, and plasma and bile were available in 28 patients. Somatic mutations were detected in 100% (8/8), 71.4% (20/28), and 53.6% (15/28) of samples comprising tumor tissue DNA, bile cell-free DNA (cfDNA), and plasma cfDNA, respectively. Bile cfDNA showed a significantly higher maximum allele frequency than plasma cfDNA (P = 0.0032). There were 56.2% of somatic single-nucleotide variant (SNVs)/insertions and deletions (indels) shared between bile and plasma cfDNA. When considering the genetic profiles of tumor tissues as the gold standard, the by-variant sensitivity and positive predictive value for SNVs/indels in bile cfDNA positive for somatic mutations were both 95.5%. The overall concordance for SNVs/indels in bile was significantly higher than that in plasma (99.1% versus 78.3%, P < 0.0001). Moreover, the sensitivity of CA 19-9 combined with bile cfDNA achieved 96.4% in BTC diagnosis.

CONCLUSION

We demonstrated that bile cfDNA was superior to plasma cfDNA in the detection of tumor-related genomic alterations. Bile cfDNA as a minimally invasive liquid biopsy medium might be a supplemental approach to confirm BTC diagnosis.

Orange-spotted grouper Epinephelus coioides Tak1: molecular identification, expression analysis and functional study

In this study, the complementary (c)DNA sequence encoding orange-spotted grouper Epinephelus coioides Tak1 (ectak1) was cloned, which has an open reading frame of 1728 bp that encodes 575 amino acids (aa). Sequence analysis indicated that Ectak1 contains two characteristic conserved domains, i.e. an N-terminal serine-threonine protein kinase catalytic domain (27-275 aa) and a C-terminal coiled-coil region (499-562 aa). Ectak1 shares high sequence identity with Tak1 from other fish species, especially those of Nile tilapia Oreochromis niloticus (96%) and zebra mbuna Maylandia zebra (96%). ectak1 transcripts were expressed broadly in all of the tissues tested, but ectak1 expression was reduced mainly in the local infection sites (skin and gill) after infection with Cryptocaryon irritans. Intracellular localization analysis showed that Ectak1 was distributed mainly in the cytoplasm. A luciferase reporter assay showed that Ectak1 significantly impaired the NF-κB activity induced by E. coioides Myd88 and Traf6. Overall, these results suggest that Ectak1 functions to reduce the activity of NF-κB induced by toll-like receptor (TLR) signal molecules in HEK-293T cells, and it might have an important role in host defences against parasitic infections.