Several studies have been suggested that immunity plays a part in neurodevelopment and schizophrenia pathogenesis. Early age of onset in schizophrenia is associated with genetic factors which affect neurodevelopment. This study aims to identify immune abnormalities associated with neurodevelopmental impairments in early-onset schizophrenia (EOS) and adult-onset schizophrenia (AOS) patients. We determined the plasma levels of six cytokines (IL-1β, IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, IL-12 and TNF-α) in schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Measurements included neurological soft signs (NSS) to distinguish and subgroup those with neurodevelopmental impairments. The study included 210 schizophrenia patients, which were divided into 84 EOS and 126 AOS patients, as well as 122 healthy controls. We observed significant differences in levels of IL-4, IL-6 and IL-10 between EOS and AOS patients. The results demonstrated the area under ROC curve (AUC) of the IL-4 in EOS and healthy controls was 0.81. Moreover, these results indicated that AUC of the IL-4 and the combination of IL-4, IL-6 and IL-12 in EOS with NSS and healthy controls were 0.91 and 0.95. These cytokines are altered in EOS and schizophrenia patients with neurodevelopmental impairments and demonstrated good classification abilities. These findings manifested that both pro-and anti-inflammatory cytokines are contributed to the clinical and pathophysiological features of schizophrenia. Future works are expected to explore potential genetic effectors and predictors as well as therapeutic directions in personalized medicine for early-onset schizophrenia.

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A novel immunoassay has been developed for the quantitative determination of polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) using indirect competitive format. A new method was developed to synthesize PBBs congener (PCB15) hapten and its artificial immunogen, then the polyclonal antibodies. The assay was optimized concerning the coating conjugate and antibody concentration, incubation time and temperature, the tolerance to organic solvents and so on. Under optimized conditions, PBB15 can be determined in the concentration range of 0.01-100 μg L-1 with a detection limit of 0.02 μg L-1. The cross-reactivities of the assays were below 8%. While water samples could be analyzed directly.

In this paper, a magnetic hollow fly ash microsphere(MHFM) was prepared by citrate sol-gel method and the Cu doped TiO2nanopowder were prepared by sol-gel process at which the novel magnetic Cu-doped TiO2photocatalyst (M-Cu/TiO2) was prepared by coating-calcining process. The crystal phase and morphology of M-Cu/TiO2were investigated by Scanning electron microscopy(SEM), X-ray diffraction(XRD), The photocatalytic activities of the prepared photocatalyst under different preparation conditions were evaluated by the degradation of methyl orange (MO). Results showed that these TiO2photocatalysts were highly efficient for the destruction of methylene orange in water. In addition, the multi-coating procedure made it possible to effectively control the physical properties of TiO2layer such as the coating thickness, amount of TiO2and photocatalytic activity. The floating catalyst made by this method could also be separated easily from the reaction system. And the multilayer film has higher photocatalytic activity than TiO2film under visible light irradiation.