Background:T lymphocyte infiltration has been detected in glioma, although its significance remains unclear. The purpose of the present study was to explore the prognostic value of CD4+ and CD8+ tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in glioma, and the prognostic value of infiltrating Forkhead box protein 3 (FoxP3+) regulatory T cells were also investigated.Methods:CD4+, FoxP3+ and CD8+ TILs were assessed by immunohistochemical staining of tissue microarray cores from 284 gliomas. Kaplan–Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the survival function of these TILs in 90 glioblastoma patients.Results:The number of CD8+ TILs was inversely correlated with tumour grade (P=0.025), whereas the number of CD4+ TILs was positively correlated with tumour grade (P=0.002). FoxP3+ TILs were only observed in glioblastomas, but not in low-grade astrocytomas or oligodendroglial tumours. Among patients with glioblastoma, none of CD4+ TILs, FoxP3+ TILs and CD8+ TILs alone was significantly associated with patient prognosis. However, the presence of high CD4+ and low CD8+ TIL levels was an independent predictor of poor progress-free survival (multivariate hazard ratio (HR) 1.618, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.245–2.101, P<0.001) and poor overall survival (multivariate HR 1.508, 95% CI 1.162–1.956, P=0.002). Moreover, pseudoprogression was more often found in patients with high CD4+ TILs and high CD8+ TILs.Conclusions:The combination of CD4+ and CD8+ TILs is a predictor of clinical outcome in glioblastoma patients, and a high level of CD4+ TILs combined with low CD8+ TILs was associated with unfavourable prognosis.

PTENp1, non-coding RNA (ncRNA) pseudogene, is involved in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). The precise effects mediated by PTENp1 transcripts within intricate regulatory networks involving molecular interactions with ancestral gene PTEN and tumorigenicity in OSCC remain unclear. Here, we found that PTENp1 was aberrantly expressed in OSCC. There was a positive correlation between the expression levels of PTENp1 and PTEN. Further, we showed that PTENp1 acted as a competing endogenous RNA that protects PTEN transcripts from being inhibited by miR-21, and consequently inhibited proliferation and colony formation and triggered S-G2/M cell cycle arrest through the AKT pathway. Also, the homogeneous relationship between expression of PTENp1 and PTEN was confirmed in OSCC tumor xenografts. Finally, low expression of PTENp1 and PTEN was negatively associated with histological differentiation and OSCC prognosis. The present work provided the first evidence for the extraordinary crosstalk among PTENp1, PTEN, and miR-21, and rendered a new light on the treatment of OSCC. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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This meta-analysis compared harmonic scalpel and LigaSure systems with the conventional clamp-and-tie technique in thyroidectomy. Medline, Cochrane, EMBASE, and Google Scholar databases were searched until December 30, 2015. Randomized controlled studies (RCTs) or two-arm prospective studies were included. The primary outcome was operation time. The data were evaluated both by pair-wise meta-analyses and network meta-analysis within a Bayesian framework using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Compared with the conventional hemostasis, there was a significant reduction in operation time with harmonic scalpel (HS) and LigaSure (LS) (difference in means = -24.27 min, 95 % CI -28.11 to -20.44 min, P < 0.001; and difference in means = -13.08 min, 95 % CI -16.88 to -9.27 min, P < 0.001, respectively). For total thyroidectomy and hemi-thyroidectomy, subgroup pair-wise meta-analyses found a reduction of 26.31 and 21.90 min in operation time for harmonic scalpel, and a reduction of 12.77 and 17.48 min for LigaSure, respectively. Among studies with mixed total and hemi-thyroidectomy, no significant difference in operation time was seen between harmonic scalpel and the conventional hemostasis (P = 0.313). Network meta-analysis also found harmonic scalpel and LigaSure to have less operation time than the conventional hemostasis, and that harmonic scalpel was associated with a significant 9.78 min reduction in operation time than LigaSure which was not seen in pair-wise comparison. Harmonic scalpel had significantly less risk of definitive recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy, intra-operation blood loss, and post-operation bleeding than the conventional hemostasis. LigaSure was associated with significantly less intra-operative blood loss than the conventional hemostasis (P = 0.023). There was no significant difference among three different procedures in rates of transient recurrent laryngeal nerve palsy. This study found that harmonic scalpel and LigaSure decreased operation time compared with the conventional hemostasis and that harmonic scalpels was associated with the lowest operation time.