Although much promising data that interleukin (IL)-12 could be a powerful therapeutic agent against cancer were reported in animal models, its excessive toxicity has become a problem for its clinical application. IL-27 is a novel IL-12 family member that plays a role in the early regulation of T helper cell 1 initiation, including induction of T-bet and IL-12 receptor ␤2 expression. In the present study, we have evaluated the antitumor activity of IL-27 against a murine tumor model of colon carcinoma C26. C26 cells, which were transduced with the single-chain IL-27 cDNA and became secreting IL-27 (C26-IL-27), exhibited minimal tumor growth in vivo, and all of the mice inoculated with these cells survived healthily with complete tumor remission. Inoculation of mice with C26-IL-27 induced enhanced IFN-␥ production and cytotoxic T-lymphocyte activity against C26 tumor in spleen cells. Recovered mice from the inoculation showed a tumor-specific protective immunity to the following challenge with parental C26 tumor. The antitumor activity of IL-27 was almost diminished in nude mice, and depletion of CD8 ؉ T cells and neutralization of IFN-␥ in immunocompetent mice reduced greatly the antitumor activity. Moreover, the antitumor activity was abolished in T-bet-deficient mice, whereas it was observed unexpectedly in mice deficient of signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) 4. These results suggest that IL-27 has potent abilities to induce tumor-specific antitumor activity and protective immunity and that the antitumor activity is mediated mainly through CD8 ؉ T cells, IFN-␥, and T-bet but not through STAT4.

LADG is advantageous over ODG because it results in lesser blood loss, is less painful, and is associated with a low risk of complications. Additional RCTs that compare LADG and ODG and investigate the long-term oncological outcomes of LADG are required to determine the advantages of LADG over ODG.

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UTI suppressed jugular venous O₂⁻· generation, oxidative stress, early inflammation, and endothelial activation in FBI/R rats. Therefore, UTI might be a useful agent for the therapy of the cerebral ischemia/reperfusion pathophysiology.

BackgroundIt is important to screen for alcohol consumption and drinking customs in a standardized manner. The aim of this study was 1) to investigate whether the AUDIT score is useful for predicting hazardous drinking using optimal cutoff scores and 2) to use multivariate analysis to evaluate whether the AUDIT score was more useful than pre-existing laboratory tests for predicting hazardous drinking.MethodsA cross-sectional study using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) was conducted in 334 outpatients who consulted our internal medicine department. The patients completed self-reported questionnaires and underwent a diagnostic interview, physical examination, and laboratory testing.ResultsForty (23 %) male patients reported daily alcohol consumption ≥ 40 g, and 16 (10 %) female patients reported consumption ≥ 20 g. The optimal cutoff values of hazardous drinking were calculated using a 10-fold cross validation, resulting in an optimal AUDIT score cutoff of 8.2, with a sensitivity of 95.5 %, specificity of 87.0 %, false positive rate of 13.0 %, false negative rate of 4.5 %, and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.97. Multivariate analysis revealed that the most popular short version of the AUDIT consisting solely of its three consumption items (AUDIT-C) and patient sex were significantly associated with hazardous drinking. The aspartate transaminase (AST)/alanine transaminase (ALT) ratio and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) were weakly significant.ConclusionsThis study showed that the AUDIT score and particularly the AUDIT-C score were more useful than the AST/ALT ratio and MCV for predicting hazardous drinking.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-016-3053-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.