BackgroundToxoplasmosis is an important zoonotic parasitic disease worldwide. In immune competent individuals, Toxoplasma gondii preferentially infects tissues of central nervous systems, which might be an adding factor of certain psychiatric disorders. Congenital transmission of T. gondii during pregnancy has been regarded as a risk factor for the health of newborn infants. While in immune-compromised individuals, the parasite can cause life-threatening infections. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of T. gondii infection among clinically healthy individuals and patients with psychiatric disorders in China and to identify the potential risk factors related to the vulnerability of infection in the population.MethodsSerum samples from 2634 healthy individuals and 547 patients with certain psychiatric disorders in Changchun and Daqing in the northeast, and in Shanghai in the south of China were examined respectively for the levels of anti-T. gondii IgG by indirect ELISA and a direct agglutination assay. Prevalence of T. gondii infection in the Chinese population in respect of gender, age, residence and health status was systematically analyzed.ResultsThe overall anti-T. gondii IgG prevalence in the study population was 12.3%. In the clinically healthy population 12.5% was sero-positive and in the group with psychiatric disorders 11.3% of these patients were positive with anti-T. gondii IgG. A significant difference (P = 0.004) was found between male and female in the healthy population, the seroprevalence was 10.5% in men versus 14.3% in women. Furthermore, the difference of T. gondii infection rate between male and female in the 20-19 year's group was more obvious, with 6.4% in male population and 14.6% in female population.ConclusionA significant higher prevalence of T. gondii infection was observed in female in the clinically healthy population. No correlation was found between T. gondii infection and psychiatric disorders in this study. Results suggest that women are more exposed to T. gondii infection than men in China. The data argue for deeper investigations for the potential risk factors that threat the female populations.

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), HOTAIR has been reported to be upregulated in cervical cancer development and progression. However, SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) in the lncRNAs and their associations with cervical cancer susceptibility have not been reported. In the current study, we hypothesized that SNPs within the lncRNA HOTAIR may influence the risk of cervical cancer. We performed a case-control study including 510 cervical cancer patients (cases) and 713 cancer-free individuals (controls) to investigate the association between three haplotype-tagging SNPs (rs920778, rs1899663 and rs4759314) in the lncRNA HOTAIR and the risk of cervical cancer. We found a strong association between the SNP rs920778 in the intronic enhancer of the HOTAIR and cervical cancer (P<10−4). Moreover, the cervical cancer patients with homozygous TT genotype were significantly associated with tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage. In vitro assays with allele-specific reporter constructs indicated that the reporter constructs bearing rs920778T allele conferred elevated reporter gene transcriptional activity when compared to the reporter constructs containing rs920778C allele. Furthermore, HOTAIR expression was higher in cervical cancer tissues than that in corresponding normal tissues, and the high expression was associated with the risk-associated allele T. In summary, our studies provide strong functional evidence that functional SNP rs920778 regulates HOTAIR expression, and may ultimately influence the predisposition for cervical cancer.

Hypoxia is prognostically important in colorectal cancer (CRC) therapy. Partial oxygen pressure (pO2) is an important parameter of hypoxia. The correlation between pO2 levels and expression levels of prognostic biomarkers was measured in CRC tissues. Human CRC tissues were collected and pO2 levels were measured by OxyLite. Three methods for tissue fixation were compared, including formalin, Finefix, and Finefix-plus-microwave. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining was conducted by using the avidin-biotin complex technique for detecting the antibodies to hypoxia inducible factor-1 (HIF-1) alpha, cytokeratin 20 (CK20), and cell proliferation factor Ki67. The levels of pO2 were negatively associated with the size of CRC tissues. Finefix-plus-microwave fixation has the potential to replace formalin. Additionally, microwave treatment improved Finefix performance in tissue fixation and protein preservation. The percentage of positive cells and gray values of HIF-1 alpha, CK20, and Ki67 were associated with CRC development (P < 0.05). The levels of pO2 were positively related with the gray values of Ki67 and negatively related with the values of HIF-1 alpha and CK20 (P < 0.05). Thus, the levels of microenvironmental pO2 affect the expression of predictive biomarkers HIF-1 alpha, CK20, and Ki67 in the development of CRC tissues.

This paper reports the connections between red blood cells abnormality risk of petrochemical workers and their exposure to airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Urinary 1-hydroxypyrene (1-OHP), as the biomarker of PAHs exposure, was adopted to assess the exposure risk of the petrochemical workers to PAHs in Xigu, the west suburb of Lanzhou where petrochemical industries are located. Fifty-three workers, sub-grouped to 36 petrochemical workers and 17 office workers, participated in this investigation. Logistic regression model and spearman correlation analysis were performed to estimate the associations between PAHs exposure levels and red blood cells abnormality risk of petrochemical workers. Strong associations between some red cell indices (MCH, MCHC, RDW) and 1-OHP concentration were found. Results also show that the red blood cells abnormality risk increased with increasing PAHs exposure level. Compared with office workers, risk level of red blood cells abnormality in petrochemical workers was higher by 41.7 % (OR, 1.417; 95 % CI: 0.368-5.456) than that in office workers. This result was verified by the tissue-to-human blood partition coefficient for pyrene and 1-OHP. The quantitative assessments of the potential health risk through inhalation exposure to PAHs were conducted using the Incremental Lifetime Cancer Risk (ILCR) model. It was found the ILCR from inhalation exposure to PAHs for the petrochemical workers ranged from 10(-5) to 10(-4) with 95 % probability, indicating that petrochemical plant workers were under a high potential cancer risk level.

Crosslinked polystyrene (CPS) beads modified with polar groups for the separation of aromatic/aliphatic hydrocarbons were successfully prepared. The synthesized beads were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. The effects of the crosslinking agents and polar groups on the swelling and selectivity performances toward n-heptane/toluene mixtures were studied. Impressively, the results indicated that the sulfone-modified CPS beads obtained a high toluene selectivity. Further adsorption tests with a variety of aromatic/aliphatic hydrocarbons were carried out at 50 C with initial aromatic concentrations of 13 wt %, and the results showed that the beads had a preferential selectivity for aromatic hydrocarbons, in particular, a higher separation factor of 6.76 for benzene/cyclohexane mixtures. We expect that modified CPS beads will serve as an effective material for the selective separation of aromatic/aliphatic hydrocarbons in chemical and petrochemical fields.