Background: Intrauterine adhesion (IUA) is one of the most important causes of female infertility, while iatrogenic endometrial injury is the main, but not the entire, cause of IUA. The microorganisms of the female reproductive tract play an important role in its health and disease. The imbalance of immune regulation caused by the imbalance of reproductive tract dysbacteriosis may be an important link in the formation mechanism of uterine cavity adhesion.Methods: We prospectively enrolled 30 patients diagnosed with IUA and 30 women with a history of intrauterine surgery, but without IUA, as control subjects. All participants were diagnosed with hysteroscopy while two swabs-one being leucorrhea drawn from the middle of the vagina and the other being cervical mucus drawn from the cervical canal-were taken. The bacterial load and community were identified by 16S rDNA quantitative polymerase chain reaction and pyrosequencing. Immunocytokines in serum were quantitatively detected by human T-helper cytokine kit. The correlation between Th cytokines and microorganisms in IUA and non-IUA groups was analyzed.Results: Compared with non-IUA participants at the phylum level, patients with IUA had a significantly higher percentage of firmicutes in most samples, while the diversity of bacteria was significantly decreased. Some species that were members of vaginal and cervical canal bacterial phyla, including Euryarchaeota, Acidobacteria, Chlamydiae, Chlorobi, Planctomycetes and TM6 (Dependentiae), almost disappeared. The quantity in serum of IUA patients of classical proinflammatory cytokines IL-6 and TNF-γ, released from immune cells, also known as profibrotic cytokines, were significantly higher than that of the non-IUA women in our study (P<0.05) Conclusions: IUA is characterized by an increased bacterial burden, decreased diversity of bacterial communities in the vagina/cervical canal, and increased immune cytokines of pro-fibrosis, which may predict new and more effective therapeutic schemes for the treatment of IUA.

Background: Kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) is a potentially fatal urogenital disease. It is a major cause of renal cell carcinoma and is often associated with late diagnosis and poor treatment outcomes. More evidence is emerging that genetic models can be used to predict the prognosis of KIRC. This study aimed to develop a model for predicting the overall survival of KIRC patients. Results: We identified 333 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between KIRC and normal tissues from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. We randomly divided 591 cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) into training and internal testing sets. In the training set, we used univariate Cox regression analysis to retrieve the survival-related DEGs and futher used multivariate Cox regression with the LASSO penalty to identify potential prognostic genes. A seven-gene signature was identified that included APOLD1, C9orf66, G6PC, PPP1R1A, CNN1G, TIMP1, and TUBB2B. The seven-gene signature was evaluated in the training set, internal testing set, and external validation using data from the ICGC database. The Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the high risk group had a significantly shorter overall survival time than the low risk group in the training, testing, and ICGC datasets. ROC analysis showed that the model had a high performance with an AUC of 0.738 in the training set, 0.706 in the internal testing set, and 0.656 in the ICGC external validation set. Conclusion: Our findings show that a seven-gene signature can serve as an independent biomarker for predicting prognosis in KIRC patients.

Background: Intrauterine adhesion (IUA) prevalence is difficult to measure, but appears to have increased over the last few decades. The reproductive outcomes following hysteroscopic adhesiolysis (HA) for moderate-severe IUAs were unsatisfactory, and few studies have analyzed the clinical characteristics pre-, intra-and post-HA to determine the main risk factors for infertility in patients with IUAs. Methods: This retrospective observational study included 406 patients, desiring fertility, who had undergone HA between January 1st, 2016 to May 31st, 2017, and had moderate-to-severe IUA [5-12 on the American Fertility Society (AFS) classification scale]. Logistic regression was performed to analyze the data of the clinical characteristics associated with IUA.Results: A total of 406 IUA patients were initially collected. Twenty-six [26] were lost during followup or excluded by other criteria; 380 were included in the study with a follow-up period ranging from 2 to 3 years. There were 215 patients (56.6%) that became pregnant, of whom 18 spontaneously miscarried, 5 birthed prematurely (31-36 gestational weeks), 182 delivered at term, and 10 were pregnant at the end of the study. A bivariate and binary logistic regression analysis showed that an age of >30 years, cohesive IUA, lack of increased menstrual volume, and more than 2 times undergoing HA procedure were the risk factors for infertility in IUA patients (P<0.05).Conclusions: Age, severity of IUA, increased menstrual volume, and HA procedures were the dominant factors affecting reproductive outcomes and may be regarded as potential predictors for evaluating IUA prognosis.

Background: This study aims at investigating the effect of growth hormone (GH) on the growth of human endometrial glandular cells (hEGCs) and preliminary exploring its mechanism.Methods: HEGCs were isolated from the endometrial biopsies and exposed to different dose of GH (0, 50, 100, and 200 ng/mL). Cell proliferation and cell cycle assay, migration assay was performed to investigate the growth and motivation of hEGCs, respectively. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), immunocytochemistry (ICC), and western blot (WB) were processed to investigate its related gene or protein expression. Results:The results revealed that GH administration promoted the proliferation, cell cycle, migration, and growth hormone receptors (GHRs) expression of the hEGC. We further inhibited GHRs with AG490, and the inhibitor reversed the effects of GH on cell growth, motion, and the activation of GHR and STAT3/5. Conclusions: GH promoted hEGCs proliferation and motion, which is GHR-JAK-STAT3/5 signaling pathway-dependent. These findings reveal the essential roles of GH in the hEGCs growth and provide evidence for potential GH therapy in intrauterine adhesion (IUA) treatment.