No abstract

Diabetic cardiomyopathy (DCM) is one of the main complications in type I diabetic patients. Activated macrophage is critical for directing the process of inflammation during the development of DCM. The present study focused on the roles of CD226 on macrophage function during the DCM progression. It has been found that the number of cardiac macrophages in the hearts of streptozocin (STZ)‐induced diabetes mice was significantly increased compared with that in non‐diabetes mice, and the expression level of CD226 on cardiac macrophages in STZ‐induced diabetes mice was higher than that in non‐diabetes mice. CD226 deficiency attenuated the diabetes‐induced cardiac dysfunction and decreased the proportion of CD86+F4/80+ macrophages in the diabetic hearts. Notably, adoptive transfer of Cd226−/−‐ bone marrow derived macrophages (BMDMs) alleviated diabetes‐induced cardiac dysfunction, which may be due to the attenuated migration capacity of Cd226−/−‐BMDM under high glucose stimulation. Furthermore, CD226 deficiency decreased the macrophage glycolysis accompanying by the downregulated hexokinase 2 (HK2) and lactate dehydrogenase A (LDH‐A) expression. Taken together, these findings revealed the pathogenic roles of CD226 played in the process of DCM and provided a basis for the treatment of DCM.

Esophageal cancer (EC) is the sixth leading cause of cancer death worldwide [1] . And it is one of the most common malignant diseases in China. HIF-1 is a heterodimeric protein consisting of an alpha-and beta-subunit, in which the HIF-1α subunit mediates HIF-1 function as a transcription factor in response to cellular hypoxia, and induces the activation of key regulations systems through more than 60 putative hypoxia-inducible genes which have been found to be directly regulated by HIF-1 [2] . We adopted the immunohistochemistry method to examine HIF-1α, VEGF and Survivin in ESCC in order to evaluation their clinically pathological significance. Materials and methods Clinical materialsThe study population consisted of 50 patients with esophageal cancer who had undergone radical radiation therapy at the Department of Radiology, Hebei Province People's Hospital, China, between 2000 and 2004, and their biopsy specimens were available for reexamination. Thirty-seven patients were males and thirteen were females, the mean age was 62.8 years (range 43-85 years), and the median age was 65 years. Karnofsky performance status ≥ 70. The patients of tumor location of cervical, thoracic-upper, thoracic-middle, and thoracic-lower were 10, 11, 23, and 6 cases respectively; the well, moderate, and poorly differentiation squamous cell carcinomas were 20, 21, and 9 cases respectively. The patients of tumor length in barium esophagography < 5 cm, 5-7 cm, Abstract Objective: To evaluate the expression and correlation of hypoxia inducible factor 1α (HIF-1α) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and Survivin proteins in biopsy specimens of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), and then determine whether the levels of expression of these proteins could predict the clinical effectiveness of radiotherapy in individual cancers. Methods: The expressions of HIF-1α, VEGF and Survivin were shown by S-P immunohistochemical staining method in biopsy specimens of ESCC, which were obtained endoscopically from 50 patients before radiotherapy, and 10 cases of normal esophageal tissue. Results: The positive expression rates of HIF-1α, VEGF and Survivin were 68%, 74% and 72% in ESCC respectively. However, the three tumor markers had negative expressions in normal esophageal tissue. The positive rate of HIF-1α was positively correlated with VEGF and Survivin proteins. The positive rates of HIF-1α and Survivin were closely related to the clinical stage, radiotherapy effectiveness and survival, otherwise, the expression of HIF-1α was closely related to distant metastasis; both of them were no correlation with the differentiation degree of tumor. The effective rates of radiotherapy and mean survival periods of those cases with positive and negative expressions of HIF-1α were 8.8%, 10 months and 81.25%, 25 months, respectively. The one, two, and three years survival rates of patients with positive and negative expressions of HIF-1α were 38.2%, 5.9%, 2.9%, and 81.3%, 54.2%, 15.8%, respectively (P = 0.001). Patients with HIF-1α positive expre...

No abstract