Eczema is a chronic atopic disease that is highly prevalent among children worldwide. Identification of factors that may contribute to childhood eczema is needed in order to develop strategies in its prevention. Over the past decade, accumulating evidence has suggested a potential correlation between the experience of stress by mothers and the risk of eczema development in their child. The present review attempts to provide an overview of the studies that contribute data on this correlation. The literature search was conducted using five databases, resulting in the inclusion of eleven studies in the review. The findings of these studies were summarized narratively. Further, an appraisal of the reporting quality of the included studies was conducted using a twelve-item checklist adapted from the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) checklist. Overall, the included studies showed that a positive correlation exists between the experience of stress among mothers and eczema risk of their child. The findings highlight the importance of the implementation of stress reduction programs for pregnant women and those in their postpartum period within communities in order to enable these individuals to relieve stress effectively.

Umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (UC-MSCs) have several advantages for clinical therapy: the material is easily obtainable, the donation procedure is painless and there is low risk of viral contamination. UC-MSCs play important roles in tissue regeneration, tissue damage repair, autoimmune disease and graft-versus-host disease. In this study, we investigated the normal mRNA expression profile of UC-MSCs, and analyzed the candidate proteins responsible for the signaling pathway that may affect the differentiation characteristics of UC-MSCs. UC-MSCs were isolated by mincing UC samples into fragments and placing them in growth medium in a six-well plate. The immunophenotype characteristics and multilineage differentiation potential of the UC-MSCs were measured by flow cytometry and immunohistochemical assays. In addition, the pathway-focused gene expression profile of UC-MSCs was compared with those of normal or tumorous cells by realtime quantitative polymerase chain reaction. We successfully isolated and cultured UC-MSCs and analyzed the appropriate surface markers and their capacity for osteogenic, adipogenic and neural differentiation. In total, 168 genes focusing on signal pathways were examined. We found that the expression levels of some genes were much higher or lower than those of control cells, either normal or tumorous. UC-MSCs exhibit a unique mRNA expression profile of pathway-focused genes, especially some stemness genes, which warrants further investigation.

Background. Ex vivo culture of intact embryonic kidney has become a powerful system for studying renal development. However, few methods have been available for gene manipulation and have impeded the identification and investigation of genes in this developmental process. Results. Here we systemically compared eight different serotypes of pseudotyped self-complementary adenoassociated viruses (scAAVs) transduction in cultured embryonic kidney with a modified culture procedure. We demonstrated that scAAV was highly effective in delivering genes into and expressing in compacted tissues. scAAV serotypes 2 and 8 exhibited higher efficiency of transduction compared to others. Expression kinetics assay revealed that scAAV can be used for gene manipulation at the study of UB branching and nephrogenesis. Repressing WT1 in cultured kidney using shRNA impairs tubule formation. We for the first time employed and validated scAAV as a gene delivery tool in cultured kidney. Conclusions. These findings are expected to expedite the use of the ex vivo embryonic kidney cultures for kidney development research. For other ex vivo cultured organ models, scAAV could also be a promising tool for organogenesis study.