Impact of Increased Economic Burden Due to Human Echinococcosis in an Underdeveloped Rural Community of the People's Republic of China

This paper compares medical expenditure for hospital treatment of echinococcosis in NHAR, western People's Republic of China, for different years, different regions and different socioeconomic groups. The results show that the level of household income strongly influences health care decisions. This study represents an effort to determine the effect of hospital charges for inpatient treatment of echinococcosis on the choice of provider in NHAR, and quantitatively examines this topic for the rural poor. The findings show that low income individuals from rural areas opted to visit a local county hospital rather than an urban hospital for hydatid surgery despite the inferior infrastructure, personnel and general health care facilities available. There are a number of policy implications. For example, enhancing the quality and service of county hospitals in rural areas will benefit those with lower incomes, thus improving access of rural residents to health facilities for higher quality diagnosis and efficient treatment. Thus, we advocate that government policy should be to increase investment in health care in poor rural areas, and to launch relevant medical aid projects to help those in poverty

Origin Identification and Quantitative Analysis of Honeys by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Chemometric Techniques

The combination of H-1 NMR spectroscopy and multivariate statistical analysis has become a promising method for the discrimination of food origins. In this paper, this method has been successfully employed to analyze 70 Chinese honey samples from eight botanic origins, three geographical origins, and five production dates. Thirty-three components in honey samples were detected and identified from their H-1 NMR spectra, and 20 of them were accurately quantified by comparing their integral area with that of internal standards with relaxation time correction. Nontargeted principal component analysis (PCA) has been applied to distinguish the honeys from different botanical and geographical origins. The variations of components in the honeys, including saccharides and all kind of amino and organic carboxylic acids, confirmed their clustering according to their origins in PCA scores plots. Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) based on the NMR data for the different pairwise honey samples allows to identify the compositional variations contributed to geographical discrimination and storage time. Hence, NMR spectroscopy coupled with chemometric techniques offers an efficient tool for quality control of honey, and it could further serve to the classification, qualitative and quantitative control of other foods

Long-lived stops in MSSM scenarios with a neutralino LSP

This work investigates the possibility of a long-lived stop squark in supersymmetric models with the neutralino as the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP). We study the implications of meta-stable stops on the sparticle mass spectra and the dark matter density. We find that in order to obtain a sufficiently long stop lifetime so as to be observable as a stable R-hadron at an LHC experiment, we need to fine tune the mass degeneracy between the stop and the LSP considerably. This increases the stop-neutralino coanihilation cross section, leaving the neutralino relic density lower than what is expected from the WMAP results for stop masses ~1.5 TeV/c^2. However, if such scenarios are realised in nature we demonstrate that the long-lived stops will be produced at the LHC and that stop-based R-hadrons with masses up to 1 TeV/c^2 can be detected after one year of running at design luminosity

Molecular characterisation of protist parasites in human-habituated mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei), humans and livestock, from Bwindi impenetrable National Park, Uganda

Over 60 % of human emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, and there is growing evidence of the zooanthroponotic transmission of diseases from humans to livestock and wildlife species, with major implications for public health, economics, and conservation. Zooanthroponoses are of relevance to critically endangered species; amongst these is the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) of Uganda. Here, we assess the occurrence of Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora, Giardia, and Entamoeba infecting mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park (BINP), Uganda, using molecular methods. We also assess the occurrence of these parasites in humans and livestock species living in overlapping/adjacent geographical regions

Genomic imbalances in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma identified by molecular cytogenetic techniques

This review summarizes the chromosomal changes detected by molecular cytogenetic approaches in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), the ninth most common malignancy in the world. Whole genome analyses of ESCC cell lines and tumors indicated that the most frequent genomic gains occurred at 1, 2q, 3q, 5p, 6p, 7, 8q, 9q, 11q, 12p, 14q, 15q, 16, 17, 18p, 19q, 20q, 22q and X, with focal amplifications at 1q32, 2p16-22, 3q25-28, 5p13-15.3, 7p12-22, 7q21-22, 8q23-24.2, 9q34, 10q21, 11p11.2, 11q13, 13q32, 14q13-14, 14q21, 14q31-32, 15q22-26, 17p11.2, 18p11.2-11.3 and 20p11.2. Recurrent losses involved 3p, 4, 5q, 6q, 7q, 8p, 9, 10p, 12p, 13, 14p, 15p, 18, 19p, 20, 22, Xp and Y. Gains at 5p and 7q, and deletions at 4p, 9p, and 11q were significant prognostic factors for patients with ESCC. Gains at 6p and 20p, and losses at 10p and 10q were the most significant imbalances, both in primary carcinoma and in metastases, which suggested that these regions may harbor oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes. Gains at 12p and losses at 3p may be associated with poor relapse-free survival. The clinical applicability of these changes as markers for the diagnosis and prognosis of ESCC, or as molecular targets for personalized therapy should be evaluated

Mobility of primary health care workers in China

© 2009 Meng et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Xanthene Food Dye, as a Modulator of Alzheimer's Disease Amyloid-beta Peptide Aggregation and the Associated Impaired Neuronal Cell Function

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. AD is a degenerative brain disorder that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. It has been suggested that aggregation of amyloid-beta peptide (Aβ) is closely linked to the development of AD pathology. In the search for safe, effective modulators, we evaluated the modulating capabilities of erythrosine B (ER), a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved red food dye, on Aβ aggregation and Aβ-associated impaired neuronal cell function.In order to evaluate the modulating ability of ER on Aβ aggregation, we employed transmission electron microscopy (TEM), thioflavin T (ThT) fluorescence assay, and immunoassays using Aβ-specific antibodies. TEM images and ThT fluorescence of Aβ samples indicate that protofibrils are predominantly generated and persist for at least 3 days. The average length of the ER-induced protofibrils is inversely proportional to the concentration of ER above the stoichiometric concentration of Aβ monomers. Immunoassay results using Aβ-specific antibodies suggest that ER binds to the N-terminus of Aβ and inhibits amyloid fibril formation. In order to evaluate Aβ-associated toxicity we determined the reducing activity of SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells treated with Aβ aggregates formed in the absence or in the presence of ER. As the concentration of ER increased above the stoichiometric concentration of Aβ, cellular reducing activity increased and Aβ-associated reducing activity loss was negligible at 500 µM ER.Our findings show that ER is a novel modulator of Aβ aggregation and reduces Aβ-associated impaired cell function. Our findings also suggest that xanthene dye can be a new type of small molecule modulator of Aβ aggregation. With demonstrated safety profiles and blood-brain permeability, ER represents a particularly attractive aggregation modulator for amyloidogenic proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases

Evaluation of Physicochemical and Antioxidant Properties of Peanut Protein Hydrolysate

Peanut protein and its hydrolysate were compared with a view to their use as food additives. The effects of pH, temperature and protein concentration on some of their key physicochemical properties were investigated. Compared with peanut protein, peanut peptides exhibited a significantly higher solubility and significantly lower turbidity at pH values 2–12 and temperature between 30 and 80°C. Peanut peptide showed better emulsifying capacity, foam capacity and foam stability, but had lower water holding and fat adsorption capacities over a wide range of protein concentrations (2–5 g/100 ml) than peanut protein isolate. In addition, peanut peptide exhibited in vitro antioxidant properties measured in terms of reducing power, scavenging of hydroxyl radical, and scavenging of DPPH radical. These results suggest that peanut peptide appeared to have better functional and antioxidant properties and hence has a good potential as a food additive

The Tandem CARDs of NOD2: Intramolecular Interactions and Recognition of RIP2

Caspase recruitment domains (CARDs) are homotypic protein interaction modules that link the stimulus-dependent assembly of large signaling platforms such as inflammasomes to the activation of downstream effectors that often include caspases and kinases and thereby play an important role in the regulation of inflammatory and apoptotic signaling pathways. NOD2 belongs to the NOD-like (NLR) family of intracellular pattern recognition receptors (PRR) and induces activation of the NF-κB pathway in response to the recognition of bacterial components. This process requires the specific recognition of the CARD of the protein kinase RIP2 by the tandem CARDs of NOD2. Here we demonstrate that the tandem CARDs of NOD2 are engaged in an intramolecular interaction that is important for the structural stability of this region. Using a combination of ITC and pull-down experiments we identify distinct surface areas that are involved in the intramolecular tandem CARD interaction and the interaction with the downstream effector RIP2. Our findings indicate that while CARDa of NOD2 might be the primary binding partner of RIP2 the two CARDs of NOD2 do not act independently of one another but may cooperate to from a binding surface that is distinct from that of single CARDs

Prediction of Ubiquitination Sites by Using the Composition of k-Spaced Amino Acid Pairs

As one of the most important reversible protein post-translation modifications, ubiquitination has been reported to be involved in lots of biological processes and closely implicated with various diseases. To fully decipher the molecular mechanisms of ubiquitination-related biological processes, an initial but crucial step is the recognition of ubiquitylated substrates and the corresponding ubiquitination sites. Here, a new bioinformatics tool named CKSAAP_UbSite was developed to predict ubiquitination sites from protein sequences. With the assistance of Support Vector Machine (SVM), the highlight of CKSAAP_UbSite is to employ the composition of k-spaced amino acid pairs surrounding a query site (i.e. any lysine in a query sequence) as input. When trained and tested in the dataset of yeast ubiquitination sites (Radivojac et al, Proteins, 2010, 78: 365–380), a 100-fold cross-validation on a 1∶1 ratio of positive and negative samples revealed that the accuracy and MCC of CKSAAP_UbSite reached 73.40% and 0.4694, respectively. The proposed CKSAAP_UbSite has also been intensively benchmarked to exhibit better performance than some existing predictors, suggesting that it can be served as a useful tool to the community. Currently, CKSAAP_UbSite is freely accessible at http://protein.cau.edu.cn/cksaap_ubsite/. Moreover, we also found that the sequence patterns around ubiquitination sites are not conserved across different species. To ensure a reasonable prediction performance, the application of the current CKSAAP_UbSite should be limited to the proteome of yeast