Association between social support and mutual-support needs among the rural adults in China: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundIn rural China, there is now a huge gap between the supply and demand for old-age care. To close the gap, developing rural mutual old-age services is extremely important. The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship among social support, mutual support need, and mutual support willingness.MethodsWe conducted an online questionnaire survey using a Chinese Internet research company; 2,102 valid responses were received. The measures comprised the Social Support Rating Scale, the Mutual Support Willingness Questionnaire, and the Mutual Support Needs Scale. We calculated Pearson correlations to explore the association of social support with mutual-support need and mutual-support-need willingness. Multivariate analyses were also conducted using these factors as dependent variables.ResultsThe total score for the mutual support need for the adults in rural areas was 58.0 ± 12.1 and 36.96 ± 6.40 for social support, approximately 86.8% of the participants were willing to participate in mutual support. Furthermore, mutual support needs were positively correlated with subjective support (p < 0.01) and support utilization (p < 0.01), but negatively correlated with willingness to support each other (p < 0.05). The need for mutual support was also associated with age, sex, education level, dissatisfaction with the current economic situation, health status, and so on.ConclusionIt is necessary for government and health care providers to assess the different needs of rural older people and encourage individuals and organizations to provide mutual support for older people, especially to enhance emotional care for older people and improve their use of support. This is of great significance for developing mutual support services in rural China

Amino acid metabolism regulated by lncRNAs: the propellant behind cancer metabolic reprogramming

Abstract Metabolic reprogramming is one of the main characteristics of cancer cells and plays pivotal role in the proliferation and survival of cancer cells. Amino acid is one of the key nutrients for cancer cells and many studies have focused on the regulation of amino acid metabolism, including the genetic alteration, epigenetic modification, transcription, translation and post-translational modification of key enzymes in amino acid metabolism. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are composed of a heterogeneous group of RNAs with transcripts of more than 200 nucleotides in length. LncRNAs can bind to biological molecules such as DNA, RNA and protein, regulating the transcription, translation and post-translational modification of target genes. Now, the functions of lncRNAs in cancer metabolism have aroused great research interest and significant progress has been made. This review focuses on how lncRNAs participate in the reprogramming of amino acid metabolism in cancer cells, especially glutamine, serine, arginine, aspartate, cysteine metabolism. This will help us to better understand the regulatory mechanism of cancer metabolic reprogramming and provide new ideas for the development of anti-cancer drugs. Video Abstrac

STUB1-mediated ubiquitination regulates the stability of GLUD1 in lung adenocarcinoma

Summary: The dysregulation of glutamine metabolism provides survival advantages for tumors by supplementing tricarboxylic acid cycle. Glutamate dehydrogenase 1 (GLUD1) is one of the key enzymes in glutamine catabolism. Here, we found that enhanced protein stability was the key factor for the upregulation of GLUD1 in lung adenocarcinoma. We discovered that GLUD1 showed a high protein expression in lung adenocarcinoma cells or tissues. We elucidated that STIP1 homology and U-box-containing protein 1 (STUB1) was the key E3 ligase responsible for ubiquitin-mediated proteasomal degradation of GLUD1. We further showed that lysine 503 (K503) was the main ubiquitination site of GLUD1, inhibiting the ubiquitination at this site promoted the proliferation and tumor growth of lung adenocarcinoma cells. Taken together, this study clarifies the molecular mechanism of GLUD1 in maintaining protein homeostasis in lung adenocarcinoma, which provides a theoretical basis for the development of anti-cancer drugs targeting GLUD1