The emerging COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection poses severe challenges to global public health. Serum antibody testing is becoming one of the critical methods for the diagnosis of COVID-19 patients. We investigated IgM and IgG responses against SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (N) and spike (S) protein after symptom onset in the intensive care unit (ICU) and non-ICU patients. 130 blood samples from 38 COVID-19 patients were collected. The levels of IgM and IgG specific to N and...

Background: Multidrug-resistant bacteria, especially those with high virulence, are an emerging problem in clinical settings. Methods: We conducted a multicentre epidemiological and comparative genomic analysis on the evolution, virulence and antimicrobial resistance of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae in patients with bacterial liver abscesses from 2012 to 2016. Results: A total of 477 bacterial isolates were collected. Enterobacteriaceae were the main pathogen (89.3%) with K. pneumoniae (52.4%) predominating followed by Escherichia coli (26.8%). All CRKps (3.2%) were of...

Following acute infection, individuals COVID-19 may still shed SARS-CoV-2 RNA. However, limited information is available regarding the active shedding period or whether infectious virus is also shed. Here, we monitored the clinical characteristics and virological features of 38 patients with COVID-19 (long-term carriers) who recovered from the acute disease, but still shed viral RNA for over 3 months. The median carrying history of the long-term carriers was 92 days after the first admission, and the...

Following acute infection, individuals COVID-19 may still shed SARS-CoV-2 RNA. However, limited information is available regarding the active shedding period or whether infectious virus is also shed. Here, we monitored the clinical characteristics and virological features of 38 patients with COVID-19 (long-term carriers) who recovered from the acute disease, but still shed viral RNA for over 3 months. The median carrying history of the long-term carriers was 92 days after the first admission, and the...

Maternal diabetes may lead to long-term risks for the offspring. The study aims at identifying the potential crucial genes and pathways associated with foetal metabolism and malformation of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Gene Expression Series 49524 and 87295 were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus database, including eight from GDM and eight from non-GDM. A total of 35 differentially expressed genes were identified. Gene ontology functional annotation and signalling pathway analyses were performed. Four hub genes...

The modulatory effect of tranilast on neuropathic pain in type-2 diabetes (T2DM) remains unclear. We monitored interleukin (IL)-1β, nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) and tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) levels during the progression of T2DM induced neuropathic pain in rats, and assessed the impact of tranilast treatment of increasing concentrations (0, 200 and 400 mg/kg/day via oral gavage in 1% NaHCO3 delivered as 100 mg/kg twice a day) on the levels of cytokine production, as well as on...

Scabies remains a significant public health concern globally, affecting people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic groups. The epidemic characteristics of scabies are yet unravelled, especially in high-income countries and elderly population. In this study, we sought to investigate incidence and prevalence and their trends of scabies worldwide from 1990 to 2017 via the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2017. The prevalence and incidence of scabies tend to a moderate increase after age 70....

Obtaining ideal gene delivery vectors is still a major goal in cancer gene therapy. CAMEL, a short hybrid antimicrobial peptide, can kill cancer cells by membrane lysis. In this study, we constructed a series of non-viral vectors by attaching fatty acids with different chain lengths to the N-terminus of CAMEL. Our results showed that the cellular uptake and transfection efficiency of acyl-CAMEL started to significantly increase from a chain length of 12 carbons. C18-CAMEL was...

Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is the causative agent of bovine viral diarrhea-mucosal disease, which significantly affects the production performance of cattle, causing serious economic losses to the cattle industries worldwide. Up to now, some mechanisms involved in host–BVDV interaction are still not fully understood. The discovery of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) has provided a new perspective on gene regulation in diverse biological contexts, particularly in viral infection and host immune responses. However, little is...

The adsorption of phages to hosts is the first step of phage infection. Studies have shown that tailed phages use tail fibres or spikes to recognize bacterial receptors and mediate adsorption. However, whether other phage tail components can also recognize host receptors is unknown. To identify potential receptors, we screened a transposon mutagenesis library of the marine pathogen Vibrio parahaemolyticus and discovered that a vp0980 mutant (vp0980 encodes a predicted transmembrane protein) could not be...

We, the Editors and Publisher of the journalArchives of Physiology and Biochemistry, have retracted the following article: Wei Zhang, Jun Ma, Shan Wang, Tao Huang & Min Xia (2020) Tranilast attenuates neuropathic pain during type-2 diabetes by inhibiting hypoxia-induced pro-inflammatory cytokines in Zucker diabetic fatty rat model, Archives of Physiology and Biochemistry, DOI: 10.1080/13813455.2020.1854309 Since publication, the authors informed the Publisher and Editor that the authors had not received ethics approval from the Institutional Animal...

Sichuan Province is located at the transitional junction regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the low-altitude plains. It also serves as the corridor of Sino-Tibetan-speaking population migration and expansion since neolithic expansion of Proto-Tibeto-Burman populations from Middle/Upper Yellow River during Majiayao period (3300–2000 BC). However, the population structure and the corresponding genetic diversity of forensic-related markers in this region remain unclear. Thus, we genotyped 30 insertion-deletion (InDel) markers in 444 samples from four ethnic groups...

Obtaining ideal gene delivery vectors is still a major goal in cancer gene therapy. CAMEL, a short hybrid antimicrobial peptide, can kill cancer cells by membrane lysis. In this study, we constructed a series of non-viral vectors by attaching fatty acids with different chain lengths to the N-terminus of CAMEL. Our results showed that the cellular uptake and transfection efficiency of acyl-CAMEL started to significantly increase from a chain length of 12 carbons. C18-CAMEL was...

Several dehydroabietylamine derivatives containing heterocyclic moieties such as thiophene and pyrazine ring were successfully synthesized. The antiproliferative activities of these thiophene-based Schiff-bases, thiophene amides, and pyrazine amides were investigated in vitro against Hela (cervix), MCF-7 (breast), A549 (lung), HepG2 (liver), and HUVEC (umbilical vein) cells by MTT assay. The toxicity of L1−L10 (IC50 = 5.92− >100 μM) was lower than L0 (1.27 μM) and DOX (4.40 μM) in every case. Compound L1 had higher anti-HepG2...

In this work, the two-step headspace (HS) technique was applied to determine the actual volatile compositions of tea infusions. In order to eliminate the influence of water vapor to the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis and enable the capability to determine the volatile compounds in water base samples, a programed temperature vaporizer (PTV) was employed for the additional pre-concentration of thee analytes. While using the reported method, the volatile compounds were retained by the absorbent...

Scabies remains a significant public health concern globally, affecting people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic groups. The epidemic characteristics of scabies are yet unravelled, especially in high-income countries and elderly population. In this study, we sought to investigate incidence and prevalence and their trends of scabies worldwide from 1990 to 2017 via the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2017. The prevalence and incidence of scabies tend to a moderate increase after age 70....

The adsorption of phages to hosts is the first step of phage infection. Studies have shown that tailed phages use tail fibres or spikes to recognize bacterial receptors and mediate adsorption. However, whether other phage tail components can also recognize host receptors is unknown. To identify potential receptors, we screened a transposon mutagenesis library of the marine pathogen Vibrio parahaemolyticus and discovered that a vp0980 mutant (vp0980 encodes a predicted transmembrane protein) could not be...

Scabies remains a significant public health concern globally, affecting people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic groups. The epidemic characteristics of scabies are yet unraveled, especially in high-income countries and elderly population. In this study, we sought to investigate incidence and prevalence and their trends of scabies worldwide from 1990 to 2017 via the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2017. The prevalence and incidence of age-standardized rate (ASR) of scabies tend to a moderate...

Maternal diabetes may lead to long-term risks for the offspring. The study aims at identifying the potential crucial genes and pathways associated with foetal metabolism and malformation of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Gene Expression Series 49524 and 87295 were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus database, including eight from GDM and eight from non-GDM. A total of 35 differentially expressed genes were identified. Gene ontology functional annotation and signalling pathway analyses were performed. Four hub genes...

Collagen type X alpha 1 (COL10A1) is a member of the collagen family and the main matrix component. However, COL10A1 expression and prognosis relationship remains unclear in gastric cancer (GC). Through the analysis of database of Oncomine, the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) as well as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), in contrast to the tissue of normal gastric, COL10A1 in gastric cancer, had been upregulated. The high expression of COL10A1 was obviously related to T...

Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is the causative agent of bovine viral diarrhea-mucosal disease, which significantly affects the production performance of cattle, causing serious economic losses to the cattle industries worldwide. Up to now, some mechanisms involved in host-BVDV interaction are still not fully understood. The discovery of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) has provided a new perspective on gene regulation in diverse biological contexts, particularly in viral infection and host immune responses. However, little is...

FNDC4 is an anti-inflammatory factor that alters the activation state of macrophages; it is used to treat colitis in mice. However, its role in muscle formation and mechanism of function remains unknown. We found that FNDC4 promotes the bovine MDSCs migration and differentiation. Furthermore, we reported that it interacts with integrin β1 (ITGβ1). FAK, mediated by ITGβ1, regulates cell migration. Our results found FNDC4 to influence the expression of p-FAK, p-paxillin, and vinculin. Then, overexpressed...

Collagen type X alpha 1 (COL10A1) is a member of the collagen family and the main matrix component. However, COL10A1 expression and prognosis relationship remains unclear in gastric cancer (GC). Through the analysis of database of Oncomine, the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) as well as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), in contrast to the tissue of normal gastric, COL10A1 in gastric cancer, had been upregulated. The high expression of COL10A1 was obviously related to T...

In December 2019, a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) caused an outbreak in Wuhan, China, and soon spread to other parts of the world. It was believed that 2019-nCoV was transmitted through respiratory tract and then induced pneumonia, thus molecular diagnosis based on oral swabs was used for confirmation of this disease. Likewise, patient will be released upon two times of negative detection from oral swabs. However, many coronaviruses can also be transmitted through oral–fecal route by...

In December 2019, a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) caused an outbreak in Wuhan, China, and soon spread to other parts of the world. It was believed that 2019-nCoV was transmitted through respiratory tract and then induced pneumonia, thus molecular diagnosis based on oral swabs was used for confirmation of this disease. Likewise, patient will be released upon two times of negative detection from oral swabs. However, many coronaviruses can also be transmitted through oral–fecal route by...