let-23

BACKGROUND: Women have an increased prevalence of severe asthma compared with men. IL-17A is associated with severe asthma and requires IL-23 receptor (IL-23R) signaling, which is negatively regulated by let-7f microRNA. OBJECTIVE: We sought to Determine the mechanism by which 17β-estradiol (E2) and progesterone (P4) increase IL-17A production. METHODS: IL-17A production was determined by using flow cytometry in TH17 cells from women (n = 14) and men (n = 15) with severe asthma...

OBJECTIVE: We investigate differences between White and South Asian (SA) populations in levels of objectively measured and self-reported physical activity. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: Leicestershire, UK, 2010-2011. PARTICIPANTS: Baseline data were pooled from two diabetes prevention trials that recruited a total of 4282 participants from primary care with a high risk score for type 2 diabetes. For this study, 2843 White (age=64±8, female=37%) and 243 SA (age=58±9, female=34%) participants had complete physical activity data and were included in the analysis...

BACKGROUND: Dose painting is a concept that may increase the tumor control probability (TCP). In particle therapy of hypoxic tumors, it may also be beneficial to redistribute the linear energy transfer (LET) so that the oxygen effect is minimized; so-called LET painting. The purpose of the present study was to use TCP estimates for comparing dose and LET painting of hypoxic tumors. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Protons, lithium ions and carbon ions were considered. Tumor images tentatively depicting hypoxia were used as input...

PURPOSE: To characterize the response of Al2O3:C optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) detectors (OSLDs) exposed to therapeutic proton beams of differing beam quality. METHODS: We prepared Al2O3:C OSLDs from the same material as commercially available nanoDot dosimeters (Landauer, Inc). We irradiated the OSLDs in modulated proton beams of varying quality, as defined by the residual range. An absorbed dose to water of 0.2 Gy was delivered to all OSLDs with the residual range values varying from 0...

PURPOSE: To investigate the trade-off between vertebral column sparing and thecal-sac target coverage in craniospinal irradiation (CSI) of pediatric patients treated with passive-scattering (PS) and intensity modulated (IMPT) proton therapy. METHODS: We selected 2 pediatric patients treated with PS CSI for medulloblastoma. Spinal irradiation was re-planned with IMPT. For all cases, we assumed prescription dose of 23.4 Gy(RBE), with the spinal canal receiving at least 95% of 23...

Ligand-induced receptor dimerization has traditionally been viewed as the key event in transmembrane signalling by epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFRs). Here we show that the Caenorhabditis elegans EGFR orthologue LET-23 is constitutively dimeric, yet responds to its ligand LIN-3 without changing oligomerization state. SAXS and mutational analyses further reveal that the preformed dimer of the LET-23 extracellular region is mediated by its domain II dimerization arm and resembles other EGFR extracellular dimers seen in structural studies...

OBJECTIVE: To observe the clinical therapeutic effect of blood-letting plus acupuncture intervention for acute facial paralysis with pain (damp-heat type of liver and gallbladder). METHODS: A total of 120 cases of acute facial paralysis with pain were randomly and equally divided into control group and treatment group. Patients of the control group were treated by simple acupuncture therapy only, and patients of the treatment group treated by acupuncture plus bloodletting at the ipsilateral Yangbai(GB 14) and Quanliao (SI 18), and Dazhui (GV 14) and Yifeng (TE 17), alternatively...

BACKGROUND: Present study provides clinical evidence of existence of a functional loop involving miR-21 and let-7a as potential regulators of aberrant STAT3 signaling recently reported by our group in an experimental setup (Shishodia et al. BMC Cancer 2014, 14:996). The study is now extended to a set of cervical tissues that represent natural history of human papillomavirus (HPV)-induced tumorigenic transformation. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Cervical tissues from histopathologically-confirmed pre-cancer (23) and cancer lesions (56) along with the normal control tissues (23) were examined for their HPV infection status, expression level of miR-21 & let-7a and STAT3 & pSTAT3 (Y705) by PCR-based genotyping, quantitative real-time PCR and immunoblotting...

BACKGROUND: Let-7 family plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD). Genetic polymorphisms in the promoters of miRNA may influence individual׳s susceptibility to diseases. The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between rs10877887 and rs13293512 polymorphisms in the promoters of let-7 family and the risk of MDD. METHOD: Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism and DNA sequencing assays were used to analyze the rs10877887 and rs13293512 polymorphisms in 237 MDD patients and 296 controls...

Dicer is critical for producing mature microRNAs (miRNAs) from precursor molecules and small interfering RNAs and plays an important role in controlling development and metabolism. In the present study, we cloned the flounder dicer gene, which is 6585 nucleotides (nt), including a 5'-untranslated region (UTR) of 231 nt, a 3'-UTR of 663 nt and an open reading frame of 5691 nt encoding a polypeptide of 1897 amino acids, and analyzed the conservation and expression pattern of dicer. The tissue distribution analysis indicated that dicer is abundantly expressed in the brain, heart, liver, spleen, stomach, kidney, gill, muscle, intestine and gonad of adult fish...

Osteoporosis is the consequence of altered bone metabolism resulting in the systemic reduction of bone strength and increased risk of fragility fractures. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression on a post-transcriptional level and are known to take part in the control of bone formation and bone resorption. In addition, it is known that miRNAs are secreted by many cell types and can transfer "messages" to recipient cells. Thus, circulating miRNAs might not only be useful as surrogate biomarkers for the diagnosis or prognosis of pathological conditions, but could be actively modulating tissue physiology...

Our objective was to construct a 3D, interactive, and reference atlas of the extracranial vasculature spatially correlated with the intracranial blood vessels, cranial nerves, skull, glands, and head muscles.The atlas has been constructed from multiple 3T and 7T magnetic resonance angiogram (MRA) brain scans, and 3T phase contrast and inflow MRA neck scans of the same specimen in the following steps: vessel extraction from the scans, building 3D tubular models of the vessels, spatial registration of the extra- and intracranial vessels, vessel editing, vessel naming and color-coding, vessel simplification, and atlas validation...

BACKGROUND/AIM: MicroRNAs (miRs) are non-coding RNA molecules regulating diverse cellular processes essential in carcinogenesis. Little is known regarding miRs in head and neck squamous cell cancer (HNSCC). The aim of the present study was to investigate miRs in relation to the clinico pathological features of site-specific HNSCC. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study comprised of 51 patients with HNSCC (23 oropharyngeal, 24 laryngeal and 4 hypopharyngeal carcinomas)...

The multifactorial aspect of neurodegenerative diseases has posed challenges in terms of understanding various mechanistic cues behind these ailments. The fact that single microRNA (miRNA) molecules can regulate multiple genes and associated pathways makes these molecules interesting for studies within the area of age-associated neurodegenerative diseases. miRNAs are endogenous, evolutionarily conserved, 20-23 nucleotide non-coding RNAs, which were first discovered in Caenorhabditis elegans. They play a key role in gene regulation and are known to be deregulated in many disease conditions...

The present study reports that Klebsiella pneumoniae (KP) killed the Caenorhabditis elegans as a consequence of an accumulation and proliferation of the pathogen inside the worms' intestine. The real-time PCR analysis of the genes responsible for vulval development (let-23) and egg laying (lin-29) in KP infected C. elegans confirmed the reproductive defects provoked by KP at the molecular level. In addition, the genetic analysis in N2 wild type, tol-1, sek-1 and pmk-1 mutants unveiled that KP attenuates the toll-dependent p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK) by chiefly inhibiting the production of antimicrobial factors such as nlp-29, lys-1 and C-type lectins...

The changes in cellular microRNA (miRNA) expression during the course of an adenovirus type 2 infection in human lung fibroblast were studied by deep RNA sequencing. Expressions of 175 miRNAs with over 100 transcripts per million nucleotides were changed more than 1.5-fold. The expression patterns of these miRNAs changed dramatically during the course of the infection, from upregulation of the miRNAs known as tumor suppressors (such as miR-22, miR-320, let-7, miR-181b, and miR-155) and down-regulation of oncogenic miRNAs (such as miR-21 and miR-31) early to downregulation of tumor suppressor miRNAs (such as let-7 family, mir-30 family, 23/27 cluster) and upregulation of oncogenic miRNAs (include miR-125, miR-27, miR-191) late after infection...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) modulate many biological processes and can be up-or down-regulated in a variety of diseases states, including in bacterial infection. In this study, we characterized miRNAs associated with susceptibility or resistance to motile Aeromonas hydrophila in grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella), a commercially important farmed fish species in China. Using Illumina next-generation sequencing, we detected 185 miRNAs in A. hydrophila-susceptible (SGC) and -resistant grass carp (RGC) during immune activation...

An estimated 1.6 million to 3.8 million sports-related concussions occur each year in the United States, and many are related to football. This has generated much discussion in the media on the perceived safety of the sport. In the current study, researchers asked 230 individuals various questions about attitudes toward safety in football. Approximately 92.6% of participants indicated they would allow their child to play football; these participants were more likely to be female (χ(2) = 5.23, p > .05), were slightly younger (t= -2...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important regulators that play key roles in tumorigenesis and tumor progression. In this study, we investigate whether let-7b acts as a tumor suppressor to inhibit invasion and metastasis in gastric cancers. We analyzed the expression of let-7b in 60 pair-matched gastric neoplastic and adjacent non-neoplastic tissues by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Functional analysis of let-7b expression was assessed in vitro in gastric cancer cell lines with let-7b precursor and inhibitor...

INTRODUCTION: Worldwide, HIV-related mortality among adolescents living with HIV (ALHIV) increased by 50% from 2005 to 2012 and is attributed in part to a lack of support for adolescent retention to care and adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART). This vulnerability reinforces the need to better understand incomplete ART adherence among ALHIV, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the majority of the world's 2.1 million ALHIV reside. METHODS: From December 2011 to February 2012, we conducted in-depth interviews with 32 ALHIV (aged 15 to 18) and 23 of their adult caregivers in the Copperbelt Province of Zambia...