Gastric cancer is a common tumor of the gastrointestinal tract, and the global trend in morbidity and mortality are not encouraging. Especially in advanced gastric cancer, patient survival outcome is an essential clinical concern and a vital outcome indicator in clinical outcome assessment. This article reviews the definition of clinical outcome assessment and the measurement tools that can be applied in gastric cancer patients, describes the detailed classification of clinical outcome assessment tools, and reviews the current status of the application of clinical outcome assessment in gastric cancer, analyzing the effects and shortcomings of its application, to provide a reference for the clinical staff in choosing the appropriate tools, and assisting in the comprehensive and holistic assessment of clinical outcomes for the promotion of the development of precision medicine.

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic dermatological disease characterized by recurrent eczematous lesions, dry skin and pruritus. The prevalence of AD in China has been increasing during the past decade. This study assessed the direct medical expenses of adult and adolescent patients with AD in China via a comprehensive questionnaire designed with support from three dermatologists in China. Forty-seven questionnaires (29 for adults and 18 for adolescents aged 12 to 17) from different geographic regions to assess the direct medical costs of different AD severity were collected and analyzed. Cost data were converted to US dollars using the 2020 exchange rate (1 USD=6.8974 RMB). At last, the average annual direct medical expenses for adult patients were $826, $1,627 and $3,709 (mild, moderate, severe), respectively, while those for adolescents were $371, $1,001 and $1,800, respectively. For cost composition, moisturizers accounted for the largest proportion of all groups except adults with severe AD who spent the most on systemic therapies. For adult patients, moisturizers, topical drugs, systemic therapies and other treatments (including ultraviolet light therapy and traditional Chinese medicine) accounted for 61.05%, 33.79%, 1.76% and 3.40% of the total treatment expenses in patients with mild AD, 47.26%, 30.29%, 12.85% and 9.59% in patients with moderate AD, and 29.88%, 24.41%, 31.47% and 14.24% in patients with severe AD. For adolescents, the proportion of costs on above-mentioned components were 64.02%, 21.88%, 2.83% and 11.27% for mild, 44.87%, 19.85%, 7.97% and 27.31% for moderate, and 33.46%, 25.75%, 25.17% and 15.61% for severe, respectively. In summary, the direct medical costs of both adult and adolescent patients with AD increase with the higher disease severity in China.

BACKGROUND Cerebrovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death and disability in China. Preventive measures to reduce the incidence of cerebrovascular disease are important, so the risk factors associated with death need to be identified. Most studies showed that cerebrovascular disease has many risk factors for death, such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, family history of stroke, diabetes, overweight, alcohol consumption, and smoking. METHODS A literature search was conducted in the English database PubMed and Chinese databases including CNKI, VIP, and China Journal Full-text Database. The time limit for retrieval was from establishment of the database to March 2021. All randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving hypertension, hyperlipidemia, family history of stroke, diabetes, overweight, drinking, smoking and cerebrovascular diseases (i.e., stroke and cerebral infarction) were included. Review Manager 5.3 provided by the Cochrane Collaboration was used for meta-analysis. RESULTS A total of 10 studies (with 32,664 patients in trial and control groups) were included: 14,743 cases in the control group and 17,901 cases in the risk factor group. The combined odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) of all risk factors in patients with emergency cerebrovascular diseases in the Department of Neurology were 2.33 (1.83-2.98) for hypertension, 2.65 (1.80-3.91) for hyperlipidemia, 2.18 (1.73-2.73) for family history of stroke, 4.78 (3.07-7.42) for overweight, 2.97 (1.95-4.52) for alcoholism, and 2.98 (2.11-4.2) for smoking. P values were all less than 0.05, and the differences were statistically significant. DISCUSSION The 10 articles included in this meta-analysis studied the effects of various mortality risk factors (hypertension, hyperlipidemia, family history of stroke, diabetes, overweight, alcohol consumption, and smoking) on the death of patients with emergency cerebrovascular diseases in the Department of Neurology. Attention should be paid to the treatment or care of the above factors in clinical practice to reduce the mortality of patients.

Purpose: Advanced age is the largest risk factor for age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Sumoylation is a reversible post-translational modification that conjugates small peptide, small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO), to a target protein. Dysregulation of sumoylation is recently found to be critically involved in several age-related disorders. However, the effects of sumoylation during retina senescence and aging remains elusive. This study is aimed to investigate the function and regulation of sumoylation pathway in the aging retina and premature senescent retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells. Methods: 1.5- and 10-month C57/B6 mice were used for comparative aging study. Both ARPE primary cultures and ARPE-19 cells were used for assay systems. The qRT-PCR was used for analysis of mRNA expression. Western blot and immunofluorescence were used to analyze the protein expression. Cell flow cytometry was used for cell cycle progression analysis. RPE barrier function and senescent-associated beta-galactosidase (SA beta-gal) activity were analyzed to measure cellular senescence. Results: We show that the expression of SUMO enzymes and global protein sumoylation were downregulated in the aging mouse retina, and in the oxidative stress (OS) -induced premature senescent RPE cells. Dramatical altered distribution of SUMO E1, E2 and E3 enzymes were observed during RPE senescence. Inhibition of sumoylation alleviated OS-induced cell senescence in RPE cells, as indicated by decreased p21 and p53 expression and decreased percentage of cell cycle arrest at G(0)/G(1 )phase. Intriguingly, inhibition of SUMO E1 repressed the expression of proinflammatory cytokine and chemokine in the premature senescent RPE cells. However, inhibition of sumoylation did not prevent DNA damage during the OS-induced RPE senescence process. Conclusions: Our data indicate sumoylation critically regulates retina and RPE aging and that targeting sumoylation process may provide potential therapeutic strategy for AMD treatment.

Purpose: The protein phosphatase-2A (PP-2A) is one of the most important serine/threonine phosphatases in eukaryotes. The holoenzyme of PP-2A consists of three subunits: a scaffold A subunit, a catalytic C subunit and a regulatory B subunit. While both A and C subunits are coded by two different genes, the B subunits exist in 26 or more isoforms which are encoded by at least 15 different genes. Previous studies have shown that besides regulating specific PP-2A activity, various B subunits may have other functions. To explore the possible roles of the regulatory subunits of PP-2A in vertebrate development, we have cloned the gene encoding goldfish striatin, a member of the B'" family regulatory subunits for PP-2A, and determined their tissue-specific and temporal expression patterns.Methods: The cDNA cloning was conducted with RT-PCR-based RACE. The mRNA expression levels for the goldfish striatin were analyzed with RT-PCR. The expression levels of the striatin protein from goldfish were determined with Western blot analysis. The semi-quantitation of the mRNA and protein expression levels was conducted with the software of U-scanning.Results: Our study revealed that the full length cDNA for striatin consists of 2965 bp coding for a deduced protein of 769 amino acids, which bears a very high level of amino acid sequence identity with the homolog protein from other species. The striatin mRNA is highly expressed in the kidney, to a less degree in brain, fin, muscle, liver, ovary and gill, and the lowest in testis and heart. Similar pattern of protein expression is detected in the above 9 tissues. During the development of goldfish, the striatin mRNA maintains a relatively high level at the 2-cell, multiple cell and blastula stages. Then, it drops down substantially at gastrula stage and fluctuates around this level in the next 8 different stages. At the protein level, the striatin maintained higher level from 2-cell to gastrula stages, then decreased at neurula and optic vesicle stages, and gradually increased again to peak at eye pigmentation stage, then slightly decreased in the next few stages of development.Conclusions: Our results suggest that the striatin may play an important role in regulating goldfish development and adult tissue homeostasis. While the former function may or may not occur through PP-2A functions, the later function appears to occur via PP-2A activity.

Sumoylation, a post-translational modification discovered over a decade ago, turns out to be a very important regulatory mechanism mediating multiple cellular processes. Recent studies from our laboratory and others also revealed that it plays a crucial role in regulating both differentiation and pathogenesis of the ocular lens. This review will summarize these progresses.

The male abnormal gene family contains 3 members, named mab21l1, mab21l2 and mab21l3. Since their first discovery in C. elegans, homologues of mab21l1 and mab21l2 have been found in Drosophila, Zebrafish, Xenopus, chicken, mouse and human. A number of studies have revealed that mab21 gene family members, mab21l1 and mab21l2, play important roles in regulating eye development. Here, we review the functions of the mab genes in regulating ocular development.

It is often necessary to optimize the Bayesian network structure. Based on the junction tree, Bayesian network had been decomposed into a number of sub-networks. For different situations of adding edges, deleting edges and reversing edges in Bayesian network, it takes disparate approach. The changes in sub-networks were detected by the scoring function. And the conditional independence test of sub networks corresponding to adjacent cliques of junction tree is used to determine the inter-networks changes. At last utilizing all the change of within or between sub-networks, the optimization of Bayesian network structure is selected. The effectiveness of this method has been to verify by the simulation results.