BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to explore the expression level of miRNA-30 expression in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NCLC) and analyze its correlation with clinicopathological features and prognosis. METHODS Preoperative serum samples and paracancerous tumor-free tissues of 108 patients with NSCLC treated in our hospital as well as serum samples of 108 healthy subjects were collected from April 2015 to May 2018. The expression levels of miRNA-30 in tissue samples were detected by in situ hybridization and that of miRNA-30 mRNA in serum samples by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). The difference in miRNA-30 expression in tumor-free tissues of NSCLC patients and NSCLC tissues of each stage was measured. The miRNA-30 mRNA levels in NSCLC patients was compared with those in healthy subjects. All subjects were divided into low-expression group ( 0.05), but correlated with lymph node metastasis, tumor size, TNM stage, and degree of differentiation (p less then 0.05). The median overall survival of the miRNA-30 low expression group was 23.0 months, which was shorter than the 36.0 months of high expression group, and the difference was statistically significant (p less then 0.05). CONCLUSIONS miRNA-30 is lowly expressed in NSCLC patients and participates in the development of NSCLC. Moreover, NSCLC patients with low expression show poor prognosis. Thus, miRNA-30 features potential as a marker for NSCLC screening and prognosis prediction.BACKGROUND Tropomyosin alpha-1 chain (TPM1) is a member of the tropomyosin family and the expression of TPM1 is found to be dysregulated in various tumors. The present study aimed to investigate the clinical performance and significance of TPM1 in gastric cancer. METHODS First, the levels of TPM1 mRNA and protein were detected through real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) respectively. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/fasoracetam-ns-105.html The correlation between TPM1 expression and clinicopathological variables was analyzed. Then, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to determine the diagnostic performance of TPM1 in gastric cancer. Finally, overall survival analysis was carried out using Kaplan-Meier method in order to determine the prognostic performance of TPM1 in gastric cancer. RESULTS Compared with the controls, TPM1 mRNA and protein expression levels were significantly downregulated in patients with gastric cancer. Downregulation of TPM1 was associated with depth of invasion and tumor node metastasis (TNM; p = 0.0030 and 0.0175, respectively). Furthermore, TPM1 might be a novel predictive biomarker for gastric cancer with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.8327. Overall survival analysis indicated that low TPM1 expression predicted poor survival (log-rank test, p = 0.0058). CONCLUSIONS TPM1 might be a novel predictive diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for gastric cancer (95% con-fidence interval = 0.7705 - 0.8949, p less then 0.0001).BACKGROUND Immunocompromised patients are at increased risk of morbidity and mortality due to transfusion transmitted cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections. To avoid or minimize such risk, clinicians working in the field continually monitor the changing epidemiology of CMV infections. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 234,192 blood donations obtained from 44,779 donors were tested. CMV seroprevalence and antibody conversion rates were determined over a 3-year period. RESULTS A significant percentage (37.5%) of all male and female blood donors tested seropositive. Both age and gender were risk factors for CMV infection. A total of 177 seroconversions (0.4% of donors) were identified. The highest antibody conversion rate occurred among men between 30 and 39 years of age; women did not experience a similar peak in antibody conversion rate. Approximately 10% of infected blood donors were identified by CMV DNA testing prior to seroconversion. CONCLUSIONS The high rates of seroprevalence and seroconversion and the identification of a significant number of CMV DNA-positive (infected) blood donors prior to seroconversion indicate that the routine testing of blood samples for CMV DNA could reduce the potential risk of CMV transmission to high-risk patients.BACKGROUND Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of the immunosuppressant mycophenolic acid (MPA) is especially recommended for the control of personalized immunosuppressive therapy. Various test systems are available for MPA monitoring, including high performance liquid chromatography combined with UV detection (HPLC-UV) and isotope dilution liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (ID-LC-MS/MS). METHODS In the present work, commercially available kits for MPA monitoring with HPLC-UV and ID-LC-MS/ MS were subjected to routine use TDM. Following method verification according to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines, 105 native sample duplicates from patients under therapy with mycophenolate mofetil were assayed with both procedures for comparative testing. RESULTS Using bi-level quality controls, the estimate of repeatability, within-laboratory imprecision and inaccuracy were ≤ 5.18%, ≤ 5.95% and ≤ 3.86% for all MPA measurements. Weighted Deming regression analysis yielded a slope of 0.93, an intercept of 0.04, and Pearson's correlation coefficient (r) of 0.99, while Bland-Altman analysis showed a combined relative bias of 4.93% (± 1.96 SD -16.68 - 26.54%). Plasma samples taken from a patient re-peatedly showed the presence of an interferent only in HPLC-UV analysis. CONCLUSIONS Based on these results, HPLC-UV testing can be considered suitable for routine TDM of MPA in the clinical setting with high precision. Due to the risk of unforeseen analytical interference in ever-increasing multimorbidity and polypharmacy, highly selective ID-LC-MS/MS methodology should be given preference over HPLC-UV analysis whenever feasible.BACKGROUND We tested the uniformity and stability of candidate reference materials (RMs) for serum potassium and aimed to design RMs with better quality that can meet all clinical test requirements and effectively solve the quantity traceability transfer problem. METHODS Three levels of frozen mixed serum potassium candidate RMs were prepared and packed in freezing tubes. RMs were determined in triplicate in 10 vials randomly selected from each level. A one-way analysis of variance was used to evaluate the uniformity using a ratio of the mean squares among groups to mean squares within groups F less then F0.05 as the criteria. Stability was studied by synchronization; the short-term stability of the serum potassium in the transport conditions was observed for 30, 15, and 7 days at refrigeration (2 - 8°C), room temperature (18 - 25°C), and 37°C, respectively. By linear regression analysis of variance, the straight line was used as an empirical model. The criterion for judging is |b1| less then t0.95, n - 2·sb1.