Background: Existing studies which regarding to the association between individual socioeconomic status (SES) and obesity are still scarce in developing countries. The major aim of this study is to estimate such association in an adult population which was drawn from an economically prosperous province of China. Methods: Study population was determined by multilevel randomized sampling. Education and income were chosen as indicators of individual SES, general obesity and abdominal obesity were measured by body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). Descriptive statistical methods were used to depict overall and factor-specific distributions of general and abdominal obesity among 16,013 respondents. Two-step logistic regression models were fitted on gender basis. Results: The age-and-sex adjusted rates of general overweight, general obesity, abdominal overweight and abdominal obesity in study population were 28.9% (95%CI: 27.9%-29.9%), 7.5% (95%CI: 7.0%-8.1%), 32.2% (95%CI: 31.2%-33.3%) and 12.3% (95%CI: 11.6%-13.1%), respectively. Based on model fitting results, a significant inverse association between education and obesity only existed in women, while in men, income rather than education was positively related to obesity. Conclusions: The atypical SES-obesity relationship we found reflected the on-going social economy transformation in affluent regions of China. High-income men and poorly-educated women were at higher risk of obesity in Zhejiang province, thus merit intense focuses.

Purpose: To identify potential molecular targets for lung cancer intervention and diagnosis, we analyzed the differential miRNA expression of peripheral blood between lung cancer patients and healthy controls.Methods: Three pairs of cases’ and controls’ peripheral blood samples were evaluated for miRNA expression by microarray. 12 miRNAs were selected for RT‐PCR validation and target genes prediction. In addition, 4 miRNAs were selected for future validation by RT‐PCR in a large sample of 145 cases and 55 frequency‐matched healthy controls.Results: A total of 338 differentially expressed miRNAs were screened and identified by microarray. According to the fold changes, the top ten upregulated miRNAs were hsa‐miR‐124‐3p, hsa‐miR‐379‐5p, hsa‐miR‐3655, hsa‐miR‐450b‐5p, hsa‐miR‐29a‐5p, hsa‐miR‐200a‐3p, hsa‐miR‐542‐3p, hsa‐miR‐138‐5p, hsa‐miR‐219a‐2‐3p, and hsa‐miR‐4701‐3p, and the top ten downregulated miRNAs were hsa‐miR‐34c‐5p, hsa‐miR‐135a‐5p, hsa‐miR‐132‐3p, hsa‐miR‐3178, hsa‐miR‐4449, hsa‐miR‐4999‐3p, hsa‐miR‐1246, hsa‐miR‐4424, hsa‐miR‐1252‐5p, and hsa‐miR‐24‐2‐5p. RT‐PCR verification of the 12 miRNAs revealed that 5 of 8 upregulated miRNAs, 2 of 4 downregulated miRNAs showed a significant difference between the cases and controls (P < .05). A large number of target genes and their functional set showed overlapping among the 453 predicted target genes of the 12 miRNAs (P < .01). RT‐PCR in the large sample confirmed the significant differential expression level of hsa‐miR‐29a‐5p, hsa‐miR‐135a‐5p, hsa‐miR‐542‐3p, and hsa‐miR‐4491 between cases and controls (P < .05), and three of these microRNA, except hsa‐miR‐29a‐5p, were significant after Bonferroni correction for adjustment of multiple comparisons.Conclusion: There was a significant difference in miRNAs expression in the peripheral blood between lung cancer patients and healthy controls, and 4 miRNAs were validated by a large‐size sample.

Purpose: Circulating microRNA (miRNA) has been reported to have diagnostic value in multiple tumors. To identify serum miRNAs for early diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), we analyzed the differential miRNA expression between HCC patients and controls.Methods: Real‐time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) was carried out to detect serum miR‐16, miR‐22, and miR‐122 expression in 100 HCC patients and 100 controls (including hepatitis B, liver cirrhosis, liver metastases, hepatic hemangioma, health group, and each of them had 20 subjects). The miRNA expression results were combined with alpha‐fetoprotein (AFP) to evaluate the diagnostic efficacy in HCC through receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. And the target genes were predicted through bioinformatics methods.Results: Compared with controls, the expression of miR‐16 and miR‐122 significantly increased in early‐stage HCC patients, while no significant changes were detected in miR‐22. The ROC curve analysis demonstrated that miR‐16 and miR‐122 had a high diagnostic efficacy (AUC 0.798 and 0.759), and it was improved when combined with AFP (AUC 0.862). When compared with each of the five groups in the controls, the results showed that miR‐16 of HCC was significantly higher than liver cirrhosis (AUC 0.936), liver metastases, and health; miR‐122 was significantly higher than liver metastases, hepatitis B, and health. Moreover, 175 and 101 potential target genes were regulated by miR‐16 and miR‐122, respectively. And most of the target genes were enriched in the PI3K, MAPK, FoxO signaling pathways, and pathways in cancer.Conclusion: Our findings illustrate that both circulating miR‐16 and miR‐122 can provide value for early diagnosis of HCC and they are potential biomarkers for the early‐stage HCC.

Although exercise seems to be beneficial for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients, there is limited research elucidating the optimal accessible indices of adiposity and insulin resistance for identifying elderly T2DM patients with poor glycemic control, which could be improved by performing regular exercise. A community-based, cross-sectional study was conducted with 918 Chinese elderly individuals with T2DM in Zhejiang. Relevant risk factors for poor glycemic control, as determined using glycated haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) > 7%, were explored using logistic regression analyses and included body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist to height ratio (WHtR), fasting blood glucose (FBG), triglycerides (TGs), total cholesterol (TC), the product of fasting triglycerides and glucose (TyG), visceral adiposity index (VAI), lipid accumulation product (LAP), TyG-BMI, and TyG-WC. Comparisons of the risk factors’ ability to discriminate poor glycemic control as well as their optimal cutoff values were determined using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses, and then the extent of poor glycemic control risk reduction through regular exercise was examined using multivariate logistic regression analyses. The overall poor glycemic control rate was 49.3%. The factors associated with poor glycemic control included FBG > 3.869, TyG > 8.73, TyG-BMI > 222.45, and TyG-WC > 713.48 in logistic regression analyses. The optimal cutoff points of FBG, TyG, TyG-WC, and TyG-BMI in discriminating poor glycemic control were 7.38, 9.22, 813.33, and 227.77, and their corresponding areas under the ROC curves were 0.864(0.840–0.886), 0.684(0.653–0.714), 0.604(0.571–0.635), and 0.574(0.541–0.606), respectively. Occasional and regular exercise reduced the odds ratios (95% confidence interval) of poor glycemic control to 0.187 (0.063–0.557) and 0.183 (0.059–0.571) for subjects with TyG-WC > 813.33 (p = 0.008), to 0.349 (0.156–0.782) and 0.284 (0.123–0.652) for subjects with TyG > 9.22 (p = 0.011), and to 0.390 (0.175–0.869) and 0.300(0.130–0.688) for subjects with TyG-BMI > 227.77 (p = 0.017), respectively, after adjusting for multiple confounding factors. Among elderly individuals with T2DM, poor glycemic control risk might be identified using indices calculated from FBG, TG, BMI, and WC measurements, which are indicative of adiposity and insulin resistance. TyG-WC seems to be an accessible and useful indicator to identify which elderly T2DM patients would benefit from performing regular exercise to achieve good glycemic control.

Background: Previous studies have indicated inconsistent relationships of diabetes with thyroid cancer risk, yet little is known in China. In this study, we aimed to investigate the associations between diabetes, diabetes duration and the risk of thyroid cancer in Chinese population. Methods: A 1:1 matched case-control study was performed between 2015 and 2017 in Zhejiang Province including 2,937 thyroid cancer cases and 2,937 healthy controls. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95 % confidence intervals (CIs) for thyroid cancer were estimated in logistic regression models. Specific effects stratified by age, as well as sex, body mass index (BMI) and family history of diabetes were also examined. Results: Overall, neither diabetes (OR = 0.75, 95 % CI: 0.21-2.73) nor diabetes duration (OR = 0.14, 95 % CI: 0.02-1.22 for diabetes duration <= 5 years; OR = 2.10, 95 % CI: 0.32-13.94 for diabetes duration > 5 years) was significantly associated with thyroid cancer. In stratified analyses, significant lower risk of thyroid cancer was observed among subjects with diabetes and shorter diabetes duration ( <= 5 years), but limited to those who were aged more than 40 years, female, overweight/obese and had positive family history of diabetes. Conclusions: Diabetes and shorter diabetes duration were significantly associated with decreased risk of thyroid cancer in individuals characterized by older age, female sex, higher BMI and positive family history of diabetes.