Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are one of the most common bacterial infections acquired both in community and hospital. Fluoroquinolones, represented by levofloxacin and ciprofloxacin, are widely used for treatment of UTIs. However, it remains controversial for the comparison between the 2 drugs, which propelled us to conduct the first evidence-based research on this topic. To establish their relative efficacy and safety, we searched Pubmed, embase, and Web of Science for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for UTIs. A total of 5 RCTs were finally included, involving 2,352 patients and a systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to compare the end-of-therapy and posttherapy clinical success rate, microbial eradication rate and adverse event rate. Jadad score and Review Manager 5.3.0 version were applied respectively to evaluate the study quality and heterogeneity. There was no significant difference between levofloxacin and ciprofloxacin group in end-of-therapy or posttherapy clinical success rate and microbial eradication rate (p > 0.05). As for adverse event rate, the 2 drugs were comparable and both safe for clinical use. Based on one included trial and pharmacological research, we raised hypothesis that levofloxacin was superior to ciprofloxacin for treatment of E. coli-induced chronic bacterial prostatitis (CBP) and it required a further study to prove it.

Retinoic acid receptor β (RARβ), a known tumor suppressor gene, is frequently silenced in numerous malignant types of tumor. Recent reports have demonstrated that loss of RARβ expression may be responsible, in part, for the drug resistance observed in clinical trials. However, little is known about the role of RARβ in regulating drug sensitivity in patients with cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) with a high risk of mortality and poor outcomes. In the present study, low RARβ expression was observed in the majority of CCA tissues investigated (28/33, 84.8%). In addition, the CCA cell line QBC939, which exhibits low RARβ expression, was found to be significantly resistant to chemotherapeutic agents compared with SK‑ChA‑1, MZ‑ChA‑1 and Hccc9810 CCA cell lines, which exhibit high RARβ expression. Furthermore, upregulation of RARβ significantly enhanced the sensitivity of QBC939 cells to common chemotherapeutic agents both in vitro and in vivo. Upregulation of RARβ was shown to increase the expression of proapoptotic genes bax, bak and bim, in addition to caspase‑3 activity, and decrease the expression of antiapoptotic genes bcl‑2, bcl‑xL and mcl‑1. As a result, CCA cells were more susceptible to caspase‑dependent apoptosis. Taken together, these data suggest that RARβ upregulation rendered CCA cells more sensitive to chemotherapeutic agents by increasing the susceptibility of cells to caspase-dependent apoptosis. These results support the hypothesis that RARβ may be an ideal chemosensitization target for the treatment of patients with drug-resistant CCA.

Multidetector computed tomography (MDCT) exhibited wide ranges of sensitivities and specificities for lymph node assessment of gastric cancer (GC) in several individual studies. This present meta-analysis was carried out to evaluate the value of MDCT in diagnosis of preoperative lymph node metastasis (LNM) and to explore the impact factors that might explain the heterogeneity of its diagnostic accuracy in GC. A comprehensive search was conducted to collect all the relevant studies about the value of MDCT in assessing LNM of GC within the PubMed, Cochrane library and Embase databases up to Feb 2, 2016. Two investigators independently screened the studies, extracted data, and evaluated the quality of included studies. The sensitivity, specificity, and area under ROC curve (AUC) were pooled to estimate the overall accuracy of MDCT. Meta-regression and subgroup analysis were carried out to identify the possible factors influencing the heterogeneity of the accuracy. A total of 27 studies with 6519 subjects were finally included. Overall, the pooled sensitivity, specificity, and AUC were 0.67 (95% CI: 0.56–0.77), 0.86 (95% CI: 0.81–0.90), and 0.86 (95% CI: 0.83–0.89), respectively. Meta-regression revealed that MDCT section thickness, proportion of serosal invasion, and publication year were the main significant impact factors in sensitivity, and MDCT section thickness, multiplanar reformation (MPR), and reference standard were the main significant impact factors in specificity. After the included studies were divided into 2 groups (Group A: studies with proportion of serosa-invasive GC subjects ≥50%; Group B: studies with proportion of serosa-invasive GC subjects <50%), the pooled sensitivity in Group A was significantly higher than in Group B (0.84 [95% CI: 0.75–0.90] vs 0.55 [95% CI: 0.41–0.68], P < .01). For early gastric cancer (EGC), the pooled sensitivity, specificity, and AUC were 0.34 (95% CI: 0.15–0.61), 0.91 (95% CI: 0.84–0.95), and 0.83 (95% CI: 0.80–0.86), respectively. To summarize, MDCT tends to be adequate to assess preoperative LNM in serosa-invasive GC, but insufficient for non-serosa-invasive GC (particularly for EGC) owing to its low sensitivity. Proportion of serosa-invasive GC subjects, MDCT section thickness, MPR, and reference standard are the main factors influencing its diagnostic accuracy.

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) represents a type of epithelial cancer with a late diagnosis and poor outcome. However, the molecular mechanisms responsible for the development of CCA have not yet been fully identified. Thus, in this study, we aimed to elucidate some of these mechanisms. For this purpose, isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ) was performed to analyze the secretory proteins from the 2 CCA cell lines, TFK1 and HuCCT1, as well as from a normal biliary epithelial cell line, human intrahepatic biliary epithelial cells (HiBECs). Differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) were identified and biological process analysis was performed according to the Gene Ontology (GO) functional classification annotation and KEGG metabolic pathway map analysis. tumor protein D52 (TPD52) and DnaJ heat shock protein family (Hsp40) member B1 (DNAJB1) were validated using RT-qPCR, western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry. In total, 778 proteins were identified as DEPs. Following validation, TPD52 and DNAJB1 were used for further analysis. The expression levels of TPD52 and DNAJB1 were elevated in CCA cell lines, tissues and bile samples, suggesting that these proteins may contribute to tumor pathogenesis. In addition, the expression levels of TPD52 and DNAJB1 were found to be closely associated with the clinical parameters and prognosis of patients with CCA. On the whole, the findings of this study indicate that TPD52 and DNAJB1 may serve as novel bile biomarkers for CCA.