Background: With the aging of the Chinese population, the prevalence of depression and chronic diseases is continually growing among middle-aged and older adult people. This study aimed to investigate the association between chronic diseases and depression in this population.Methods: Data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) 2011–2018 longitudinal survey, a 7-years follow-up of 7,163 participants over 45 years old, with no depression at baseline (2011). The chronic disease status in our study was based on the self-report of the participants, and depression was defined by the 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D-10). The relationship between baseline chronic disease and depression was assessed by the Kaplan–Meier method and Cox proportional hazards regression models.Results: After 7-years follow-up, 41.2% (2,951/7163, 95% CI:40.1, 42.3%) of the participants reported depression. The analysis showed that participants with chronic diseases at baseline had a higher risk of depression and that such risk increased significantly with the number of chronic diseases suffered (1 chronic disease: HR = 1.197; 2 chronic diseases: HR = 1.310; 3 and more chronic diseases: HR = 1.397). Diabetes or high blood sugar (HR = 1.185), kidney disease (HR = 1.252), stomach or other digestive diseases (HR = 1.128), and arthritis or rheumatism (HR = 1.221) all significantly increased the risk of depression in middle-aged and older adult Chinese.Conclusion: The present study found that suffering from different degrees of chronic diseases increased the risk of depression in middle-aged and older adult people, and these findings may benefit preventing depression and improving the quality of mental health in this group.

Background: Aberrantly activated Notch signaling has been shown to play a key role in carcinogenesis and progression of various human malignancies. In this study, we investigated the expression of Notch1 and Notch2 in colorectal cancer to determine whether they could serve as prognostic predictors. Patients and methods: The protein expression of Notch1 and Notch2 was examined by immunohistochemistry in 1003 clinical colorectal cancer specimens. Notch1 and Notch2 protein levels were investigated by immunohistochemistry. Statistical analysis was carried out to assess their prognostic value. Results: Significantly negative correlation between Notch1 and Notch2 was found in colorectal cancer (P < 0.001). Notch1 and Notch2 were proved to be inversely correlated with tumor differentiation, depth of invasion, lymph node metastases, distant metastasis, TNM (tumor–node–metastasis) stage and survival of patients, suggesting opposite function of the two receptors. Notch1 and Notch2 were proved to be adverse independent prognostic predictors (P < 0.001). Moreover, a synergistic effect of positive Notch1 and negative Notch2 coexpression on predicting poor overall survival was proved. Conclusions: Notch1 and Notch2 may be independent adverse prognostic predictors for patients with colorectal cancer. These results would contribute to identify more efficient prognostic predictors and therapeutic targets.

Matrix metalloproteinase‐9 is a member of the Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) family, which is overexpressed in some solid tumor and thought to enhance the tumor invasion and metastasis ability. Our study is to investigate the association of MMP‐9 expression with disease‐free survival and overall survival of patients with gastric cancer. Clinical gastric cancer specimens and adjacent normal tissues from 286 patients who had not received neoadjuvant chemotherapy were investigated by immunohistochemistry assay. Staining evaluation results were analyzed statistically in relation to various clinicopathological characters, disease‐free survival and overall survival. High level of MMP‐9 expression was detected in gastric cancer, significantly more than in adjacent normal epithelial cells. In gastric cancer, MMP‐9 was significantly positively correlated with depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis. However, no correlations between MMP‐9 expression and patients' age, sex, tumor location or differentiation status were detected. The disease‐free survival and overall survival were significantly shorter for patients with MMP‐9 positive than those with MMP‐9 negative tumors. Multivariate analysis identified MMP‐9 was an independent prognostic factor for both disease‐free survival and overall survival. Our findings provided convincing evidence for MMP‐9 as an important role in human gastric cancer recurrence and prognosis. It might also serve as a novel target for both prognostic prediction and therapeutics.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have demonstrated that circadian genes play a role in the development and progression of many cancers. This study aims to assess the effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in circadian genes on recurrence and survival of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients.METHODS: Nine functional SNPs in 3 genes (CLOCK, NPAS2, and BMAL1) on the circadian positive feedback loop were selected and genotyped using the Sequenom iPLEX genotyping system in a cohort of 411 resected Chinese CRC patients. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards model and Kaplan‐Meier curve were used for the prognosis analysis.RESULTS: The authors identified 2 SNPs in the CLOCK gene to be significantly associated with CRC overall survival. SNP rs3749474 exhibited a significant association with survival of CRC patients in the additive model (hazard ratio [HR], 0.55; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.37‐0.81; P = .003). In addition, patients carrying the heterozygous variant of rs1801260 had significantly increased overall survival compared with those carrying homozygous wild‐type genotype (HR, 0.31; 95% CI, 0.11‐0.88; P = .03). Findings from functional assay provided further biological support for these significant associations. Stratified analysis found no modifying effect of chemotherapy on the prognostic significance of both SNPs. Moreover, we observed cumulative effects of these 2 SNPs on CRC overall survival (P for trend = .01). Compared with patients carrying no unfavorable genotypes, those carrying 2 unfavorable genotypes had a 2.92‐fold increased risk of death (P = .03).CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest for the first time that CLOCK gene polymorphisms may serve as an independent prognostic marker for CRC patients. Cancer 2012;. © 2011 American Cancer Society.