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Biomedical subjects

Guoqing Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Guoqing Zhang.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Reduced mean platelet volume (MPV) as an inflammatory marker in Chinese women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a case-control study.

BACKGROUND: Low-grade chronic inflammation is observed in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). A recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) suggested that several inflammation marker levels were altered in the blood routine tests in PCOS patients and such changes were associated with variant gene clusters. Therefore, inflammatory marker alterations in the blood routine tests are significant and might be involved in the onset as well as progression of PCOS. Compared with other markers, these inflammatory markers in the blood routine tests are less expensive and easier to detect. Very few studies have evaluated the changes in platelet indicators like platelet count and mean platelet volume (MPV) in Chinese women with PCOS. The aim of the study was to investigate the changes in platelet-related inflammatory indices in Chinese women with PCOS. METHODS: The study included 299 women aged 18–47 with PCOS and 481 healthy women as the control group. We conducted propensity score matching to refine our dataset, utilizing the ‘Matching’ package in R to match cases with the disease to controls. Correlation analyses were performed using Pearson correlation analysis. Partial correlation analysis was used to analyse the correlation between MPV and the indicators after adjusting for age, body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). Binary logistic regression (forward-wald) was used to evaluate if the relationship between MPV and PCOS was independent of obesity, insulin resistance (IR), and hyperandrogenism. RESULTS: After matching the age, BMI, and WC of the two groups, high-sensitivity CRP (hs-CRP), white blood cell counts (WBCs), lymphocytes, platelets and great platelet count (GPC) were significantly higher (P = 0.007, 0.022, 0.011, 0.014, and 0.000, respectively), and mean platelet volume (MPV) and platelet distribution width (PDW) were significantly lower in PCOS patients compared with the control group (P = 0.000, 0.016, respectively). Neutrophils, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and platelet hematocrit (PCT) did not show statistically significant differences between the two groups (P = 0.196, 0.480, 0.646, respectively). Decreased MPV was independently associated with the occurrence of PCOS (P = 0.005, OR = 0.770, 95% CI, 0.641–0.925). MPV was negatively correlated with total testosterone (TT), free testosterone (FT) and total cholesterol (CHOL) levels after correcting for age and obesity (r = -0.149, P = 0.000; r = -0.093, P = 0.010; r = -0.081, P = 0.025; respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Chinese PCOS patients have significantly reduced MPV as an inflammatory indicator independent of obesity, IR, and dyslipidemia.

Humans↗

PreDigs: A Database of Context-specific Cell Type Markers and Precise Cell Subtypes for Digestive Cell Annotation.

Research on cell type markers helps investigators explore the diverse cellular composition of gastrointestinal tumors, thereby enhancing our understanding of tumor heterogeneity and its impact on disease progression and treatment response. However, the integration of large-scale datasets and the standardization of cell type identification remain challenging. Here, we developed PreDigs, a user-friendly database of predicted signatures for the digestive system, which offers 124 curated single-cell RNA sequencing datasets, covering over 3.4 million cells, all available for download. After unsupervised clustering, we unified the identification and nomenclature of cell subtype labels, constructing a cell ontology tree with 142 cell types across 8 hierarchical levels. Meanwhile, we calculated three different context-specific cell type markers, including "Cell Markers", "Subtype Markers", and "TPN Markers", based on various application requirements within or across tissues. Through the integrated analysis of PreDigs data, we identified distinct cell subpopulations exclusive to tumors, one of which corresponds to tumor-specific endothelial cells. Additionally, PreDigs offers online cell annotation tools, allowing users to classify single cells with greater flexibility. PreDigs is accessible at https://www.biosino.org/predigs/.

Humans↗

[The study on heterogeneity of hepatitis B virus DNA].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the HBV quasispecies groups in the patients with chronic HBV infection. METHODS: Specific primers ware synthesized according to HBV strain found in China, the preC/C gene, reverse transcriptase region, whole S region, X gene and whole genome ware amplified by PCR method from the serum of 18 patients with chronic HBV infection, and then the PCR products were subcloned into pGEM Teasy vectors. Positive clones with target sequences were selected out for sequencing. Sequence comparison of the selected clones ware made to find the difference. RESULTS: The homology between clones from one patient of preC/C gene, reverse transcriptase of polymerase region, whole S region, X gene and whole genome are 98.0% approximately 99.1%, 98.7% approximately 99.3%, 97.5% approximately 100%, 93.0% approximately 98.2% and 96.6% approximately 97.5%, respectively. There was a high-frequency A83 substitution and core antigen internal deletion (CID) in preC/C region. Substitution, deletion and frame-shift by insertion or deletion of short sequence were found in 4 open reading frames. Deletion in X gene (Core promoter, CP) will not only result in the polymorphism of X protein at the carboxyl end, but also regulate the expression of HBeAg. Coding sequence of truncated middle surface antigen and defective HBV genome could also be detected in this study. CONCLUSION: There are HBV quasispecies groups in patients with chronic HBV infection. Hot deletion region in X region (CP) will influence the prognosis of the HBV infection. Individually characterized substitutions in amino acid sequence of viral protein is worthy of further study.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

[Quasispecies and variations of hepatitis B virus: core promotor region as an example].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the HBV quasispecies groups in the patients with chronic HBV infection. METHODS: A set of specific primers was synthesized according to DNA sequence of HBV strain found in China. The whole core promoter (CP) region was amplified by PCR method from the sera of 3 patients with chronic HBV infection, and the PCR products were subcloned into pGEM Teasy vectors. The clones were randomly selected to be sequenced. Sequence comparison of the selected clones was made to find the difference. RESULTS: By comparison, it was found that each sequence of selected clones was different. The point mutation always occurred in TATA-like boxes, especially from T to C replacement on 184 site. There is a hot region (33.3% 5/15) in basic core promoter where deletion mutation frequently happened. CONCLUSIONS: There is a hot deletion region near DR I in CP. The replacement at 184 nt (T to C) in the third TATA-like box may influence the expression of pre-C/C protein. The sequencing results suggest that there are HBV quasispecies groups in chronically infected patients.

DNA, Viral↗