• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.261-265
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• 2013

Scutellaria barbata D. Don (S. barbata), a traditional Chinese medicine, is used to treat cancers, inflammation, and urinary diseases. This study aimed to determine any protective effects of S. barbata crude extract (CE-SB) against rat liver tumorigenesis induced by diethylnitrosamine (DENA). Liver malfunction indices in serum were measured by biochemical examination. Hematoxylin and eosin staining was performed to examine liver pathology. Contents of malondialdehyde (MDA) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) were measured in liver homogenates to evaluate oxidative stress. The levels of liver malfunction indices in the CE-SB groups, especially in the CE-SB high dose group, were lower than that of the model group (P<0.05). The results from histological examination indicated that the number of liver nodules in the CE-SB groups decreased compared with the model group (P<0.05). Content of MDA determined in liver was significantly decreased, and level of SOD elevated by CE-SB. CE-SB can inhibit experimental liver tumorigenesis and relieve hepatic injury in rats.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1585-1592
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• 2013

Functional food for prevention of chronic diseases is one of this century's key global challenges. Cancer is not only the first or second leading cause of death in China and other countries across the world, but also has diet as one of the most important modifiable risk factors. Major dietary factors now known to promote cancer development are polished grain foods and low intake of fresh vegetables, with general importance for an unhealthy lifestyle and obesity. The strategies of cancer prevention in human being are increased consumption of functional foods like whole grains (brown rice, barley, and buckwheat) and by-products, as well some vegetables (bitter melon, garlic, onions, broccoli, and cabbage) and mushrooms (boletes and Tricholoma matsutake). In addition some beverages (green tea and coffee) may be protective. Southwest China (especially Yunnan Province) is a geographical area where functional crop production is closely related to the origins of human evolution with implications for anticancer influence.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.21
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• pp.9391-9394
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• 2014

Purpose: To evaluate the effect of internal-external percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage (IEPTBD) for patients with malignant obstructive jaundice. Methods: During the period of January 2008 and July 2013, internal-external drainage was performed in 42 patients with malignant obstructive jaundice. During the procedure, if the guide wire could pass through the occlusion and into the duodenum, IEPTBD was performed. External drainage biliary catheter was placed if the occlusion was not crossed. Newly onset of infection, degree of bilirubin decrease and the survival time of patients were selected as parameters to evaluate the effect of IEPTBD. Results: Twenty newly onset of infection were recorded after procedure and new infectious rate was 47.6%. Sixteen patients with infection (3 before, 13 after drainage) were uncontrolled after procedure, 12 of them (3 before, 9 after drainage) died within 1 month. The mean TBIL levels declined from 299.53 umol/L before drainage to 257.62 umol/L after drainage, while uninfected group decline from 274.86 umol/L to 132.34 umol/Lp (P < 0.5). The median survival time for uninfected group was 107 days, and for infection group was 43 days (P < 0.05). Conclusions: The IEPTBD drainage may increase the chance of biliary infection, reduce bile drainage efficiency and decrease the long-term prognosis, and the external drainage is a better choice for patients with malignant obstructive jaundice need to biliary drainage.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.9
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• pp.3715-3721
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• 2015

Leukemia is a clonal disorder with blocked normal differentiation and cell death of hematopoietic progenitor cells. Traditional modalities with most used radiation and chemotherapy are nonspecific and toxic which cause adverse effects on normal cells. Differentiation inducing therapy forcing malignant cells to undergo terminal differentiation has been proven to be a promising strategy. However, there is still scarce of potent differentiation inducing agents. We show here that Angelica sinensis polysaccharide (ASP), a major active component in Dong quai (Chinese Angelica sinensis), has potential differentiation inducing activity in human chronic erythro-megakaryoblastic leukemia K562 cells. MTT assays and flow cytometric analysis demonstrated that ASP inhibited K562 cell proliferation and arrested the cell cycle at the G0/G1 phase. ASP also triggered K562 cells to undergo erythroid differentiaton as revealed by morphological changes, intensive benzidine staining and hemoglobin colorimetric reaction, as well as increased expression of glycophorin A (GPA) protein. ASP induced redistribution of STAT5 protein from the cytoplasm to the nucleus. Western blotting analysis further identified that ASP markedly sensitized K562 cells to exogenous erythropoietin (EPO) by activating EPO-induced JAK2/STAT5 tyrosine phosphorylation, thus augmenting the EPO-mediated JAK2/STAT5 signaling pathway. On the basis of these findings, we propose that ASP might be developed as a potential candidate for chronic myelogenous leukemia inducing differentiation treatment.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.1651-1655
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• 2012

Background: Our aim was to investigate the efficacy of the Pap test in combination with the ThinPrep cytological test (TCT) in screening for cervical cancer in China. Design: From March 2006 to October 2008, 988 women with the mean age $46.4{\pm}10.5$ years (range, 23-80 years) were recruited to receive cervical cancer screening. Pap test results ${\geq}$ grade III and TCT findings ${\geq}$ ASCUS/AGUS were considered abnormal. Subjects with a Pap test result ${\geq}$ grade IIb received TCT. Colposcopy and biopsies were performed in all participants, and final diagnosis was based on pathological findings. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) and Youden index for predicting CIN I or above were determined. Results: The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and Youden index of the Pap test were 43.1%, 97.2%, 70.0%, 91.9%, and 40.3%, respectively. The same values for TCT in predicting CIN were 80.0%, 63.2%, 16.0%, 97.3%, and 43.2%, respectively. The two tests in combination gave values for predicting CIN of 64.8%, 87.6%, 43.6%, 94.4%, and 53.5%, respectively. Combined testing exhibited the highest Youden index (53.4%). Conclusion: The Pap test with a reduced threshold in combination with the TCT has high sensitivity and high specificity in screening for cervical cancer.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.8
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• pp.3795-3802
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• 2012

Cochinchina momordica seeds (CMS) have been widely used due to antitumor activity by Mongolian tribes of China. However, the details of the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. In the present study, we found that an EtOAc (ethyl ester) extract of CMS (CMSEE) induced differentiation and caused growth inhibition of melanoma B16 F1 cells. CMSEE at the concentration of $5-200{\mu}g/ml$ exhibited strongest anti-proliferative effects on B16 F1 cells among other CMS fractions (water or petroleum ether). Moreover, CMSEE induced melanoma B16 F1 cell differentiation, characterized by dendrite-like outgrowth, increasing melanogenesis production, as well as enhancing tyrosinase activity. Western blot analysis showed that sustained phosphorylation of p38 MAP accompanied by decrease in ERK1/2 and JNK dephosphorylation were involved in CMSEE-induced B16 F1 cell differentiation. Notably, 6 compounds that were isolated and identified may be responsible for inducing differentiation of CMSEE. These results indicated that CMSEE contributes to the differentiation of B16 F1 cells through modulating MAPKs activity, which may throw some light on the development of potentially therapeutic strategies for melanoma treatment.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1803-1806
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• 2014

Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) was originally developed for en bloc resection of large, flat gastrointestinal lesions. Compared with endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR), ESD is considered to be more time consuming and have more complications for treatment of early esophageal carcinoma, such as bleeding, stenosis and perforation. The objective of this study was to compare the efficacy and safety of ESD and EMR for such lesions. We searched databases, such as PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library and Science Citation Index updated to 2013 for related trials. In the meta-analysis, the main outcome measurements were the en bloc resection rate, the histologically resection rate and the local recurrence rate. We also compared the operation time and the incidences of procedure-related complications. Five trials were identified, and a total of 710 patients and 795 lesions were included. The en bloc and histologically complete resection rates were higher in the ESD group compared with the EMR group (odds ratio (OR) 27.3; 95% CI, 11.5-64.8; OR 18.4; 95% CI, 8.82-38.59). The local recurrence rate was lower in the ESD group (OR 0.13, 95 % CI 0.04-0.43). The meta-analysis also showed ESD was more time consuming, but did not increase the complication rate (P=0.76). The results implied that compared with EMR, ESD showed better en bloc and histologically resection rates, and lower local recurrence, without increasing the incidence of procedure-related complications in the treatment of early esophageal carcinoma.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.4349-4352
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• 2016

Purpose: To evaluate whether combined transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) with radiofrequency ablation (RFA) or percutaneous ethanol injection (PEI) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have superior efficacy to transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) alone a retrospective review was conducted. Methods: During January 2009 to March 2013, 108 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma underwent TACE or combined therapies (TACE+RFA or TACE+PEI). The long-term survival rates were evaluated in those patients by various statistical analyses. Results: The cumulative survival rates in the combined TACE+RFA/PEI group were significantly superior to those in the TACE alone group. When the comparison among the groups was restricted to patients with two or three tumors fulfilling the Milan criteria, significantly greater prolongation of survival was observed in the combined TACE+ RFA/PEI group than in the RFA/PEI alone group. Conclusions: In terms of the effect on the survival period, combined TACE+ RFA/PEI therapy was more effective than TACE monotherapy, and also more effective than PEI or RFA monotherapy in cases with multiple tumors.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.204-226
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• 2018

Big data processing applications have been migrated into cloud gradually, due to the advantages of cloud computing. Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is one of the fundamental support systems for big data processing on MapReduce-like frameworks, such as Hadoop and Spark. Since HDFS is not aware of the co-location of virtual machines in the cloud, the default scheme of block allocation in HDFS does not fit well in the cloud environments behaving in two aspects: data reliability loss and performance degradation. In this paper, we present a novel location-aware data block allocation strategy (LDBAS). LDBAS jointly optimizes data reliability and performance for upper-layer applications by allocating data blocks according to the locations and different processing capacities of virtual nodes in the cloud. We apply LDBAS to two stages of data allocation of HDFS in the cloud (the initial data allocation and data recovery), and design the corresponding algorithms. Finally, we implement LDBAS into an actual Hadoop cluster and evaluate the performance with the benchmark suite BigDataBench. The experimental results show that LDBAS can guarantee the designed data reliability while reducing the job execution time of the I/O-intensive applications in Hadoop by 8.9% on average and up to 11.2% compared with the original Hadoop in the cloud.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.145-151
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• 2011

The comparative efficacy of 2 anthelmintics (ivermectin and levamisole) against Baylisascaris transfuga migrating and encapsulated larvae was studied in mice. A total of 60 BALB/c mice inoculated each with about 1,000 embryonated B. transfuga eggs were equally divided into 6 groups (A-F) randomly. Mice of groups A and B were treated with ivermectin and levamisole, respectively, on day 3 post-infection (PI). Mice of groups A-C were killed on day 13 PI. Similarly, groups D and E were treated with ivermectin and levamisole, respectively, on day 14 PI, and all mice of groups D-F were treated on day 24 PI. The groups C and F were controls. Microexamination was conducted to count the larvae recovering from each mouse. The percentages of reduction in the number of migrating larvae recovered from group A (ivermectin) and B (levamisole) were 88.3% and 81.1%, respectively. In addition, the reduction in encapsulated larvae counts achieved by ivermectin (group D) and levamisole (group E) was 75.0% and 49.2%, respectively. The results suggested that, to a certain extent, both anthelmintics appeared to be more effective against migrating larvae than encapsulated larvae. However, in the incipient stage of infection, ivermectin may be more competent than levamisole as a larvicidal drug for B. transfuga.