Publications by authors named "Qiongmei Ji"

Environmental factor-induced alterations in intestinal microbiota have been demonstrated to be associated with increasing prevalence of food allergy. However, it is not clear to what extent oral administration of probiotics can affect gut microbiota composition, thus inhibiting food allergy development. Using ovalbumin (OVA)-sensitized murine model, it was demonstrated that probiotics ameliorated allergic symptoms, including reducing OVA specific-IgE, and -IgG1 levels in the serum, Th2 cytokines release in spleen, and occurrence of diarrhea.

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Food allergy (FA) is an adverse immune response to certain innocent food. It is estimated about 2% to 6% of the general population suffer from FA. Symptoms of a food allergic reaction may involve the gastrointestinal tract or/and other organs.

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Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a very complicated autoimmune disease with apparent synovial hyperplasia and cartilage and bone destruction.

Aims: In the present study, we aimed to determine whether the pathogenesis of RA correlates with food allergy and which allergen(s) are relevant.

Materials And Methods: We used type-II collagen (CII) to induce arthritis (collagen-induced arthritis, CIA) model in Wistar rats, and the development of arthritis was evaluated accordingly by scoring system.

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Background: CD4(+) T cell polarization plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of allergy. How to modulate the skewed CD4(+) T cell polarization is less clear. The specific immunotherapy (SIT) is the only specific remedy for the treatment of allergic diseases; the therapeutic effect is to be improved.

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Aim: To investigate the effect of polydatin (PD), a resveratrol glucoside, on mast cell degranulation and anti-allergic activity.

Methods: After the rats were orally sensitized with ovalbumin (OVA) for 48 d and underwent PD treatment for 4 d, all the rats were stimulated by 100 mg/mL OVA for 24 h and then sacrificed for the following experiments. The small intestines from all the groups were prepared for morphology examination by hematoxylin and eosin staining.

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Background: The prevalence of food allergy has increased dramatically during the last three decades, but currently there was no effective therapy except avoidance of allergen. This study aimed to investigate the effect of a modified Chinese herbal formula, Formula-3, on mast cell degranulation and the anti-allergic activity in both animal and cell models.

Methods: With OVA-sensitized food allergic model in Brown-Norway rats, we checked tissue injury in the small intestines by H&E staining.

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We demonstrate that a Caenorhabditis elegans Krüppel-like transcription factor is involved in fat regulation, cell death, and phagocytosis in C. elegans. Suppression of C.

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We report here the identification and characterization of STIP, a multi-domain nuclear protein that contains a G-patch, a coiled-coil, and several short tryptophan-tryptophan repeats highly conserved in metazoan species. To analyze their functional role in vivo, we cloned nematode stip-1 genes and determined the spatiotemporal pattern of Caenorhabditis elegans STIP-1 protein. RNA analyses and Western blots revealed that stip-1 mRNA was produced via trans-splicing and translated as a 95-kDa protein.

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In the present study, we characterized a sterile cpi-2a(ok1256) deletion mutant in Caenorhabditis elegans and showed that CPI-2a has an essential regulatory role during oogenesis and fertilization. We have also shown that the CPI2a inhibitor and both Ce-CPL-1 and Ce-CPZ-1 enzymes are present in the myoepithelial sheath surrounding germ cells, oocytes, and embryos as well as in the yolk granules within normal oocytes. Staining of mutant worms with anti-yolk protein antibodies has indicted that the proteins are not present in the mature oocytes.

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Rhesus (Rh) proteins share a conserved 12-transmembrane topology and specify a family of putative CO(2) channels found in diverse species from microbes to human, but their functional essentiality and physiological importance in metazoans is unknown. To address this key issue and analyze Rh-engaged physiologic processes, we sought to explore model organisms with fewer Rh genes yet are tractable to genetic manipulations. In this article, we describe the identification in nematodes of two Rh homologues that are highly conserved and similar to human Rh glycoproteins, and we focus on their characterization in Caenorhabditis elegans.

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Background & Objective: Tumor angiogenesis play an important role in growth and metastasis of cancer. Angiogenesis inhibitors induce apoptosis in cancer by inhibiting tumor angiogenesis and have strong inhibiting effect on both growth and metastasis of cancer. This study was designed to explore the effect of transfection of human endostatin gene on nasopharyngeal carcinoma CNE2 cells xenograft growth in nude mice.

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