Pulmonary infection is a heterogeneous and complex infectious disease with high morbidity and mortality worldwide. In clinical practice, a considerable proportion of the etiology of pulmonary infection is unclear, microbiological diagnosis being challenging. Metagenomic next-generation sequencing detects all nucleic acids in a sample in an unbiased manner, revealing the microbial community environment and organisms and improving the microbiological detection and diagnosis of infectious diseases in clinical settings.

Recently, development of drug delivery systems for accurate delivery of antitumor drugs to tumor sites to improve their antitumor efficacy has attracted great interest in the area of cancer immunotherapy. In this report, an intelligent biodegradable hollow manganese dioxide (HMnO 2 ) nanoparticle (NP) with a human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cell (hUC-MSC) membrane coating was designed to exert efficient chemo-immunotherapy for cancer treatment. A TAT peptide-modified membrane structure was constructed for nuclear targeting. Our findings showed that this new nanoreactor inherited the active targeting capability of MSCs and exhibited tumoritropic accumulation significantly at the cancerous parts. Compared with other formulations, intravenous injection of the NPs markedly inhibited tumor growth, relapse, and metastasis. Moreover, we found that the NPs effectively boosted dendritic cell maturation and recruited effector T cells into tumors. Overall, this work demonstrates the great potential of applying MSC membrane-coated manganese dioxide NPs as nucleus-targeting nanocarriers in cancer chemo-immunotherapy.

Background Chlamydia abortus is generally considered to cause abortion, stillbirth, and gestational sepsis in pregnant women, but it’s rare in bloodstream infection and pneumonia. Case presentation We present details of a patient with bloodstream infection and pneumonia caused by Chlamydia abortus. Both blood next-generation sequencing (NGS) and sputum NGS indicate Chlamydia abortus infection. The patient received intravenous infusion of piperacillin sodium and tazobactam sodium (4.5 g/8 h) and moxifloxacin (0.4 g/d) and oral oseltamivir (75 mg/day). Within one month of follow-up, the patient's clinical symptoms were significantly improved, and all laboratory parameters showed no marked abnormality. However, chest computer tomography (CT) showed the inflammation wasn’t completely absorbed. And we are still following up. Conclusions Chlamydia abortus can cause pneumonia in humans. NGS has the particular advantage of quickly and accurately identifying the infection of such rare pathogens. Pneumonia is generally not life-threatening, and has a good prognosis with appropriate treatment. However, Chlamydia infection can lead to serious visceral complications which clinicians should pay attention to.

Previous observational studies have suggested that the effect of diet-derived circulating micronutrient concentrations on lung cancer (LC) risk is controversial. We conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to investigate the causal relationship between circulating micronutrient concentrations and the overall risk of LC and three LC subtypes (namely lung adenocarcinoma (LA), squamous cell lung cancer (SqCLC), and small cell lung cancer (SCLC)). The instrumental variables (IVs) of 11 micronutrients (beta-carotene, calcium, copper, folate, lycopene, magnesium, phosphorus, retinol, selenium, zinc, and vitamin B6) were screened from the published genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Summary statistics related to LC and its subtypes came from the largest meta-analysis, including 29,266 cases and 56,450 controls. Inverse-variance weighted (IVW) method is used as the main MR analysis, and the sensitivity analysis is carried out to ensure the MR assumptions. This MR study found suggestive evidence that genetically predicted 6 circulating micronutrient concentrations was correlated with the risk of overall LC (odds ratio (OR): 1.394, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.041–1.868, p = 0.026, phosphorus), LA (OR: 0.794, 95% CI: 0.634–0.995, p = 0.045, beta-carotene; OR: 0.687, 95%CI: 0.494–0.957, p = 0.026, calcium), SqCLC (OR: 0.354, 95% CI: 0.145–0.865, p = 0.023, retinol), and SCLC (OR: 1.267, 95% CI: 1.040–1.543, p = 0.019, copper; OR: 0.801, 95% CI: 0.679–0.944, p = 0.008, zinc). We found no evidence that other micronutrients are associated with the risk of overall LC or its subtypes. Our study suggested that the increase in circulating beta-carotene, calcium, retinol, and zinc concentration may reduce the risk of LC; the increase in circulating copper and phosphorus concentration may be related to the increased risk of LC. In the future, larger replication samples of LC genetic data and larger micronutrient-related GWAS will be needed to verify our findings.

BackgroundObservational studies have revealed associations between diet and lung cancer. However, it is unclear whether the association is disturbed by confounding factors. We used a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) method to characterize the associations between diet and the lung cancer risk (including 3 subtypes: lung adenocarcinoma (LA), squamous cell lung carcinoma (SqCLC), and small cell lung cancer (SCLC)).Materials and methodsData on 20 diets were screened from the UK Biobank. Lung cancer data came from a large meta-analysis of 85,716 individuals. The inverse-variance weighted method was used as the main analysis. Sensitivity analysis was also used to explain the different multiplicity patterns of the final model.ResultsOur results showed significant evidence that 3 diets were associated with lung cancer [odds ratio (OR): 0.271, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.150–0.488, p = 1.46 × 10−4, dried fruit; OR: 3.010, 95% CI: 1.608–5.632, p = 5.70 × 10−4, beer] and SqCLC (OR: 0.135, 95% CI: 0.062–0.293, p = 2.33 × 10−5, dried fruit; OR: 0.485, 95% CI: 0.328–0.717, p = 2.9 × 10−4, cheese). There were also suggestive correlations between 5 dietary intakes and lung cancer (OR: 0.441, 95% CI: 0.250–0.778, p = 0.008, cereal; OR: 2.267, 95% CI: 1.126–4.564, p = 0.022, beef), LA (OR: 0.494, 95% CI: 0.285–0.858, p = 0.012, dried fruit; OR: 3.536, 95% CI: 1.546–8.085, p = 0.003, beer) and SCLC (OR: 0.006, 95% CI: 0.000–0.222, p = 0.039, non-oily fish; OR: 0.239, 95% CI: 0.086–0.664, p = 0.006, dried fruit). No other association between diet and lung cancer was observed.ConclusionOur study preliminary found that cheese, dried fruit, and beer intake were significantly associated with the risk of lung cancer or its subtypes, while cereal, beef, and non-oily fish intake were suggestively associated with the risk of lung cancer or its subtypes. Well-designed prospective studies are still needed to confirm our findings in the future.