This study examined how patients with cancer estimate caregiver burden (CB) and the association between their underestimation of CB and their caregivers' self-ratings of their quality of life (CQOLC-K; Korean version of the Caregiver Quality of Life Index-Cancer), depression and anxiety (Korean version of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Participants consisted of 990 patient-caregiver dyads recruited from a nationwide cross-sectional survey conducted in South Korea. Medical baseline data were retrieved from the hospital information systems of the participating centres. The patients with cancer who underestimated CB ranged from 18.62% (for physical CB) to 23.33% (for social CB). They had less advanced cancer, a lower income, were the caregiver's spouse, reported higher levels of family avoidance of communication about cancer, and had female caregivers. The patients' underestimation of CB was significantly related to lower CQoL and higher levels of caregiver depression and anxiety. The current study provides empirical evidence for the link between the underestimation of CB by patients with cancer and compromised caregiving experiences of cancer caregivers. Open family communication about cancer was discussed as one of several practical strategies for decreasing patients' underestimation of CB.
Epidermal growth factor (EGF) stimulates cell growth, proliferation, and survival. The biological benefits of EGF have been utilized in medical uses for improving wound healing as well as in today’s skin cosmetics. EGF has been found in urine, saliva, milk, and plasma, but its efficient isolation remains a difficult task. With technical advances, recombinant protein purification technique has been used for EGF production. However, the recombinant EGF is still expensive and keeping it with stable activity is difficult to be used widely. Thus, a molecule that can mimic the EGF activity would be a useful alternative of EGF. Herein, we have discovered that a natural small molecule piperonylic acid shows EGF-like activity in HaCaT keratinocytes. Piperonylic acid induced EGF receptor (EGFR) activation and resulted in serial activation of the downstream modulators. The activated signaling pathway eventually up-regulated gene expression of egr-1, c-fos, c-jun, and c-myc, which are involved in cell growth and survival. Moreover, piperonylic acid showed promoting role in keratinocyte growth and survival from UVB-induced cellular damages. This study has revealed the EGF-like activity of piperonylic acid and proposed that the piperonylic acid could be a promising component for skin wound healing agents or cosmetic ingredient.
Background: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) can be classified into two distinct molecular subtypes, BRAF-like (BL) and RASlike (RL). However, the molecular characteristics of each subtype according to clinicopathological factors have not yet been determined. We aimed to investigate the gene signatures and tumor microenvironment according to clinicopathological factors, and to identify the mechanism of progression in BL-PTCs and RL-PTCs.Methods: We analyzed RNA sequencing data and corresponding clinicopathological information of 503 patients with PTC from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. We performed differentially expressed gene (DEG), Gene Ontology, and molecular pathway enrichment analyses according to clinicopathological factors in each molecular subtype. EcoTyper and CIBERSORTx were used to deconvolve the tumor cell types and their surrounding microenvironment.Results: Even for the same clinicopathological factors, overlapping DEGs between the two molecular subtypes were uncommon, indicating that BL-PTCs and RL-PTCs have different progression mechanisms. Genes related to the extracellular matrix were commonly upregulated in BL-PTCs with aggressive clinicopathological factors, such as old age (≥55 years), presence of extrathyroidal extension, lymph node metastasis, advanced tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage, and high metastasis-age-completeness of resection- invasion-size (MACIS) scores (≥6). Furthermore, in the deconvolution analysis of tumor microenvironment, cancer-associated fibroblasts were significantly enriched. In contrast, in RL-PTCs, downregulation of immune response and immunoglobulin-related genes was significantly associated with aggressive characteristics, even after adjusting for thyroiditis status.Conclusion: The molecular phenotypes of cancer progression differed between BL-PTC and RL-PTC. In particular, extracellular matrix and cancer-associated fibroblasts, which constitute the tumor microenvironment, would play an important role in the progression of BL-PTC that accounts for the majority of advanced PTCs.
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