POEM is an effective approach for treating achalasia, which can relieve the symptoms of achalasia by improving esophageal emptying and lowering LES pressure.

Introduction: Marathon, as a long-distance aerobic exercise, has become a fashionable or popular sport. However, little is known about the holistic metabolic changes occurring within the serum metabolome of athletes after the completion of a marathon. Objectives: The goal of current study was to have an in-depth understanding of the impact of marathon on human metabolomics as well as the relationships among a variety of metabolites. Methods:The 20 studied subjects were all adult males who participated in a marathon. The serum samples of these participants were collected before and after the marathon and the biochemical metabolites in the serum were identified by an untargeted two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry.Results: All participants completed the marathon within 3 h. Compared to those before exercise, serum urea and creatine kinase, as well as cortisol, elevated significantly (p < 0.05), whereas testosterone decreased significantly (p < 0.01). Metabolomic analysis showed that, compared to those before the competition, metabolites pyruvic acid, glyceric acid, malic acid, cis-aconitic acid, galacturonic acid, methyl fumaric acid, maltotriose, and others increased significantly after the competition (p < 0.05), but glucosamine and O-succinyl-L-homoserine decreased significantly (p < 0.05). Amino acid indexes, such as alanine, L-tyrosine and phenylalanine, increased significantly after exercise compared with those before exercise (p < 0.05), whereas serine, valine and asparagine decreased significantly (p < 0.05). Lipid metabolism indexes, glycerol, glyceric acid, octanoic acid, and quinic acid increased significantly (p < 0.05). Theophylline, xanthine and other indicators of caffeine metabolism increased significantly (p < 0.05). Furthermore, marathon performance, fat percentage, VO 2 max, and hemoglobin were correlated with the serum metabonomic indicators, so were serum testosterone and cortisol.Conclusion: These results illustrate that the metabolism of glucose and lipid of the athletes was enhanced following the marathon match. In addition, the metabolism of glucosamine was decreased and the metabolism of caffeine was increased. Our data provide new insights for marathon performance and nutritional status.

Although there is no significant difference of genotype distribution between ESCC patients and healthy controls, genotype C/T is associated with larger tumor and higher rate of lymph node metastasis.

Integrin-linked kinase (ILK) plays a role in integrin signaling-mediated cell-extracellular matrix interactions and is involved in signal transduction pathways to control cell survival, differentiation, and proliferation in mammalian cells. ILK has been implicated in the progression of several human malignancies. However, its function in malignant tumors is not fully enunciated. Previous in vitro studies also implicated ILK in the regulation of E-cadherin expression and vascular endothelial growth factor expression. In the current study, we investigated the protein expression of ILK and its correlation with clinicopathological profiles, E-cadherin expression, microvessel density (MVD) and clinical outcome in 57 lung squamous cell carcinoma and 44 adenocarcinoma, using immunohistochemistry. No ILK was detected in normal bronchial epithelium, while it was positively expressed in 39 (68.42%) squamous cell carcinoma cases and 27 (61.36%) adenocarcinoma cases. Positive ILK expression was significantly associated with advanced TNM stage (P = 0.022) in adenocarcinoma, and associated with high MVD in lung squamous cell carcinoma (P < 0.001) and adenocarcinoma (P = 0.049). The Spearman's correlation test revealed that increased ILK expression was correlated with reduced E-cadherin expression in lung squamous cell carcinoma (correlation coefficient = 0.364, P = 0.005). Moreover, the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that ILK, E-cadherin, and MVD were all statistically significant prognostic factors in patients with lung squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma. Measuring ILK and E-cadherin expression, and MVD may contribute to a better understanding of the prognosis of patients with lung squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma.