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Acquisition of drug resistance is one of the main obstacles encountered in cancer chemotherapy. Overexpression of multi-drug resistance 1 (MDR1) gene and its protein product P-glycoprotein, accompanied with a decrease in doxorubicin accumulation level, was observed in doxorubicin-resistant R-HepG2 cells, a subline derived by selection of human hepatocellular carcinoma HepG2 cells with doxorubicin. In addition, Northern-blot analysis revealed an eight fold upregulation of the imprinted H19 mRNA in R-HepG2 cells. H19 knockdown by transfection with antisense H19 oligonucleotides suppressed the MDR1/P-glycoprotein expression, increased the cellular doxorubicin accumulation level and sensitized doxorubicin toxicity in both HepG2 parent cells and R-HepG2 cells. Results from methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction analysis indicated that the MDR1 gene promoter was hypomethylated in R-HepG2 cells. Antisense H19 oligonucleotides transfection induced a marked increase in the percentage of MDR1 promoter methylation and decrease in MDR1 expression in R-HepG2 cells. Thus, the H19 gene is believed to induce P-glycoprotein expression and MDR1-associated drug resistance at least in liver cancer cells through regulation of MDR1 promoter methylation.

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Objective. To determine the direct and indirect cost of osteoarthritis (OA) according to disease severity, and to estimate the total cost of the disease in Hong Kong. Methods. This study is a retrospective, cross-sectional, nonrandom, cohort design, with subjects stratified according to disease severity based on functional limitation and the presence or absence of joint prosthesis. Subjects were recruited from primary care, geriatric medicine, rheumatology, and orthopedic clinics. There were 219 patients in the mild disease category, 290 patients in the severe category, and 65 patients with joint replacement. A questionnaire gathered information on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, function limitation, use of health and social services, and effect on occupation and living arrangements over the previous 12 months. Costs were calculated as direct and indirect. Results. Low education and socioeconomic class were associated with more severe disease. OA affected family or close relationships in 44%. The average cost incurred as a result of side effects of medication is similar to the average cost of medication itself. Excluding joint replacement, the direct costs ranged from Hong Kong (HK) dollar $11,690 to $40,180 per person per year and indirect costs, HK $3,300 -$6,640. The direct costs are comparable to those reported in Western countries; however, the ratio of direct to indirect costs is much higher than 1, in contrast to the greater indirect versus direct costs reported in whites. The total cost expressed as a percentage of gross national product is also much lower in Hong Kong. Conclusions. The socioeconomic impact of OA in the Hong Kong population is comparable to Western countries, but the economic burden is largely placed on the government, with patients having relatively low out-of-pocket expenditures.

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Objectives: To compare the bone mineral density and dietary intake of elderly Chinese vegetarian women with omnivores, to compare the bone mineral density of Chinese`vegans' and`lactovegetarians', and to study the relationship between nutrient intake and BMD in vegetarians. Design: A cross-sectional survey. Setting and subjects: A community-based study. The vegetarian women (aged 70±89 y) (n 76) were noninstitutionalized subjects. All of them were Buddhists. Their bone mineral density were compared to normal elderly volunteers (aged 70±89 y) (n 109) who were recruited to establish normal BMD ranges. Their dietary intake was compared to omnivorous subjects from a previous dietary survey (n 250). Methods: Dietary assessment was by the 24 h recall method, and bone mineral density was measured by dual-Xray-densitometry. The analysis of co-variance was used to compare the BMD between vegetarians and omnivores, with adjustment for potential confounders. The BMD in`vegans' and`lactovegetarians' were compared by similar methods. The t-test was used to compare dietary intake between omnivores and vegetarians. The relationship between nutrient intake and BMD was studied by correlation and multiple regression. Results: The dietary calorie, protein and fat intake were much lower, but the sodiumacreatinine ratio was much higher in vegetarians than omnivores. The BMD at the spine was similar between vegetarians and omnivores. However, the BMD at the hip was signi®cantly lower in vegetarians at some sites (P`0.05). There was no signi®cant difference in BMD between`vegans' and`lactovegetarians'. BMD in vegetarians appeared to be positively correlated with energy, protein and calcium intake; and negatively associated with urinary sodiuma creatinine levels. Conclusions: There is a relationship between diet and BMD. The BMD at the hip was lower in vegetarians than omnivores, but no difference was observed between`vegans' and`lactovegetarians'. There is a complex relationship between the intake of various nutrient and BMD in vegetarians.

Recent development of per-frame motion extraction method can generate the skeleton of human motion in real-time with the help of RGB-D cameras such as Kinect. This leads to an economic device to provide human motion as input for real-time applications. As generated by a single-view image plus depth information, the extracted skeleton usually has problems of unwanted vibration, bone-length variation, self-occlusion, etc. This paper presents an approach to overcome these problems by synthesizing the skeletons generated by duplex Kinects, which capture the human motion in different views. The major technical difficulty of this synthesis comes from the inconsistency of two skeletons. Our algorithm is formulated under the constrained optimization framework by using the bone-lengths as hard constraints and the tradeoff between inconsistent joint positions as soft constraints. Schemes are developed to detect and re-position the problematic joints generated by per-frame method from duplex Kinects. As a result, we develop an easy, cheap and fast approach that can improve the skeleton of human motion at an average speed of 5 ms per frame.