Evaluation of correlation between NF-κB mediated PAI-1 gene and sepsis
Authors: Y-F Liang
G-Q Pan
L Lu
C-X Yan
L-M Tang
L-X Wang
Journal: European review for medical and pharmacological sciences (2017)
Discipline: PHARMACOLOGY & TOXICOLOGY
Keywords: PAI-1 gene; NF-κB signaling pathway; sepsis; mRNA; protein expression
Affiliations: Department of Pediatric ICU, The Second Affiliated Hospital and Yuying Children's Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, P. R. China. .

Abstract:  Objective: The present study is aimed to explore the correlation between PAI-1 gene mediated by NF-κB signaling pathway and human sepsis. Patients and methods: In this study, we used 74 cases of sepsis patients preserved by the laboratory as the observation group, and 68 cases of healthy people served the control group. Further methods like fluorescence quantitative PCR, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, Western-blotting were used to determine NF-B expression, NF-κB gene mRNA analyses and protein expression on different research subjects. Further, the positive expression rates of PAI-1 gene in the observation group and the control group were determined by immunohistochemistry. Results: The expression levels of NF-κB and PAI-1 gene mRNA in the blood of the observation group significantly increased in comparison to control group (X2 = 3.24, p &lt; 0.05; X2 = 2.81, p &lt; 0.05). Also, NF-κF and PAI-1 gene protein expressions (0.14 ug/l, 0.32 ug/l) were significantly higher in the observation group in comparison to control group (p &lt; 0.05). The results of blood glucose measurement showed that the fasting blood glucose (14.3 mmol/l) in the observation group was significantly higher than that in the control group (4.6 mmol/l). Immunohistochemical were also in sync with above results. Conclusions: The present study concludes that PAI-1 gene expression gets significantly increased via NF-κF signaling pathway during sepsis. 

Retracted: No

PubPeer comments:
 A concern about Figure 3A was pointed out to me by a reader. * Red boxes: Two lanes look more similar to each other than expected. An additional question by me about Figure 3B but also applicable to Figures 1 and 2: * Could the authors please clarify if the error bars depict standard error or standard deviation? * How many data points are shown in each bar? ![file] , 
 More concerns about this paper, now about the patients and control group. Lots of details are missing. * How was sepsis defined? Which criteria were used for inclusion in the sepsis group? Fever? Pathogen isolation? * Only the age range of the patients, not of the control group is given. What were the age gender other demographic data for both sepsis patients and control groups? Were they significantly different? * What is meant by  the tissue samples with sepsis were excised from both the groups by operation method ? Which types of tissues? What type of operation? Should I interpret the  from both the groups as meaning that also the healthy people were operated on? * What is meant by  the cryopreservation solution ? * Was IRB approval obtained from the institute? Were subjects informed and consented? ![file] , 
 More questions about the Methods. * Could the authors please clarify the  reference to the Chinese Medicine ? That is not enough information to repeat the experiment, and also leaves some question if those methods would give results comparable to international standards. ![file] , 
 The mystery around the  tisssue samples remains throughout the paper. Sepsis is an infection of the bloodstream that could be the result of a particular tissue infection (e.g. a heart valve) but it is not always clear which tissue might be infected. The authors speak of  sepsis lesions but that term appears to be unclear and or incorrect. Which tissues are we looking at in Figure 5? What are the  different samples the authors show us? ![file] ,