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The Born cross sections of the e+e− → D*+D*− and e+e− → D*+D− processes are measured using e+e− collision data collected with the BESIII experiment at center-of-mass energies from 4.085 to 4.600 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 15.7 fb−1. The results are consistent with and more precise than the previous measurements by the Belle, Babar and CLEO collaborations. The measurements are essential for understanding the nature of vector charmonium and charmonium-like states.
We present the first experimental search for the rare charm decay D0→π0ν¯ν. It is based on an e+e− collision sample consisting of 10.6×10^6 pairs of D0¯D0 mesons collected by the BESIII detector at √s=3.773 GeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.93 fb^−1. A data-driven method is used to ensure the reliability of the background modeling. No significant D0→π0ν¯ν signal is observed in data and an upper limit of the branching fraction is set to be 2.1×10^-4 at the 90% confidence level. This is the first experimental constraint on charmed-hadron decays into dineutrino final states.
Background: MicroRNA-21 (miR-21) is up-regulated in tumor tissue of patients with malignant diseases, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Elevated concentrations of miR-21 have also been found in sera or plasma from patients with malignancies, rendering it an interesting candidate as serum/plasma marker for malignancies. Here we correlated serum miR-21 levels with clinical parameters in patients with different stages of chronic hepatitis C virus infection (CHC) and CHC-associated HCC.
Methodology/Principal Findings: 62 CHC patients, 29 patients with CHC and HCC and 19 healthy controls were prospectively enrolled. RNA was extracted from the sera and miR-21 as well as miR-16 levels were analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR; miR-21 levels (normalized by miR-16) were correlated with standard liver parameters, histological grading and staging of CHC. The data show that serum levels of miR-21 were elevated in patients with CHC compared to healthy controls (P<0.001); there was no difference between serum miR-21 in patients with CHC and CHC-associated HCC. Serum miR-21 levels correlated with histological activity index (HAI) in the liver (r = −0.494, P = 0.00002), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) (r = −0.309, P = 0.007), aspartate aminotransferase (r = −0.495, P = 0.000007), bilirubin (r = −0.362, P = 0.002), international normalized ratio (r = −0.338, P = 0.034) and γ-glutamyltransferase (r = −0.244, P = 0.034). Multivariate analysis revealed that ALT and miR-21 serum levels were independently associated with HAI. At a cut-off dCT of 1.96, miR-21 discriminated between minimal and mild-severe necroinflammation (AUC = 0.758) with a sensitivity of 53.3% and a specificity of 95.2%.
Conclusions/Significance: The serum miR-21 level is a marker for necroinflammatory activity, but does not differ between patients with HCV and HCV-induced HCC.