METHODS:A computer-based online research of PubMed, CNKI and VIP databases was performed with the key words of “epigenetic; inflammatory bowel disease; Crohn’s disease; ulcerative colitis; DNA methylation; histone modification; miRNA; moxibustion” in Chinese and English. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The correlation of epigenetic modification with inflammatory bowel disease occurrence and development is elaborated. The mechanisms in inflammatory bowel disease have been related from DNA methylation, histone modifications and miRNA targets. The mechanism of moxibustion on inflammatory bowel disease is primarily associated with immune regulation, and its anti-inflammatory mechanism may be affected by epigenetic regulation of inflammatory cytokines.

BACKGROUND:Chronic visceral pain is one of major complaints of irritable bowel syndrome which seriously affects patient’s quality of life. Recent researches have shown that moxibustion therapy has positive effects on aleviating chronic visceral pain in irritable bowel syndrome patients.
OBJECTIVE: To study the clinical utility of moxibustion in coping with chronic visceral pain of irritable bowel syndrome patients, and shed light on the theoretical basis of moxibustion analgesia, thereby to give insights into the further research and application on moxibustion.
METHODS: With the key words of “moxibustion, irritable bowel syndrome, visceral pain, abdominal pain” in Chinese and in English, respectively, a computer-based search was performed in CNKI, VIP, Wanfang and PubMed databases for articles published from January 1990 to October 2014. After the initial screening, the remained articles went through further selection and categorization.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The result shows promising results of moxibustion on relieving chronic visceral pain for both two subtypes of irritable bowel syndrome patients, diarrhea type and constipation type. Moxibustion may exert an analgesic effect on chronic visceral pain in irritable bowel syndrome patients through regulation of visceral hypersensitivity, gastrointestinal motility disorders, brain-gut axis and neuroendocrine system disorders, immune dysfunction and low-grade inflammation in the gut, psychological abnormalities, and alteration of intestinal flora. However, to fuly understand the analgesia effect of moxibustion and elucidate its mechanism, more standardized randomized controled trials employing advanced scientific techniques and equipments wil stil be needed in the future.

BACKGROUND:Warm acup-moxibustion is an effective treatment in Chinese traditional medicine, which combines acupuncture with moxibustion. With an immediate analgesia or/and long-term effect, warm acup-moxibustion has been used clinicaly for acute and chronic pain. OBJECTIVE:To analyze the progress in the studies about clinical application of warm acup-moxibustion as analgesic therapy for acute and chronic pain and to discuss the influential factors. METHODS: CNKI, VIP and Wanfang databases were searched for relevant articles published between January 1995 and July 2015 using the keywords of “warm needling; warm acup-moxibustion; pain; analgesic” in Chinese. According to the exclusion and inclusion criteria, 51 articles were included in result analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Compared with ordinary acupuncture, medicine and other treatment methods, warm acup-moxibustion can play an analgesic role in multiple systems, which is better than ordinary acupuncture and Western medicine. Warm acup-moxibustion combined with drugs and acupuncture techniques can increase the analgesic effect and improve joint function activity. Warm acup-moxibustion with the overal regulatory role plays an effective analgesic pain role in the multiple systems and shortens the duration of treatment, which is an effective method for treating pain and worthy of further promotion and application.

Objective:To assess the role of Glasgow prognostic score (GPS) in the prognostic evaluation of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients.Methods:Clinical data of 129 nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients who received radical radiotherapy in Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan University from January 2012 to December 2013 were retrospectively analyzed. Clinicopathological characteristics of the patients were collected, including gender, age, TNM staging, pathological type and treatment regimen, etc. The GPS before and at 3 months after radiotherapy were calculated. The survival curve was drawn by the Kaplan- Meier method. Cox regression model was used for analysis of prognostic factors. The area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) was utilized to evaluate the predictive capability of clinical parameters on prognosis. Results:With a median follow-up of 89.0 months (range: 5.1-104.6 months), the 5-year progression-free survival (PFS) of 129 patients was 79.8% and 84.5% for the 5-year overall survival (OS). At 3 months after radiotherapy, the 5-year PFS were 85.6%, 61.1% and 33.3% in the GPS 0, 1 and 2 groups, and 90.4%, 66.7% and 33.3% for the 5-year OS, respectively (all P<0.01). At 3 months after radiotherapy, the GPS, clinical staging (Ⅰ-Ⅲ vs. Ⅳ A) and concurrent chemotherapy were significantly correlated with PFS and OS (all P<0.01). ROC curve showed that at 3 months after radiotherapy, the AUC values of GPS, clinical staging and two combined in predicting OS were 0.694, 0.815 and 0.860, respectively. Conclusions:At 3 months after radiotherapy, higher GPS is an independent poor prognostic factor for nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients. The combination of GPS and clinical staging yields high accuracy in the prognostic evaluation of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients.

Objective To analyze the spatio-temporal characteristics and influencing factors of local hospitalization proportion in 57 counties of Guangdong Province.Methods Using local hospitalization proportion and related indicators in 57 counties of Guangdong Province from 2016 to 2019,temporal trend analysis and spatial autocorrelation analy-sis were used to analyze the spatiotemporal characteristics.Bayesian spatio-temporal model was used to explore in-fluencing factors of local hospitalization proportion.Results The local hospitalization proportion in Guangdong Province rose from 79.8%in 2016 to 84.1%in 2019,showing an increasing trend and the overall characteristics of"high in the west and low in the east".The global and local spatial autocorrelation results show that there is a spatial correla-tion in the local hospitalization proportion within the counties of Guangdong Province,and spatial aggregation has formed in some areas.There is a"high"aggregation in western Guangdong,and a"low"aggregation in eastern Guangdong Province.The Bayesian spatio-temporal model shows that the number of people with a bachelor's de-gree or above per 1 000 population and the CMI of county hospitals had an effect on the local hospitalization propor-tion(P＜0.05).Conclusion Guangdong Province can improve the medical service capacity of county hospitals sub-stantially and introduce or train high-quality talents through multiple measures,and continue to improve the local hospitalization proportion.