Pulse-activating injection has the functions of supplementing qi and nourishing yin, and recovering pulse from a collapse state. It is applied in hypotension caused by serious infection or hypovolemia extensively. Pulse-activating injection can be also used to treat hypotension caused by tracheal intubation with good effects. Appropriate application according to state of illness is very important, such as controlling infection and supplementing blood-volume, etc. When applied in cardia insufficiency, vasodilating agent should be used together to regulate dropping rate.

OBJECTIVE: To study the effects of Yiqi Huayu Recipe on neural cell adhesion molecule (N-CAM) in neuromuscular junctions during nerve regeneration in rats with lumbar nerve root compression. METHODS: The rats with lumbar nerve root compression were given Yiqi Huayu Recipe for 10, 20 and 30 days respectively. The distribution of N-CAM in neuromuscular junctions of soleus muscle in rats was examined with immunohistochemical method and confocal laser scanning microscopy technique. The acetylcholine receptor (AChR) was visualized with fluorescein-conjugated alpha-bungarotoxin (alpha-BTX). The overlap areas of N-CAM and AChR sites were measured with NIH image technique. RESULTS: The aggregates, sprouts and extensions of N-CAM in the neuromuscular junctions and the overlap areas of N-CAM and AChR sites in the Yiqi Huayu Recipe-treated group were all better improved than those in the untreated group. CONCLUSION: The expression of N-CAM is regulated according to the state of innervation for muscles. Yiqi Huayu Recipe may accelerate this nerve regeneration process.

Ligusticum chuanxiong is a Common Chinese medicinal herb which is widely used in clinical treatment. Modern research has shown that the ingredients of Ligusticum chuanxiong such as tetramethylpyrazine and ferulic acid have multiple effects of scavenging oxygen free radicals,calcium-antagonism,vasodilating,inhibiting platelet aggregation and thrombosis and so on. This article reviews the research progress in pharmacological activities of the available compositions in ligusticum chuanxiong in the past several years.

The aging of population and the increasingly morbidity rate of chronic disease had brought great influence on public health and economy.And community whose scientific management model could improve effectivity was a main prevention place for chronic disease.Thus on the basis of domestic and foreign literatures,several types of chronic disease community management models were introduced,and aimed at providing a reference for community chronic disease management.

Objective Based on the traditional Chinese medical knowledge service and sharing system, to explore the application of famous doctor Yu Ying'ao's regulating the liver method. Methods The medical records of Yu Ying'ao from the outpatient department of Chinese Academy of Sciences were used as the data source. The traditional Chinese medical knowledge service and information sharing system(V1.1.5) was applied to construct database. The regulating liver core combination of drugs, drug application mode, and combined treatment of diseases and syndromes were determined by analysis methods of frequency and association rules. Results The use of regulating liver method was often used in the treatment of irregular menstruation, cirrhosis, pain and other diseases. Differentiation of liver qi stagnation, blood stasis, liver stagnation and spleen deficiency, liver and kidney deficiency were the main TCM syndromes. Treatment included Tongluo, nourishing Yin treatment. The core drugs were Bupleurum and Rhizoma Cyperi. Conclusions The use of traditional Chinese medical service and knowledge sharing system could explore the clinical diagnosis and medication rules of regulating liver methods.

Objective To study the roles of micheliolide on ovarian cancer cells. Methods Firstly, human ovarian cancer cell lines HeyA8, SKOV3 and A2780/DDP were treated with different concentration of micheliolide (0.25, 0.5, 1, 2.5, 5, 10, 20, 50 μmol/L) for 72 hours, then methyl thiazolyl tetrazolium (MTT) assay was used wo detect the growth of the human ovarian cancer cell lines and the stongest inhibited cell line were selected for the following test. Secondly, after HeyA8 cell line was treated with different concentration (5, 10, 20μmol/L) of micheliolide for 24 hours, the HeyA8 cell apoptosis was measured byflow cytometry. Thirdly, the expression of RelA mRNA in HeyA8 cell was detected through real-time PCR, the expressions of nuclear factor κB(NF-κB)signal pathway related protein RelA and the activited cysteinyl aspartate specific proteinase (caspase-9) were detected by western blot analysis. Results (1) The growth of HeyA8, SKOV3 and A2780/DDP cells were all significantly inhibited after being treated with different concentration of micheliolide for 72 hours and the roles of inhibition were all concentration dependant (P<0.05). The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of HeyA8, SKOV3 and A2780/DDP were (9.8±2.2), (12.0±2.1) and (12.8±1.8)μmol/L, respectively. We chose HeyA8 cell to do the following expreriments because of its best inhibited effect. (2) After HeyA8 cell was treated with micheliolide of different concentrations, as the concentration increased (20 and 0μmol/L, for example), the apoptosis rate of HeyA8 cell raised from (7.2±1.0)%to (17.4±1.1)%, the percentage of survived cells reduce from (92.8 ± 1.3)% to (82.6 ± 1.4)%,and the relative mRNA level of RelA decreased from 1.00 ± 0.13 to 0.18 ± 0.00 (P<0.01); furthermore, the expression of RelA protein was weaken and the activited caspase-9 protein expression was increased gradually. Conclusions Micheliolide plays a significantly inhibited role in HeyA8, SKOV3 and A2780/DDP cells. The inhibited role of micheliolide inovarian cancer cells might through inhibiting nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-кB) signaling pathway, and inducing the expression of activited caspase-9 protein to promoting apoptosis of HeyA8 cell.

Due to the importance of molecular mechanisms of drug actions, network pharmacology has become a new perspective on drug mechanism research and novel drug discovery. Drug target prediction using computational methods, is one of the key research topics in network pharmacology. This paper reviewed the related research on drug target prediction methods. Furthermore, general principles of drug target prediction methods and key steps of them in recent years were summarized. Given the diversity of Chinese medicine ingredients, the network controlla-bility of herbs and the lack of high-quality pharmacological data, the network regulation mechanism of Chinese herb research will meet even more difficulties than modern drug research. Therefore, this paper also discussed main is-sues and research trends of Chinese herb target prediction. Finally, combining with the actual consolidated network data of Chinese herbs, chemical structure similarity computation and link prediction methods, the network-based herb target prediction method was proposed to demonstrate key research steps. Furthermore, we discussed the most significant research topics that we should addressed to enhance the high quality results of herb target prediction.

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the effects of Astragalous Injection on oxidative stress and micro-inflammatory status in patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis (MHD). METHODS: Sixty MHD patients were included and randomized into treatment group and control group, with another 10 healthy volunteers as normal control. The patients in the treatment group were treated with Astragalous Injection and the patients in the control group were treated with normal saline for 12 weeks. A spectrophotometric method was used for the measurement of plasma concentrations of oxidative parameters including advanced glycation end products (AGEs), advanced oxidation protein product (AOPP), malondialdehyde (MDA) and vitamin E (Vit E). The content of C-reactive protein (CRP) was evaluated by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS: Compared with the normal control group, the plasma levels of AGEs, AOPP, MDA and CRP were significantly increased, while plasma level of Vit E was significantly decreased in MHD patients ( P<0.01). After Astragalous Injection treatment, the plasma levels of AGEs, AOPP, MDA and CRP were decreased as compared with the control group ( P<0.01), while there was no significant difference in plasma Vit E level between the treatment group and control group. CONCLUSION: There exist oxidative stress and micro-inflammation in MHD patients. Astragalous Injection can ameliorate the accumulation of oxidative products and micro-inflammatory status, but it has no significant effect on plasma Vit E level.

Objective: To investigate the sensitization of physiological (10~(-9)mol/L) and pharmacological (10~(-5)mol/L) concentrations of melatonin on cell line MCF-7 for adriamycin and its mechanism. Methods: (1) MTT was applied to test the changes in inhibition ratio and IC_(50) of call line MCF-7 for adriamycin before and af-ter incubation with melatonin. (2) Flow cytometry was used to observe the effect of different concentrations of melatonin, adriamycin and melatonin plus adriamycin on cell apoptosis. (3) Western blot was employed to de-termine the expression of p53 and bcl-2 in MCF-7 cells incubated with melatonin, adriamycin and melatonin plus adriamycin. Results: (1) MTT method showed that adriamycin had inhibitive effect on the growth of MCF-7 cells in a dose- and time-dependent manner. The IC_(50) of cell line MCF-7 for adnamycin before treat-ment with melatonin was 0.62±0.07ug/mL (P>0.05). The IC50 of cell line MCF-7 for adriamycin incubated with physiological and pharmacological concentrations of melatonin was 0.59±0.09ug/mL and 0.42±0.02ug/mL, re-spectively, with a significant difference (P<0.01). (2) Flow cytometry method showed that adriamycin could promote apoptosis of MCF-7, and no changes in the apoptosis index were observed as the concentration of melatonin was changed (P>0.05). With the same concentration of adriamycin, the apoptosis index of cells treated with physiological concentration of melatonin plus adriamycin was not changed (P=>0.05), but the apop-tosis index of cells treated with pharmacological concentrations of melatonin plus addamycin was increased significantly. The concentration of adriamycin had no effect on the apoptosis index. (3) Western blot showed that P53 protein was expressed at a lower level and bcl-2 protein was highly expressed. Physiological concen-trations of melatonin increased the expression of p53 and decreased bcl-2 expression in a dose - dependent manner. The concentration of addamycin had no effect on the expression of p53 and bcl-2 proteins. Conclu-sion: (1) Physiological concentrations of melatonin had no effect on the anti-cancer effect of adriamycin. Phar-macological concentrations of melatonin showed sensitization of MCF-7 cells for adriamycin. (2) With a lower concentration of adriamycin, the promotion of apoptosis may be part of the mechanism of sensitization effect of melatonin. With the increase of adriamycin concentration, the cytotoxic mechanism of melotonin became more and more important. (3) Physiological concentration could increase the expression of p53 and decrease bcl-2 expression in ER~+ breast carcinoma cell line MCF-7 in a dose -dependent manner. The apoptosis involv-ing p53 and bcl-2 passway was part of the mechanism of sensitization effect of melatonin for addamycin.

To investigate the high-risk factors for newborn hearing loss and to provide information for preventing the development of hearing loss and delaying its progression, from May 2003 to June 2006, neonates who failed to pass the universal newborn hearing screening (UNHS) were referred to Jinan Newborn Hearing Screening and Rehabilitation Center from 7 newborn hearing screening centers in seven cities of Shandong province. One-to-one pair-matched case-control method was employed for statistical analysis of the basic features of definitely identified cases. High-risk factors relating to the bilateral hearing loss were evaluated by univariate and multivariate Logistic regression analysis. Our results revealed that 721 transferred newborns who didn't pass the hearing screening received audiological and medical evaluation and 367 were confirmed to have hearing loss. Of them, 177 neonates with hearing loss who met the matching requirements were included in the study as subjects. Univariate analysis showed that high-risk factors related to hearing loss incuded age of father, education backgrounds of parents, parity, birth weight, gestational weeks, craniofacial deformity, history of receiving treatment in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), neonatal disease, family history of otopathy and family history of congenital hearing loss. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis revealed that 4 independent risk factors were related to bilateral hearing loss, including parity (OR=16.285, 95% CI 3.379-78.481), neonatal disease (OR=34.968, 95% CI 2.720-449.534), family history of congenital hearing loss (OR=69.488, 95% CI 4.417-1093.300) and birth weight (OR=0.241, 95% CI 0.090-0.648). It is concluded that parity, neonatal disease and family history of hearing loss are the promoting factors of bilateral hearing loss in neonates and appropriate intervention measures should be taken to deal with the risk factors.