Objective To study the effect of finasteride on preventing prostate hyperplasia with acute urinary retention.Methods Totally 626 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) were randomly divided into treatment group (316 cases) and control group (310 cases),followed up for 3 years.The incidence of acute urinary retention and prostate volume changes were analyzed.Results There were 3 cases of acute urinary retention in treatment group (1.0 ％),9 cases in control group (2.9％) (x2 ＝5.37,P＜0.05).In treatment group,the average prostate volume was reduced about 23.6％ compared with before taking the medicine,on the contrary,prostate volume was averagely increased 12.3％ in control group.Conclusions Finasteride can reduce the risk of acute urinary retention by narrowing the prostate volume in patients of benign prostatic hyperplasia.

ObjectiveTo study the feasibility,safety and efficacy of laparoscopic cyst excision and Roux-en-Y hepaticojejunostomy for adult congenital choledochal cyst.MethodA retrospective study was conducted on 7 adult patients with congenital choledochal cyst who received total laparoscopic cyst excision and Roux-en-y hepaticojejunostomy from May 2008 to February 2011 in the Department of General Surgery of Shengjing Hospital,China Medical University.ResultsAll the laparoscopic surgery was successful.The mean operation time was 210 minutes.The average intraoperative blood loss was 80 ml.All patients were out of bed within the first 24 h after surgery.The mean time to first flatus/bowel motion was 2.4 days.Except 1 patient who had small amount of bile leakage,all patients recovered smoothly without any major postoperative complications.The average hospital stay was 8.1 days.No patients suffered from abdominal pain,fever or jaundice during follow-up from 3 to 30 months.ConclusionTotal laparoscopic cyst excision and Roux-en-Y hepaticojejunostomy was a safe,efficacious,and minimally invasive procedure.

OBJECTIVETo observe the clinical efficacy of BO's abdominal acupuncture for obese type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).

METHODSSixty patients of obese T2DM were randomly divided into an acupuncture group and a medication group, 30 cases in each one. Patients in the medication group were treated with basic treatment combined with oral administration of regular antidiabetics, three weeks as one session. Patients in the acupuncture group, based on the medication group, were treated with abdominal acupuncture at Yinqiguiyuan [Zhongwan (CV 12), Xiawan (CV 10), Qihai (CV 6), Guanguan (CV 4)], Fusiguan [Huaroumen (ST 24), Wailing (TE 5)], Tianshu (ST 25), Daheng (SP 15), Qixue (KI 13), etc.; the treatment was given three times per week, 3 weeks as one session. The systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), body weight, waist circumference (WC), hip circumference, body mass index (BI) were observed before and after treatment in the two groups, and fasting plasma glucose (FPG), fasting insulin (FINS), 2-hours postprandial blood glucose by oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) and insulin, total cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), HOMA-IR of insulin resistance index were calculated and adverge events were recorded.

RESULTSCompared before the treatment, SBP, WC, body weight, BMI, FPG, OG-TT2hBG, FINS, GTT2h insulin, HOMA-IR, TC and LDL-C in the acupuncture group were all significantly reduced (all P <0. 05), while FPG, OGTT2H insulin and TG were increased in the medication group (all P<0. 05)'. The differences of reducing SBP, WC, FPG, OGTT2H insulin, HOMA-IR, TC, TG and LDL-C were statistically significant between the two groups (all P<0. 05). The total effective rate was 93. 3% (28/30) in the acupuncture group, which was significantly superior to 23. 3% (7/30) in the medication group (P<0. 01).

CONCLUSIONBO's abdominal acupuncture has obvious clinical efficacy for obese type-2 diabetes mellitus, featuring in lowering blood pressure, reducing weight, decreasing blood glucose, im- proving insulin resistance and lowering lipid, which has no adverse effects and is worthy of clinical popularization and application.

Acupuncture Points ; Acupuncture Therapy ; Adult ; Blood Glucose ; metabolism ; Body Mass Index ; Body Weight ; Cholesterol ; blood ; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 ; metabolism ; physiopathology ; therapy ; Female ; Humans ; Insulin ; blood ; metabolism ; Lipoproteins, LDL ; blood ; metabolism ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Triglycerides ; blood ; Waist Circumference

Objective To describe the preoperative factors of prolonged intensive care unit length of stay after coronary artery bypass grafting. Methods From 1997 to 2009, 1318 patients underwent isolated CABG in our hospital. Retrospective analysis was performed on these cases. Univariate and multivariate analyses for preoperative risk factors were performed. Prolonged length of ICU stay was defined as initial admission to ICU exceeding 72 h. Results The mean age of patients ( 322women and 996 men) was (67.4±9.4) years. Of 1318 patients undergoing isolated CABG from 1997 to 2009, 205 experienced prolonged length of ICU stay. The length of ICU stay was (40.1 ± 22.5 ) hours and ( 122.6 ± 48.7 ) hours separately.Overall in-hospital mortality was higher among these 205 patients ( 13.7% vs. 1.2%, P ＜0.05 ). The overall mortality was 3.1%. In univariate analyses, there were statistically significant differences with respect to the percentage of CPB, total bypass time, cross-clamp time, number of distal anastomoses, use of pressor agent, use of intro-aortic balloon pump,time of ventilation and hospital mortality. The significant risk factors were age, NYHA class Ⅲ/Ⅳ, left ventricular ejection fraction(LVEF) ＜0.40, renal failure, cerebrovascular and/or peripheral vascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, recent acute myocardial infarction, prior percutaneous coronary intervention, left main stenosi, three-vessels disease. The variables entered into the multivariate logistic regression were age, NYHA class Ⅲ/Ⅳ, LVEF ＜0.40, renal failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, recent acute myocardial infarction, prior percutaneous coronary intervention, three-vessels disease. According to the outcome of multivariate logistic regression, we can conclude the model of probability forecast and create a new variable named Pre. The area under ROC curve of the new variable Pre was larger than other variables. Conclusion The main risk factors of prolonged ICU length of stay were LVEF ＜ 0.40, recent acute myocardial infarction, renal failure and chronic obstructive pulmorary disease. The AUC of variable Pre was higher than other' s , which indicated that new variable Pre combining each variable was more valuable than single variable with respect to prediction. A predicted probability of 0. 754 was used as cut-off point for the prognostic test.

This paper presents a feature extraction method based on multivariate empirical mode decomposition (MEMD) combining with the power spectrum feature, and the method aims at the non-stationary electroencephalogram (EEG) or magnetoencephalogram (MEG) signal in brain-computer interface (BCI) system. Firstly, we utilized MEMD algorithm to decompose multichannel brain signals into a series of multiple intrinsic mode function (IMF), which was proximate stationary and with multi-scale. Then we extracted and reduced the power characteristic from each IMF to a lower dimensions using principal component analysis (PCA). Finally, we classified the motor imagery tasks by linear discriminant analysis classifier. The experimental verification showed that the correct recognition rates of the two-class and four-class tasks of the BCI competition III and competition IV reached 92.0% and 46.2%, respectively, which were superior to the winner of the BCI competition. The experimental proved that the proposed method was reasonably effective and stable and it would provide a new way for feature extraction.
Algorithms ; Brain ; physiology ; Brain-Computer Interfaces ; Discriminant Analysis ; Electroencephalography ; Humans ; Magnetoencephalography ; Principal Component Analysis

Objective: To investigate the effect of triptolide on cell proliferation, cell cycle distribution, DNA and protein expression regulation of P21wap1/cip1 and P27kip1 in human multiple myeloma RPMI 8226 cells. Methods: Cell viability was detected by MTT assay and cell cycle distribution was measured by flow cytometry. Effect on mRNA expression of P21wap1/cip1 and P27kip1 was detected by RT-PCR. The change of protein expression was measured by Western blotting. Results: Triptolide of varying concentration significantly induced the inhibition of proliferation in a dose-dependent manner and G0/G 1 phase arrest of the cell cycle progression. The events were coincided with the upregulation of the mRNA and protein expression of P21wap1/cip1 and P27kip1. Conclusion: These results suggest that triptolide might exhibit its strong antitumor effect via alternation of P21wap1/cip1 and P27kip1. It provides framework for a clinical evaluation of triptolide.

Objective To investigate the effects of adenovirus vectors for BTB and cap'n'collar protein homology 1 (Bach1) small interfering RNA (siRNA) on antioxidanffactors and fibrosis related cytokines in lung fibroblasts (MLF) in transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 induced mouse.Methods Bach1 siRNA recombinant adenovirus vectors and blankadenovirus vectorwere constructed,then the MLF cells were incubated with TGF-β1 (5 ng/ml) for 24 h and infected with blankvector and successful constructed Bach1 siRNAs.The messenger RNA (mRNA) and protein expression of Bach1,heme oxygenase (HO)-1,glutathione peroxidase 1 (GPx1) and nicotinamide-adenine dinucleotide phosphate:quinone oxidoreductase-1 (NQO1) in cell supernatants were determined by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Western blot.Changes of fibrosis-related cytokines including TGF-β1 and interleukin (IL)-6 levels in cell supernatants were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed for multiple group comparisons and LSD test was used to compare the two groups.Results Bach1 mRNA (2.127±0.089) and protein expression increased significantly after TGF-31 stimulation compared with blank group (1.000±0.067,t=-21.77,P＜0.01),as well as the expression of fibrosis-related cytokines TGF-β1 (52±6) and IL-6 (34±6) in cell supernatants increased significantly after TGF-β1 stimulation compared with blank group (26±4,t=-11.11,P＜0.01 and 20±5,t=-5.32,P＜0.01),but the mRNA expression of HO-1 and GPx1 (0.403±0.040 and 0.567±0.112) also the protein expression decreased significantly compared with mRNA (1.000±0.181,t=25.57,P＜0.01 and 1.000±0.212,t=6.68,P＜0.05) and protein expression in blank group.Follow the Bach1 siRNA treatment,Bach1 mRNA (0.153±0.015) and protein levels were significantly downregulated compared with mRNA (2.129±0.089 and 1.973±0.035,F=1835.95,P＜0.01) and protein expression of TGF-β1 and blank vector group,as well as TGF-β1 (26±3) and IL-6 (11±3) expression in cell supernatant were significantly inhibited compared with TGF-31 (52±6 and 34±6) and blankvector group (49±5 and 33±6) (F=22.25,P＜0.01 and F=28.38,P＜0.01).But the mRNA levels of HO-1 (3.303±0.294) and GPx1 (1.840±0.231) in MLF were promoted significantly compared with TGF-β1 (0.403±0.040 and 0.567±0.112) and blank vector group (0.353±0.057 and 0.667±0.090) (F=53.90,P＜0.01 and F=526.25,P＜0.01).Conclusion Silencing Bach1 rescues TGF-β1 induced reduction of antioxidants and increasethefibrosis in MLF cells.The study offers an experimental basis to explore pathogenesis of oxidative stress and antioxidant therapy for connective tissue disease related inter-stitial lung disease.

AIM: To study whether Sca-1 + cells from fetal liver can be induced to differentiate into neuronal cells in vitro. METHODS: Sca-1 + cells from 14 5-days-old murine fetal liver were isolated with a magnetic cell sorting kit, and were cultured in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM)/F12 supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS), and passaged at a ratio of 1∶3 when cells reached more than 80% confluence. The 5 passage cells were induced by 10 -3 mol/L ?-mercaptoethanol (?-ME) and 5 ?10 -7 mol/L all-trans-retinoic acid (RA) for 24 hours, and then incubated in serum-free medium for 5 hours to 5 days. The characteristics of treated cells were assayed by immunocytochemistry staining analysis at 5 hours, or 5 days.RESULTS: Cells treated with ?-ME and RA exhibited neuronal phenotype and expressed neuron-specific protein such as neuron-specific nuclear protein (NeuN), neuronfilament-M, and neuron-specific tubulin-1 (TuJ-1) but not tau, MAP-2, or the astrocyte-specific marker glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP).CONCLUSION: Sca-1 + cells from fetal liver, of which most are regarded as hematopoietic stem cells, could differentiate into early immature neuronal cells in vitro . These findings suggest that Sca-1 + cells from fetal liver may be an alternative source in cell therapy and gene therapy of neural dysfunction.

AIM: To determine whether Sca-1~+ cells from fetal liver can differentiate into neural cells. METHODS: The sex of 14.5-day-old murine fetuses was determined by PCR analysis of sry gene, and Sca-1~+ cells from male fetal liver were isolated with a magnetic cell sorting kit, 2?10~3 of which were then transplanted into lethally irradiated female mice. The donor cells and their characteristics in recipient brains were identified and detected by FISH and immunohistochemistry double-staining analysis at 60, 120, 180 days after transplantation. RESULTS: There existed many male cells in brains of female recipients, some of them express neuron-specific nuclear protein (NeuN), and some of them express the astrocyte-specific marker, i.e. glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP). CONCLUSION: Sca-1~+ cells from fetal liver, which contain hematopoietic stem cells, can differentiate into neuronal cells and astrocytes in the brains of adult mice.