Seventy percentage of perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women will experience menopause symptoms. Primary menopause symptoms in Western countries included hot flashes, insomnia, somatic pain, depression, and fatigue. Hot flashes were most commonly treated. Menopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) continues to have a clinical role in the management of vasomotor symptoms, but since 2002 there has been a marked global decline in its use due to concerns about the risks and benefits of HRT; consequently many women with menopause symptoms are now seeking alternatives including acupuncture. Acupuncture has a long tradition of use for the treatment of different menopause symptoms. Its effectiveness has been studied for natural menopause or chemical and surgery induced menopause. Here we provide an update on recent advances in the field for clinicians. The recent systematic reviews on acupuncture in menopausal symptoms suggest that acupuncture is an effective and valuable option for women suffering from menopause. However, the science of acupuncture therapies is still inadequate to sufficiently support the benefits of acupuncture therapies. Finally, we discuss our points of view on clinical trials of acupuncture for menopause symptoms.
Acupuncture Therapy ; methods ; Biomedical Research ; Female ; Humans ; Menopause ; physiology ; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic

Yeast surface display (YSD) is a technology that fuses the exogenous target protein gene sequence with a specific vector gene sequence, followed by introduction into yeast cells. Subsequently, the target protein is expressed and localized on the yeast cell surface by using the intracellular protein transport mechanism of yeast cells, whereas the most widely used YSD system is the α-agglutinin expression system. Yeast cells possess the eukaryotic post-translational modification mechanism, which helps the target protein fold correctly. This mechanism could be used to display various eukaryotic proteins, including antibodies, receptors, enzymes, and antigenic peptides. YSD has become a powerful protein engineering tool in biotechnology and biomedicine, and has been used to improve a broad range of protein properties including affinity, specificity, enzymatic function, and stability. This review summarized recent advances in the application of YSD technology from the aspects of library construction and screening, antibody engineering, protein engineering, enzyme engineering and vaccine development.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae/metabolism* ; Protein Engineering ; Biotechnology ; Antibodies/metabolism* ; Amino Acid Sequence