Abstract? AlM: To evaluate macular thickness and macular volume changes in people with diabetes mellitus but no significant decrease of visual acuity.?METHODS:A total of 87 eyes were collected in diabetic group. According to the international stage of diabetic retinopathy, these cases were divided into two subgroups:DR0 stage 54 eyes and DR1 stage 33 eyes. All the cases were received optical coherence tomography (OCT) scan in macular area;the scanning model is 512× 128; recording macular average thickness and macular volume, and compared with healthy subjects.? RESULTS: Macular average thickness and macular volume were higher in DR1 group than those in DR0 stage and control group, and differences were having statistical significance. But DR0 group and control group differences of the two indexes were not statistically significant.? CONCLUSlON: With the aggravation of diabetic retinopathy, the macular thickness tends to be thicken. Although without obvious visual loss, there have been slight morphological changes. Using OCT scan can find fundus changes earlier in patients with diabetes mellitus, and provide clinical basis for both early diagnosis and treatment.

This study aims at trying to establish a novel method of sterility test for injections based on biothermodynamics, in order to overcome the deficiencies of routine sterility tests such as long detecting cycle, low sensitivity and prone to misjudgments. A biothermodynamics method was adopted to rapidly detect the microorganism contamination of injections by monitoring the heat metabolism during the growth of microbe. The growth rate equal to or greater than zero and the heat power difference of P(i) and P(0) with three folds higher than the noise of baseline were chosen as indexes to study the heat change rule of microbe. In this way, the effectiveness of the new method to detect strains required by conventional sterility test or in injection samples was also investigated. Results showed that the Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria and fungi demanded by sterility testing methodology could be detected by biothermodynamics method within 10 hours, with the sensitivity lower than 100 CFU x mL(-1). Meanwhile, this method was successfully applied to the sterility test of Compound Yinchen injection (FFYC), Shuanghuanglian powder injection (SHL) and Compound Triamcinolone injection (TAND) which were sterilized with different degrees. Therefore, the biothermodynamics method, with advantages of fast detection and high sensitivity, could be a complementary solution for conventional sterility tests.
Anti-Inflammatory Agents ; administration & dosage ; chemistry ; Drug Contamination ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; administration & dosage ; chemistry ; Fungi ; isolation & purification ; Gram-Negative Bacteria ; isolation & purification ; Gram-Positive Bacteria ; isolation & purification ; Hot Temperature ; Injections ; Microbiological Techniques ; methods ; Sensitivity and Specificity ; Sterilization ; Triamcinolone ; administration & dosage ; chemistry

Objective To evaluate the effect of SLC6A4 gene polymorphism on pain sensitivity in the patients with lung cancer. Methods A total of 248 patients with pulmonary malignant tumor served as lung cancer group and 104 healthy subjects in the Physical Examination Center of our hospital served as con-trol group. Patients with malignant pulmonary tumor in lung cancer group were further divided into 3 sub-groups according to pain score and the three step analgesic ladder recommended by WHO(opioids was used when visual analogue scale[VAS]score≥4 points): painless subgroup, mild pain subgroup and moder-ate-severe pain subgroup. The consumption of opioids(based on requirement for morphine)within 24 h af-ter pain relief(VAS score≤3 points)after treatment and VAS score before treatment were recorded. Ve-nous blood samples were collected, and the genotypes were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction-restric-tion fragment length polymorphism. Results There was no significant difference in genotype frequency or allele frequency at rs4795541 and rs3813034 sites between lung cancer group and control group and among the three subgroups(P>0.05). There was no significant difference in VAS score before treatment or re-quirement for morphine between patients of different genotypes and alleles(P>0.05). There was no signifi-cant difference in VAS score before treatment or requirement for morphine between lung cancer patients with medium and low expression of serotonin transporter in 5-HTT-linked polymorphic region. Conclusion SLC6A4 gene polymorphism exerts no effect on pain sensitivity in the patients with lung cancer.

Autopsy by forensic pathologist is a main mean currently to determine the cause of sudden unexpected death. Retinal examination is important but seldom performed during a forensic autopsy for various reasons. The value of retina examination has not been recognized. With invention of ophthalmic endoscopy and its subsequent application in postmortem retina examination, it has proved to be useful adjunct to determine the cause of death and to estimate the postmortem interval.
Adult ; Autopsy ; Cause of Death ; Craniocerebral Trauma/pathology* ; Decompression Sickness/pathology* ; Female ; Forensic Pathology/methods* ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Ophthalmoscopy ; Retina/pathology* ; Subarachnoid Hemorrhage/pathology* ; Syndrome ; Vitreous Hemorrhage/pathology*

Individual response to drugs, toxicants, environmental chemicals and allergens varies with genotype. Some respond well to these substances without significant consequences, while others may respond strongly with severe consequences and even death. Toxicogenetics and toxicogenomics as well as pharmacogenetics explain the genetic basis for the variations of individual response to toxicants by sequencing the human genome and large-scale identification of genome polymorphism. The new disciplines will provide a new route for forensic specialists to determine the cause of death.
Cytochrome P-450 Enzyme System/genetics* ; Drug Hypersensitivity/genetics* ; Forensic Medicine ; Genetic Predisposition to Disease/genetics* ; Genome, Human ; Humans ; Pharmacogenetics/trends* ; Pharmacokinetics ; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide ; Toxicogenetics/trends*

The objective of this study was to evaluate the value of morphologic diagnosis for acute leukemia (AL), to explore the relation of morphologic diagnosis with immunology, cytogenetics and molecular biology diagnosis of AL and to analyze the onset characteristics of AL in 10 years. The samples of bone marrow and peripheral blood from 233 newly diagnosed cases of AL were collected during 2001-2011 years; the morphologic examination and immunologic, cytogenetic and molecular biologic examination (ICM) were carried out, the consistency of morphologic diagnosis with ICM diagnosis was compared, the onset characteristics of AL was analyzed. The results showed that: (1) the consistent rate of immunology, cytogenetics, molecular biology diagnosis with morphologic diagnosis was 84.3%. The order of consistent rat was AUL, M0 < M1 < HAL < M4 < M2 < M3 < M5 < ALL < M6, M7, AP; (2) Misdiagnosis always occurred among AUL, M0, M1, ALL and HAL or among M2a, M3v, M4 and M5. (3) In 233 cases, the highest ratio of blast was observed in M1 (92.5%), while the lowest ratio of blast was observed in M2 (49.5%). (4) AL occurred more frequently in males than that in female (147:86). (5) AL occurred in patients aged from 1 to 88 years. The median age was 41.5 for AUL, 40.8 for M0, 43.4 for M1, 46.3 for M2, 33.8 for M3, 42.6 for M4, 48.8 for M5, 77.3 for M6, 2.5 for M7, 65.0 for AP, 29.1 for ALL and 40.3 for HAL. (6) The number of patients in the later five years (139 cases) was significantly greater than that in the first five years (94 cases), especially the patients with M1, M2, M3, M4, and M5. It is concluded that morphologic diagnosis has important clinical value in the MICM diagnosis of AL. Attaching importance to the confusing cell morphology and onset characteristics of AL can improve the diagnostic accuracy.
Acute Disease ; Adolescent ; Adult ; Aged ; Aged, 80 and over ; Child ; Child, Preschool ; Cytogenetic Analysis ; Female ; Humans ; Infant ; Leukemia ; diagnosis ; pathology ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Molecular Biology ; Retrospective Studies ; Young Adult

The antithrombotic effect of Caragana jubata (Pall.)Poir.ethanolic extract (TE)was evaluated by inferior vena cava thrombosis in rats and acute pulmonary thrombosis in mice. To search for the bioactive fractions of TE, comparison on acute pulmonary thrombosis was made between the two main fractions of TE (TE-1 and TE-2). Besides, pharmacological effects of TE, TE-1 and TE-2 on bleeding time and clotting time were also studied. Reference substances combined with UPLC/DAD-q-TOF-MS were applied to identify the main six compounds and other chemical constituents of the TE. The results showed that TE could significantly reduce the rat thrombosis weight in all doses (P<0.01) and improve the protective rate to mice in medium and high doses (P<0.05). TE-2 showed a stronger effect on protecting the mice from paralysis or death and prolonging the bleeding time and clotting time than TE-1. Chemical constituents in TE mainly include isoflavones, pterocarpans and stilbenoids. Constituents in TE-2 were mainly isoflavones and pterocarpans, while those in TE-1 were mainly stilbenoids, which could be inferred that all of these three kinds of constituents may be responsible for the antithrombotic effects of Caragana jubata.

BACKGROUNDMyocarditis is an uncommon but serious manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). This study aimed to investigate clinical characteristics and outcomes of lupus myocarditis (LM) and to determine risk factors of LM in hospitalized Chinese patients with SLE.

METHODSWe conducted a retrospective case-control study. A total of 25 patients with LM from 2001 to 2012 were enrolled as the study group, and 100 patients with SLE but without LM were randomly pooled as the control group. Univariable analysis was performed using Chi-square tests for categorical variables, and the Student's t-test or Mann-Whitney U-test was performed for continuous variables according to the normality.

RESULTSLM presented as the initial manifestation of SLE in 7 patients (28%) and occurred mostly at earlier stages compared to the controls (20.88 ± 35.73 vs. 44.08 ± 61.56 months, P = 0.008). Twenty-one patients (84%) experienced episodes of symptomatic heart failure. Echocardiography showed that 23 patients (92%) had decreased left ventricular ejection fraction (<50%) and all patients had wall motion abnormalities. A high SLE Disease Activity Index was the independent risk factor in the development of LM (odds ratio = 1.322, P < 0.001). With aggressive immunosuppressive therapies, most patients achieved satisfactory outcome. The in-hospital mortality was not significantly higher in the LM group than in the controls (4% vs. 2%,P = 0.491).

CONCLUSIONSLM could result in cardiac dysfunction and even sudden death. High SLE disease activity might potentially predict the occurrence of LM at the early stage of SLE. Characteristic echocardiographic findings could confirm the diagnosis of LM. Early aggressive immunosuppressive therapy could improve the cardiac outcome of LM.

Adult ; Case-Control Studies ; China ; Echocardiography ; Female ; Humans ; Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic ; complications ; Male ; Multivariate Analysis ; Myocarditis ; diagnosis ; etiology ; Retrospective Studies ; Risk Factors

Objective To evaluate the effect of 56 ancestry informative single nucleotide polymorphism （aiSNP） genetic markers in the ForenSeq^TM DNA Signature Prep Kit on ancestry inference. Methods A total of 85 samples from five populations including Hebei Han population, Inner Mongolia autonomous region Mongolian population, Tibet autonomous region Tibetan population, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region Uygur population and Nigerian population were collected. The library was constructed with the ForenSeq^TM DNA Signature Prep Kit and sequencing was performed based on the MiSeq FGx Forensic Genomics System. Using universal analysis software （UAS） of ForenSeq^TM, principal component analysis （PCA）, Structure and likelihood ratio method was used on the genotyping data of 56 aiSNP markers, respectively, and the genetic relationships between populations and inference of the origin of ancestors were analyzed. Results Among the five populations tested, the four ethnic populations in China （Hebei Han population, Inner Mongolia autonomous region Mongolian population, Tibet autonomous region Tibetan population and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region Uygur population） could be significantly distinguished from Nigerian population. Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region Uygur individuals were shown as having mixed origins of ancestors and could be distinguished from the other three Chinese populations. However, the other three populations in China （Hebei Han population, Inner Mongolia autonomous region Mongolian population and Tibet autonomous region Tibetan population） could not be effectively distinguished by the system. Conclusion The 56 aiSNP markers in the ForenSeq^TM DNA Signature Prep Kit can make accurate ancestry inference from the intercontinental level, but it is not yet able to distinguish between Chinese subpopulations.
Asian People/genetics* ; China ; DNA ; DNA Fingerprinting ; Ethnicity/genetics* ; Forensic Genetics/methods* ; Genetics, Population ; High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing/methods* ; Humans ; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide

Nine compounds, including five lignan glycosides (1-5), three sucrose esters (6-8), and one organic acid ester (9), were isolated from the ethanol extract of the roots of Securidaca inappendiculata by various chromatographic methods including silica gel, MPLC and preparative HPLC. Their structures were elucidated as acernikol-4″-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (1), (7R, 8S)-dihydrodehydrodiconiferyl alcohol 9-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (2), (7R, 8S)-dihydrodehydrodiconiferyl alcohol 4-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (3), (7R, 8S)-dihydrodehydrodiconiferyl alcohol 9'-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (4), (7R, 8S)-5-methoxydihydrodehy-drodiconiferyl alcohol 4-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (5), 3, 6'-O-diferuloylsucrose (6), 3-O-feruloyl-6'-O-sinapoylsucrose (7), sibricose A5 (8), and mehyl ferulate (9) on the basis of 1H-, 13C-NMR and MS experiments. Compounds 1-5, 8, and 9 were isolated from the Securidaca genus for the first time. Compounds 2, 3, and 7 exhibited weak cytotoxic activities against Hela and MCF-7 cell lines.