Objective Our previous study has shown that porcine antigen-primed and CD4 + T cells activated macrophages are capable of the ecognition and rejection of porcine xenografts but not mouse allografts, and therefore suggested the involvement of signaling between the graft and macrophages in this specific graft recognition and destruction. Methods NOD-SCID mice were transplanted with fetal pig pancreatic fragment (FPP) before adoptive transfer with exogenous macrophages isolated from rejecting FPP xenografts of BALB/c recipient mice. The exogenous macrophages were tracked by Ly5.1 surface antigen or via CSFE staining. Gene expression of CCR2 and CCR5 and their chemokines in transplanted FPP xenografts was evaluated by real-time PCR. Results After the adoptive transfer, recently transplanted but not established FPP xenografts were rejected by exogenous activated macrophages. In the meantime, greater level of chemokine gene expression was detected in recently-transplanted compared with the established xenografts. Furthermore, expression of both CCR2 and CCR5 genes was enhanced significantly in activated macrophages when compared with non-activated macrophages. Conclusion Upregulated chemokines were associated with macrophage recruitment and destruction of islet xenografts.

Objective To compare the diagnostic value of renal ultrasound scan (RUS) and 99Tcmdimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) renal scintigraphy in children with acute pyelonephritis (APN). Methods In all, 165 children with initial clinical diagnosis of APN, aged from 1.5 months to 11 yrs ( median 20 months), were included in the study, all of which were examined with RUS and DMSA renal scientigraphy. The diagnosis with DMSA renal scientigraphy results was taken as the standard reference to evaluate the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of RUS. Results Of 99 out of all 330 kidneys that were found abnormal on DMSA renal scientigraphy, 31 were abnormal on RUS. Of the rest normal kidneys on DMSA scans renal scientigraphy, 4 were abnormal on RUS. Thus diagnostic sensitivity of RUS for APN was 31.3%(31/99) and specificity was 98.3% (227/231). Conclusions Although RUS provides with high diagnostic specificity for children with APN, its low sensitivity may underestimate the clinical evaluation of APN.More often than not, 99Tcm-DMSA renal scientigraphy is a clinical necesscity for the definite RUS diagnosis.

OBJECTIVETo investigate the prevalence of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and correlative risk factors among natural population in China.

METHODSAnkle brachial index (ABI) was measured by trained doctors and related data were collected in residents from Beijing, Shanghai, Changsha, Guangdong, Neimenggu, and Xinjiang selected through cluster multistage and random sampling method. PAD was defined as an ABI < or = 0.9 in either leg.

RESULTSThe prevalence of PAD among 21 152 eligible participants was 3.08%, the standardized prevalence was 3.04%. The prevalence in males and females was 2.52% and 3.66% and the standardized prevalence was 1.84% and 4.31% respectively, the prevalence rate was significantly lower in males than that in females (P < 0.01). The prevalence in both males and females increased significantly in proportion to aging (P < 0.01). The prevalence in Han Chinese was significantly higher than that in non-Han Chinese (P < 0.01). Logistic regression analysis showed that older age, female gender, Han Chinese, waist circumference, smoking, lipid disorder, diabetes mellitus, coronary artery disease and a history of ischemic stroke were associated with the increased prevalence of PAD. Incidence of known PAD was 1.38% in this cohort.

CONCLUSIONSOlder age, female gender, Han Chinese, waist circumference, smoking, lipid disorder, diabetes mellitus, coronary artery disease and a history of ischemic stroke were associated with the increased prevalence of PAD in natural Chinese population.

Adult ; Aged ; Ankle Brachial Index ; China ; epidemiology ; Female ; Humans ; Lower Extremity ; blood supply ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Peripheral Vascular Diseases ; epidemiology ; ethnology ; Prevalence ; Risk Factors ; Smoking

Skeletal remains collected from the archaeological fields must be maintained carefully, for being used in scientific studies on the physical characteristics, health status, and pathological disease of the ancient or medieval human populations. Even if Joseon Dynasty Human Sample Collection might be a good example for such studies, few of bone collections predated the Joseon Age (e.g. Goryeo Dynasty) have been established until now, possibly owing to poor preservation condition of archaeological sites in Korea. In this study, we performed anthropological studies on a few cases of Goryeo skeletons, which have been rarely reported by anthropologists in Korea. Judging from the preservation status of bones found in various types of Goryeo graves (e.g. earthen- or stone-chambered tombs), many cases seem to be cremated in accordance with Buddhist funeral rites. Goryeo bone collections must be constructed with the bones identified in the earthen tombs, which were preserved much perfectly than those of any other types of Goryeo tombs.
Anthropology, Physical ; Archaeology ; Funeral Rites ; Humans ; Korea ; Skeleton

Objective To investigate the role of MBP-1 in proliferation,apoptosis and invasion of human esophageal cancer cells Ec109.Methods The human esophageal cancer cells Ec109 were cultured,and divided into the MBP-1 mimics group,siRNA-MBP-1 group,negative control group and blank control group.The cell proliferation activity of each group was detected by tetrazolium blue (MTT) method;flow cytometry was used to detect cell apoptosis and cell cycle;Transwell assay was used to detected the invasion ability and the expressions of cellular cycle related C-myc,Cyclin D1 and Cyclin E were detected by western blot.Results Compared with the negative control group and blank control group,the expression of MBP-1 in esophageal cancer cells Ec109 of the MBP-1 mimics group was up-regulated (P＜0.05),the proliferation ability of esophageal cancer cells was decreased,increased the proportion of apoptosis,decreased the proportion of G0/G1 phase cells,inhibited the number of invasive cells was decreased and the expressions of C-myc,Cyclin D1 and Cyclin E proteins.After silencing MBP-1,the expression of MBP-1 in esophageal cancer cells Ec109 in the siRNA-MBP-1 group was down-regulated,the proliferation ability of esophageal cancer cells was increased,the proportion of apoptosis was decreased,the proportion of G0/G1 phase cells was increased.the number of invasive cells was increased and the expressions of C-myc,Cyclin D1 and Cyclin E proteins were up-regulated.Conclusion MBP-1 is closely correlated with the cell proliferation,cell apoptosis and invasion ability of human esophageal cancer cell line Ec109,and its mechanism might be related to cell cycle abnormality.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The increased risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) has been explained by accelerated atherosclerosis and impaired angiogenesis, where endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) may play key roles. It was hypothesized that : "an altered EPC biology may contribute to the pathophysiology of CRF". SUBJECTS AND METHODS: EPC were isolated from CRF patients on maintenance hemodialysis (n=44) and from a normal control group (n=30). After morphological and immunological characterization, the number and in vitro angiogenic function of the EPC were evaluated. RESULTS: CRF patients showed markedly decreased numbers of EPC (44.6%) and colonies (75.3%) compared to the controls (p<0.001). These findings were corroborated by a 30.5% decrease in the migratory function in response to vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)(p=0.040) and by a 48.8% decrease in EPC incorporation into human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC)(p<0.001). In addition, The Framingham's risk factor scores of both the CRF (r=-0.461, p=0.010) and normal groups (r=-0.367, p=0.016) were significantly correlated with the numbers of EPC. Indeed, under the same burden of risk factors the number of circulating EPC was significantly lower in CRF patients than in the normal group (p<0.001). A significant correlation was also observed between the dialysis dose (Kt/V) and EPC incorporation into the HUVEC (r=0.427, p=0.004). CONCLUSION: The EPC biology, which is critical for neovascularization and the maintenance of vascular function, was altered in CRF. Our data strongly suggest that dysfunction of circulating EPC has a role in the progression of cardiovascular disease in patients with CRF.
Atherosclerosis ; Biology ; Cardiovascular Diseases ; Coronary Artery Disease ; Dialysis ; Endothelial Cells ; Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells ; Humans ; Kidney Failure, Chronic* ; Renal Dialysis ; Risk Factors ; Stem Cells* ; Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A

OBJECTIVE: To propose a semi-supervised epileptic seizure prediction model (ST-WGAN-GP-Bi-LSTM) to enhance the prediction performance by improving time-frequency analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals, enhancing the stability of the unsupervised feature learning model and improving the design of back-end classifier. METHODS: Stockwell transform (ST) of the epileptic EEG signals was performed to locate the time-frequency information by adaptive adjustment of the resolution and retaining the absolute phase to obtain the time-frequency inputs. When there was no overlap between the generated data distribution and the real EEG data distribution, to avoid failure of feature learning due to a constant JS divergence, Wasserstein GAN was used as a feature learning model, and the cost function based on EM distance and gradient penalty strategy was adopted to constrain the unsupervised training process to allow the generation of a high-order feature extractor. A temporal prediction model was finally constructed based on a bi-directional long short term memory network (Bi-LSTM), and the classification performance was improved by obtaining the temporal correlation between high-order time-frequency features. The CHB-MIT scalp EEG dataset was used to validate the proposed patient-specific seizure prediction method. RESULTS: The AUC, sensitivity, and specificity of the proposed method reached 90.40%, 83.62%, and 86.69%, respectively. Compared with the existing semi-supervised methods, the propose method improved the original performance by 17.77%, 15.41%, and 53.66%. The performance of this method was comparable to that of a supervised prediction model based on CNN. CONCLUSION The utilization of ST, WGAN-GP, and Bi-LSTM effectively improves the prediction performance of the semi-supervised deep learning model, which can be used for optimization of unsupervised feature extraction in epileptic seizure prediction.
Humans ; Memory, Short-Term ; Seizures/diagnosis* ; Electroencephalography

Objective: To investigate the clinical features of children with chronic nonbacterial osteomyelitis (CNO), and raise awareness among clinicians. Methods: In this retrospective study, 18 patients with CNO who were diagnosed in Children's Hospital of Fudan University from January 2015 to December 2021 were included. Results: Eighteen children with CNO (12 males, 6 females) were identified. Their age at onset was 9 (5, 11) years, the delay in diagnosis was 2 (1, 6) months, and follow-up-was 17 (8, 34) months. The most common symptoms were fever in 14 children, as well as bone pain and (or) arthralgia in 14 children. In terms of laboratory results, normal white blood cell counts were observed at onset in 17 patients; increased erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) in all patients; increased C reactive protein (CRP) over the normal value in 14 patients. Of the 18 patients, 2 had positive antinuclear antibodies, while none had positive human leukocyte antigen-B27 or rheumatoid factor. Imaging examination revealed that all the patients had symmetrical and multifocal skeletal lesions. The number of structural lesions detected by imaging investigation was 8 (6, 11). The most frequently affected bones were tibia in 18 patients and femur in 17 patients. Bone biopsy was conducted in 14 patients and acute or chronic osteomyelitis manifested with inflammatory cells infiltration were detected. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) found bone lesions in all the patients and bone scintigraphy were positive in 13 patients. All the patients were treated with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, among whom 10 cases also treated with oral glucocorticoids, 9 cases with traditional disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs, 8 cases with bisphosphonates and 6 cases with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors. The pediatric chronic nonbacterial osteomyelitis disease activity score, increased by 70% or more in 13 patients within the initial 6-month follow-up. Conclusions: The clinical manifestations of CNO are lack of specificity. The first symptom of CNO is fever, with or without bone pain and (or) arthralgia, with normal peripheral blood leukocytes, elevated CRP and (or) ESR. Whole body bone scanning combined with MRI can early detect osteomyelitis at subclinical sites, and improve the diagnostic rate of CNO.
Female ; Male ; Humans ; Child ; Retrospective Studies ; Osteomyelitis/drug therapy* ; Arthralgia ; Diphosphonates ; Fever ; Graft vs Host Disease

Clinical practice guideline on traditional Chinese medicine therapy alone or combined with antibiotics for sepsis is strictly in accordance with the latest diagnostic criteria for sepsis (sepsis-3) for the treatment of septic patients at different stages through syndrome differentiation. At present, the abuse of antibiotics and the prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria are very serious, without effective solutions. Thus, this is the first time to focus on traditional Chinese medicine combined with antibiotics to treat sepsis, in order to minimize the incidence of drug-resistant bacteria. This Guideline tends to systematically analyze the sepsis period, septic shock period as well as different clinical symptoms and traditional Chinese medicine measures for organ dysfunction in the sepsis process. By analyzing and interpreting the Guideline systematically, the clinicians could understand its purpose, significance and core ideas more thoroughly, and grasp the recommended specific interventions as well as their advantages and disadvantages, hoping to better implement the Guideline, provide guidance to clinicians and standardize the treatment of sepsis by traditional Chinese medicine.
Anti-Bacterial Agents ; therapeutic use ; Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Sepsis ; drug therapy

To investigate the clinical application of clinical practice guideline on traditional Chinese medicine therapy alone or combined with antibiotics for sepsis, in order to promote the follow-up revision and further promotion of the Guidelines. Copies of 500 application evaluation questionnaire and 500 copies of applicability evaluation questionnaire were given to the clinicians who had used this Guideline in China, both in a form of registered questionnaire, and a database was established by Excel 2016 for descriptive statistical analysis. Copies of 211 application evaluation questionnaire and 211 copies of applicability evaluation questionnaire were collected. We can conclude from the survey that we should adjust the whole content and structure on the basis of better evaluation of the present recommendation scheme, update the prescription selection and clinical evidence of the recommendation scheme, and put forward the improvement measures for the hindrance factors in the application of the Guideline. Furthermore, in order to promote the Guideline more clearly, we should strengthen the doctor-patient education, improve guidance quality and increase the publicity, providing basis for the implementation and promotion strategies of the Guideline.
Anti-Bacterial Agents ; therapeutic use ; China ; Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Sepsis ; drug therapy ; Surveys and Questionnaires