Spinal cord injury occurs with an average annual incidence of 15 40 cases per million of population. The costs of treatment and rehabilitation in the living period of patients with spinal cord injury are very high. Prevention, therapy and rehabilitation of spinal cord injury have become a major subject in medical science. The aim of this article is to summarize the statistics of incidence, etiological factors, clinical characteristics and complications in patients with spinal cord injury.

Objective To study the effect of fetal transplants on the fu nctional recovery after spinal cord transection in new born and adult rats. Meth ods The spinal cord tissue at E14 of a rat fetal was transferred into the hemise ction cavity at lumbar spinal cord in the newborn and adult rats. 4, 8, 12 weeks after the operation, spinal cord tissue morphology, combined behavioral score ( CBS), somatosensory evoked potentials (SEP), and motor evoked potentials (MEP) w ere examined. Results The transplanted tissue survived in the host spinal cord. There was a statistical difference in CBS between the newborn graft group and th e adult graft group. The peak latencies of early waves in SEPs and MEPs of the n ewborn graft group were superior to those of the adult graft group (P

Allergic rhinitis is a common disease, which was released by the IgE-mediated atopic individuals exposed to allergens in the earlier researches. However, there are variety of immunocompetent cells and cytokines involved in the nasal mucosa immunologic mechanism in nowadays researches. The mechanism of AR is caused by the imbalance of the Th1/Th2, a kind of allergic inflammation who is characterized by the nasal Th2 immune response dominant. Th1 cells mainly produce of IFN-gamma (does not include IL-4 and IL-5), Th2 cells produce IL-4, IL-5, IL-9 and IL-13 (not including IFN-gamma). Recently it was found that regulatory T cells (T regulatory cells, Treg) and Th17 cell research played a crucial role in the occurrence of allergic inflammation.
Cytokines ; immunology ; Humans ; Rhinitis, Allergic ; Rhinitis, Allergic, Perennial ; immunology ; Th1 Cells ; immunology ; Th2 Cells ; immunology

Objective To investigate the protective effect of trichostatin-A (TSA) on cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury via Janus kinase/signal transducer and activator of transcription (JAK/STAT) signal pathway.Methods 36 male SD rats were randomly (random number) divided into 3 groups:shamoperated group,ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) group and TSA group.Rat model of middle cerebral artery occlusion/reperfusion (MCAO) was established using a modified filament method.No occlusion was applicated to the sham-operated group.TSA group was injected with TSA 0.05 mg/kg via penile vein,20 minutes before operation.Reperfusion was carried out 24 hours after modeling.Longa 5 score was used to assess the neurological function,and TTC staining was applied to calculate the percentage of cerebral infarction area,The expression of JAK2 and p-JAK2 proteins was detected by Elisa.Results The low expression of JAK2 was observed in each group,and there was no statistical difference between groups (P =0.266).Compared with I/R group,TSA group had lower score in cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury assessment (P=0.019),smaller area of cerebral infarction (P ＜0.01),reduced expression of p-JAK2 (P =0.009),all of which were of significant difference.Condusions TSA can reduce the cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury via JAK/STAT signal pathway by down regulating p-JAK2 expression.

Adult ; Diagnosis, Differential ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; therapeutic use ; Humans ; Male ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Middle Aged ; Phytotherapy ; Prostatitis ; drug therapy ; prevention & control

Objective To analyze the composition principles of Chinese patent drugs containing Rehmanniae Radix;To provide reference for clinical application and new drug research and development.Methods Based on the software Traditional Chinese Medicine Inheritance Support System (V2.0), the authors built prescription database containing Rehmanniae Radix in National Standard for Chinese Patent Drugs (NSCPD). Then the authors adopted the statistical module by using data mining methods such as association rules and improved mutual information method, with a purpose to analyze the attending disease, combination rules and the core groups in prescriptions containing Rehmanniae Radix.Results In 357 prescriptions containing Rehmanniae Radix, 17 most commonly used drug combinations were mined. Meanwhile, two diseases, namely, insomnia and vertigo were chosen from the 22 diseases that Rehmanniae Radix was most frequently used to make deeper analysis, showing that Rehmanniae Radix can achieve different therapeutic effects through different compatibility.Conclusion Prescriptions containing Rehmanniae Radixin NSCPD mainly concentrate on clear heat and cool blood, and nourish Yin. The composition principles obtained from the research that Rehmanniae Radix used when curing different diseases can fully play the efficacy of RehmanniaeRadix and provide evidence for clinical scientific formulae.

Objective To investigate the prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing in elderly patients with permanent cardiac pacemaker implantation due to bradyarrhythmias, and the relationship between pacing mode and patients' sleep apnea-hypopnea index.Methods Forty-four elderly patients (＞60 years) with cardiac pacemaker and their 44 controls matched for gender, age, body mass index and cardiovascular morbidity were studied using polysomnography or portable sleep monitoring device. Results Prevalence of sleep-disordered breathing (apnea-hypopnea index ≥5/h) was 44.7% and the mean apnea-hypopnea index was 8.2 ±4.1/h in the cardiac pacemaker group, which were significantly higher than those in control subjects (25% and 4.6±2.4/h, respectively, P＜0.01 and P＜0.05). The mean apnea-hypopnea index of patients with DDD or AAI pacemaker was significantly lower than that of patients with VVI pacemaker. Conclusions Sleep-disordered breathing was more common in patients who had their cardiac pacemaker implanted due to bradyarrhythmias than in their matched controls. Compared with VVI pacing, DDD or AAI pacing may be more beneficial to patients with bradyarrhythmias and sleep-disordered breathing.

Objective To evaluate the influence of integrated-CT artifacts on attenuation-corrected (AC) images of SPECT bone imaging. Methods Imaging documents of 78 patients who underwent SPECT/CT bone imaging were retrospectively analyzed, and the artifacts on CT images and CT attenuation maps were visually studied. Compared with the non-attenuation corrected (NC) images, the coefficient of variation (CV) and percentage difference (PD) of radioactive count of regional bone influenced by CT artifacts were calculated and statistically analyzed to estimate the influence of CT artifacts on AC images of SPECT bone imaging. Results The integrated-CT artifacts were found in 38 patients of 78, and appeared the same image findings as those on CT attenuation maps respectively, including truncation artifact, thoraco-abdominal gas artifact, photon starvation artifact, etc. On all the AC images with integrated-CT artifacts, regional bones were influenced not only on uniformity (CVAC 17.62%±4.13%, CVNC 11.19%±3.81%;t=2.13, P<0.05), but also by the distribution (PDAC 16.98%±3.31%, PDNC 9.84%±1.62%;t=2.46, P<0.05) of radioactive count. Conclusion Artifacts on integrated-CT images can induce false AC information on CT attenuation maps, therefore, a comparative analysis with NC images is recommended if necessary.

Objective To investigate the predicative value of midkine (MK) as a cancer biomarker for metastatic lesions in differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) patients with positive thyroglobulin antibodies (TgAb) before the first 131Ⅰ therapy.Methods MK levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 151 recruited DTC patients included in this study according to strict inclusion and exclusion criteria.There were 28 TgAb positive DTC patients with metastases and 123 DTC patients without metastases.The value of pre-131Ⅰ-ablative MK to predict metastasis was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves in these two groups of patients.Results MK levels were significantly higher in TgAb positive DTC patients than those in DTC patients without metastases.MK levels showed good diagnostic value,with an area under the curve of 0.856 (P＜0.001),and a diagnostic accuracy of 83％ at the optimal cut-off value of 550 ng/L.Conclusion Results show that MK can potentially be used as a surrogate biomarker for predicting DTC metastases when thyroglobulin is not suitable due to TgAb positivity.

Objective To obtain an accurate and effective method for thalamus segmentation based on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).Methods Based on the fact that resting-state fMRI technique examined spatial synchronization of spontaneous fluctuations in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals indirectly reflect the neuronal and synaptic activity,the in-thalamus BOLD signal correlations were calculated,and then the k-means clustering algorithm was applied to obtain functional connectivity-based thalamus segmentation.Results The thalamus was divided into seven regions.Voxels within the same region were highly correlated with each other.The segmentation result was similar to that divided by functional connectivity between thalamus and the cerebral cortex.Conclusions Resting-state fMRI could provide not only the functional connectivity network between cortical and subcortical brain regions,but also the functional characteristics of thalamus.Segmentation algorithm using only internal information of thalamus shows lower computational complexity and higher processing speed than that based on the functional connectivity between thalamus and the cerebral cortex.