AIM: To analyze the reasons of low vision and blindness in elderly patients and the application of optical aids in rehabilitation.METHODS: Totally 87 elderly patients which had 74 cases of low vision,13 cases of blind,including 53 males and 34 females.Routine internal and external eye examinations should be performed,and special removal examinations should be performed if necessary.Both refractive correction,and try with far and near optical aids,check after wearing a typoscope distant and near vision,distant vision ≥0.05 out the blindness,distant vision ≥0.3 out the disability.Near vision ≥ 0.5 was valid,<0.5 was invalid.RESULTS: Among 87 elderly patients with low vision,high myopia was the leading cause of blindness,followed by macular degeneration,cataracts,glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy.The visual acuity after refractive correction increased ≥ 2 lines in 62 cases (71%),visual acuity was not correct or corrected for ≤ 1 of 25 cases (29%).With aids,far visual was ≥0.3 of the 70 cases (80%),≥0.05 in 10 cases (11%),<0.05 in 7 cases (8%),residue removal rate of 92%.With reading glasses near and near visual acuity was >0.5 effective in 60 cases (69%),<0.5 ineffective in 27 cases (31%).Typoscope was often used in 58 cases,not often used 18 cases,11 cases rarely used or give up.CONCLUSION: High myopia is the leading cause of low vision and blindness in the elderly,followed by macular degeneration.The application of visual aids is still reliable and economical and effective treatment method,patients should be encouraged to use visual aids to improve the utilization rate of aids,so as to improve the quality of life of patients.

Objective To investigate the early diagnosis, indications of operation, choice of operative procedure and effect of operation of closed injury of the duodenum . Methods The clinical data of 38 cases of closed injury of the duodenum treated in recent 11 years were retrospectively analysed . Results Thirty cases(78.9%) were diagnosed preoperatively, and 8 were misdiagnosed(21.1%). All of the 38 patients underwent surgical treatment. 36 cases(94.7%) were cured ,and 2 died(5.3%). Complications occurred in 9(23.7%) .Duodenal fistula was the main complication .Conclusions One must be alert to the possibility of injury of the duodenum in patients with closed upper abdominal injury. Early diagnosis, early operation and rational choice of surgical procedure are very important for the treatment of duodenal trauma.

Objective To investigate clinical phenotype and the characteristics of gene mutation of patients with spinocercbellar ataxia type 2 and type 3.Methods The trinucleotide repeat mutations were detected by polymerase chain reaction (PCR),fluorescence-PCR and capillary electrophoresis in 9 patients and 43 members from 4 spinocerebellar ataxia families,1 sporadic patients,and 60 normal controls without family history.Results Six patients from 3 families and one sporadic patient had SCA3/MJD (CAG) n expansion mutation(n=68-75) ;Three patients from 1 family had SCA2 allele expansion for 37-41 times. Some of clinical menifestations were same among patients with type 2 or 3,while they showed significant difference in age of onset ,disease devetopment and nervous system injury.Conclusion The difference of clinical feature helps to distinguish SCA3/MJD and SCA2,however genotype analysis is the only method of definite diagnosis.

Objective: To explore the structural and functional changes of femoral and popliteal arteries in hypertension patients before and after drug therapy. Methods: A total of 201 hypertension patients treated in our hospital from 2010-03 to 2016-01 were studied. Based on blood pressure levels, the patients were divided into 3 groups: Grade-1 group,n=72, Grade-2 Group,n=68 and Grade-3 group,n=61. The patients were treated for 3 months and blood pressure was reduced below 140/90 mmHg. The intima-media thickness (IMT) of femoral and popliteal arteries was measured by two-dimensional ultrasound, blood vessel elasticity parameters of β, Ep, AC and PWV were determined by ET technology. The differences were compared between pre- and post-medication. Results: Compared with pre-medication, post-medication IMT in femoral artery was decreased in 3 groups, allP<0.05 and IMT in popliteal artery was similar,P>0.05; blood vessel elasticity parameters of β, Ep, PWV were decreased in 3 groups and AC was increased, allP<0.05. Conclusion: Drug therapy could effectively improve the elasticity of femoral and popliteal arteries in hypertension patients; two-dimensional ultrasound combining ET technology may dynamically monitor vascular elasticity of lower extremity which provides an objective basis for evaluating medication efifcacy in clinical practice.

With the current accumulation of metagenome data, it is possible to build an integrated platform for processing of rigorously selected metagenomic samples (also referred as "metagenomic communities" here) of interests. Any metagenomic samples could then be searched against this database to find the most similar sample(s). However, on one hand, current databases with a large number of metagenomic samples mostly serve as data repositories but not well annotated database, and only offer few functions for analysis. On the other hand, the few available methods to measure the similarity of metagenomic data could only compare a few pre-defined set of metagenome. It has long been intriguing scientists to effectively calculate similarities between microbial communities in a large repository, to examine how similar these samples are and to find the correlation of the meta-information of these samples. In this work we propose a novel system, Meta-Mesh, which includes a metagenomic database and its companion analysis platform that could systematically and efficiently analyze, compare and search similar metagenomic samples. In the database part, we have collected more than 7 000 high quality and well annotated metagenomic samples from the public domain and in-house facilities. The analysis platform supplies a list of online tools which could accept metagenomic samples, build taxonomical annotations, compare sample in multiple angle, and then search for similar samples against its database by a fast indexing strategy and scoring function. We also used case studies of "database search for identification" and "samples clustering based on similarity matrix" using human-associated habitat samples to demonstrate the performance of Meta-Mesh in metagenomic analysis. Therefore, Meta-Mesh would serve as a database and data analysis system to quickly parse and identify similar
Cluster Analysis ; Computational Biology ; methods ; Databases, Genetic ; Humans ; Metagenome ; Metagenomics ; methods

Objective To investigate the diagnosis and treatment of primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) with urolithiasis.Methods The clinical data of 9 PHPT patients who were evaluated with simple metabolic evaluation in 881 urolithiasis from 2000 to 2005 were summarized and the references were reviewed.Results The level of serum calcium was (2.96±0.48)mmol/L before operation, (1.94±0.42) mmol/L after operation.The level of parathyroid hormone(PTH) was(1133.53±788.21)pmol/L before op-eration,(74.52±49.17)pmol/L after operation.The level of serum calcium and PTH changed significantly after the parathyroidectomy (P<0.01).Follow-up for 14 months to 6 years.the ureteral stones fragments with lithotripsy were clear after 3 months and followed without recurrence,although the renal stones without lithotripsy were followed with no significant change.Conclusions Increase of serum calcium or increase of PTH above double with normal serum calcium may be helpful for diagnosis of PHPT with urolithiasis.Ureteral stone with PHPT should be treated together.Renal stone with PHPT may be followed up after the parathv-roidectomy,and be treated until the complications were occurred.It suggests that the maidend diagnosed pa-tient with urolithiasis should be added with simple metabolic evaluation,including serum calcium, phospho-nium and PTH.

This study aims to analyse the value of CODEHOP RT-PCR in the detection of Flavivirus. According to the amino acid sequences of polyproteins of different flaviviruses published in GenBank, a pair of primers was designed using the CODEHOP method. One-step RT-PCR was used to detect Japanese encephalitis virus strain JEV1201, Dengue virus strain JKD001, and yellow fever virus vaccine YV6161. BLAST analysis and phylogenetic analysis were performed after the RT-PCR products of nucleocapsid genes were sequenced. The results showed that this method could amplify Flavivirus specifically, and the size and sequence of the target fragment accorded with the anticipated result. JEV1201 had the highest homology to Japanese encephalitis virus strain YL2009-4/YC2009-3, belonging to the branch of the phylogenetic tree of Japanese encephalitis virus strains. JKD001 had the highest homology to Dengue virus strain DENV-2/ID/1022DN/1975, belonging to the branch of the phylogenetic tree of Dengue virus strains. YV6161 had the highest homology to Yellow fever virus strain 17D, belonging to the branch of the phylogenetic tree of Yellow fever virus strains. In conclusion, the method of CODEHOP RT-PCR can be effectively used to detect, identify, and phylogenetically analyse Flavivirus.
DNA Primers ; genetics ; Flavivirus ; classification ; genetics ; isolation & purification ; Flavivirus Infections ; virology ; Humans ; Molecular Sequence Data ; Phylogeny ; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction ; methods ; Viral Nonstructural Proteins ; genetics

Objective To investigate the imaging features and laboratory detection characteristics of tuberculous meningitis (TBM ) for achieving the purpose of early diagnosis and treatment.Methods Seventy-four patients with TBM in First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University from January 2013 to December 2015 were selected as the experimental group and 80 patients of non-TBM as the control group.All cases were performed ADA ,TB-DNA and acid-fast bacilli smear detection in cerebrospinal fluid ,and at the same time ,which was combined with tuberculous infection T-SPOT.TB test and compared with the results of ima-ging examination.Then the application values of various examinations were compared.Results The sensitivity of ADA ,TB-DNA , acid-fast bacilli smear ,T-SPOT.TB and the imaging examination for 74 patients with TBM were respectively 64.86% (48/74) , 33.78% (25/74) ,75.68% (56/74) ,10.81% (8/74) and 54.05% (40/74).The specificity were respectively 75.00% (60/80) , 100.00% (80/80) ,58.75% (47/80) ,100.00% (80/80) and 91.25% (73/80).Conclusion The difference in imaging and laboratory test indicators has a certain guiding significance for TBM clinical diagnosis.Except for clinical routine detection ,other detections should be perfected as far as possible ,conducting the comprehensive analysis can improve the accuracy of diagnosis.

Objective:To investigate the significance of metronomic therapy against Helicobacter pylori (HP) in the prevention of delayed emesis caused by chemotherapy of gastric cancer compared with the routine therapy. Methods:HP infection was confirmed by carbon 14 breath test in 69 patients. Combined chemotherapy was employed for the first time in the patients, who were divided into groups A and B. Metronomic therapy was administered to group A (n=33). Briefly, triplex medication against Helicobacter bacil i triplex was oral y ad-ministered:20 mg of omeprazole and 0.5 g of amoxicillin twice daily, with 200 mg of tinidazole once daily. Oral administration in group A was performed for 14 days from the start of chemotherapy. Simultaneously, 5-HT3 antagonists were applied. By contrast, group B (n=36) was treated with the oral triplex medication against Helicobacter bacilli:20 mg of omeprazole and 1 g of amoxicillin twice daily, with 400 mg of tinidazole once daily. Oral administration in group B was performed for 7 days from the beginning of chemotherapy with simultaneous application of 5-HT3 antagonists. Both groups were simultaneously treated with the 5-HT3 antagonist granisetron at 3 mg once daily during the administration of anti-HP therapy. HP infection was evaluated by immunohistochemistry before and after treatment. Results:The total effective rate for emesis in group A was 84.85%, which was significantly higher than that in group B (55.56%). Among the patients in group A, 15.15%demonstrated delayed emesis, compared with 44.44%of the patients in group B;the number of individuals was significantly lower in group A than in group B. The average number of chemotherapy cycles in group A was significantly higher than that in group B at 3.1 cycles;the difference between groups was statistically significant (P<0.05). In addition, the HP infection in group B was significantly lower than that in group A (P<0.05). Conclusion:Compared with one week of treatment with the conventional dose, two weeks of low-dose metronomic therapy against HP during chemotherapy can significantly reduce chemotherapy induced delayed emesis and can significantly reduce the degree of HP infection in patients with gastric cancer with HP infection.

Objective To study radiographic features of atypical adenomatous hyperplasia(AAH) of lung and correlate them with their pathologic findings,so as to improve the imaging diagnose.Methods The imaging features of 8 patients with pathology-proved AAH were reviewed.All patients were women with age ranging from 35 to 74 years.All cases had chest radiography and HRCT.The radiographic findings were studied retrospectively and correlated with those of pat hology.Results On chest X-ray,the foci in five patients presented as nodule-like area of a bit high attenuation,while the chest radiograph in the other three patients were negative.On HRCT,all 8 patients presented as non-solid nodules.All lesions were round or oval shaped with well-defined margin(n=4)or poor-defined margin(n=3).The greatest dimension of the lesions ranged from 5.0 mm to 20.0 mm.Their CT value ranged from-362.7 HU to-485.6 HU,the mean CT value was(-423.0?47.0)HU.Air bronchograms and/or bubbles were seen in 5 lesions.Coarse spiculation and pleural tag was not seen in any lesion.Before operation,all the nodules did not change in size over a follow-up period from one month to six months.Pathologic findings showed atypical epithelial cell proliferation along thickened alveolar septa without alveolar collapse.Conclusion AAH should be considered in cases with the following features:(1)nodules are found in lung cancer screening or incidentally detected;(2)the diameter of the nodule is usually less than 10 mm;(3)the lesion presented as non-solid nodule on HRCT,air bronchogram and/or bubble sign can be seen;(4)no coarse spiculation and plural tag was seen.