Objective: To investigate the role of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) in supporting hematopoiesis and the expansion of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells in vitro. Methods: According to the fact that HUVEC supernatant has colony stimulating activity shown by methylcellulose colony-forming assay and HUVEC can maintain the survival of mononuclear cells for at least four weeks in vitro, CD34+ cells from umbilical cord blood were seeded with (HUVEC group) or without (control group) HUVEC monolayer. Every week cells were collected and counted, the frequency of CFU-GM was measured by using methylcellulose colony-forming assay, and the percentage of CD34+ and CD41a+ cells was measured by flow cytometry. Results: In control group，all the CD34+ cells died in two weeks. However, in HUVEC group,most nucleated cells and CD34+ cells were expanded by 68.1±14.8 fold and 6.6±1.4 fold，respectively at the third week while CFU-GM expansion reached its peak (5.7±2.1 fold) at the week 2. Moreover, the percentage of CD41a+ cells was enhanced significantly, reaching a maximum (15.6%) at the week 3. Conclusions:HUVEC can support hematopoiesis in vitro and expand the hematopoietic progenitor cells and CD41a+ cells in direct contact coculture.

OBJECTIVETo observe the effect of Qinggan Jiangtang tablet (QJT) in improving the insulin resistance (IR) in patients with multiple metabolic syndrome (MMS).

METHODSAdopting randomized controlled double-blinded method, 60 patients with MMS were divided equally into two groups. The treated group was treated by oral taking of QJT 3 tabs, twice a day and the control group treated by oral taking of Glucophage 3 tabs, twice a day, the therapeutic course for both groups was 1 month, and the observation lasted for 2 successive courses.

RESULTSAfter treatment, levels of blood glucose, fasting and postprandial blood glucose, C-peptide and IR were significantly reduced with markedly improvement of beta-cell function in both groups, the difference between the two groups showed no significance. Change of plasma level of free fatty acids before and after treatment in both groups was insignificant.

CONCLUSIONQJT has the effects on reducing blood glucose, blood lipids, blood pressure and IR and improving function of beta cells.

Adult ; Aged ; Double-Blind Method ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; therapeutic use ; Female ; Humans ; Hypoglycemic Agents ; therapeutic use ; Insulin Resistance ; Male ; Metabolic Syndrome ; drug therapy ; Metformin ; therapeutic use ; Middle Aged ; Phytotherapy ; Tablets

OBJECTIVETo seek for an effective therapy for abducent paralysis.

METHODSSeventy-six cases of abducent paralysis were randomly divided into an acupoint-injection group and a western medicine group. The acupoint-injection group were treated by point-injection therapy, with Jingming (BL 1), Yangbai (GB 14), Sibai (ST 2), Tongziliao (GB 1) on the affected side, and bilateral Ganshu (BL 18) used as basic points and compound Danggui Injection as the principal injected medicine, and in combination with corresponding acupoints and injected medicine according to different syndrome types. The western medicine group were treated with routine western medicine therapy. After treatment for 36 days, the therapeutic effects were recorded and analyzed statistically.

RESULTSThe total effective rate was 94.7% in the acupoint-injection group and 76.3% in the western medicine group with a significant difference between the two groups (P < 0.05); there was a significant difference between the two groups in eyeball moving rate and restoration of cateral rectus (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONChinese drug acupoint-injection therapy has a definite therapeutic effect on acquired abducent paralysis, which is better than that of routine western medicine.

Abducens Nerve ; Acupuncture Points ; Adult ; Aged ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Middle Aged ; Ophthalmoplegia ; therapy

Expression of HLA class Ⅱ antigens(HLA-DR, DQ and DP), interleukin2 receptors(IL-2R) and transferrin receptors(TfR) of blood monocytes from 10 patients with insulin-dependent diabetes meIlitus (IDDM) were assayed with the indirect immune fluorescence technique using corresponding monoclonal antibodies and the FITC-labelled second antibody. The results showed that the number of HLA-DQ~+ monocytes was much more in diabetics than in normal controls. The percentages of HLA-DR~+ and HLA-DP~+ monocytes in diabetics were not different significantly from those in normal controls. Besides, IL-2R~+ and TfR~+ monocytes were also found to be very much increased in diabetics as compared with controls. It was possible that increased expression of HLA-DQ antigen, IL-2R and TfR of monocytes in patients with IDDM might play a role in the pathogenesis of the autoimmune reaction.

OBJECTIVETo investigate the protective effect of luteolin on isolated rat heart in hypothermic preservation.

METHODSForty male SD rats were randomly divided into 4 groups (n = 10): control group, luteolin low-dose group (7.5 micromol/L), middle-dose group (15 micromol/L) and high dose group (30 micromol/L). Langendorff model of isolated rat heart was used. After 30 min basal perfusion, the hearts were stored in University of Wisconsin solution (UW solution) at 4 degrees C with luteolin (7.5, 15 and 30 micromol/L) or without luteolin for 12 h and followed by 60 min reperfusion. The recovery of cardiac contractile and diastolic function, coronary flow (CF), creatine kinase (CK) leakage in the coronary effluent, myocardial water content were determined. The myocardial ultrastructure was also observed.

RESULTSThe results revealed that luteolin improved the recovery of left ventricular peak systolic pressure and +/- dp/dtmax dose-dependently and increased coronary flow. The leakage of creatine kinase in the coronary effluent was significantly reduced in luteolin-added hearts. Impairment of myocardial ultrastructure after 12 h hypothermic preservation was obviously alleviated in hearts luteolin-added group compared with that in control group. There were no differences between the groups in myocardial water contents.

CONCLUSIONLuteolin as a supplementation in cardiac preservation solution can significantly improve the hypothermic preservation effects on rat heart and have myocardial protection effect, especially in luteolin-added with 30 micromol/L.

Animals ; Cryopreservation ; In Vitro Techniques ; Luteolin ; pharmacology ; Male ; Myocardium ; Organ Preservation ; methods ; Organ Preservation Solutions ; Rats

Objective To compare the clinical efficacies regarding femoral artery or radial artery approaches on coronary artery interventional therapies.Methods 360 patients were randomly divided into intervention group via femoral artery (TFI) or transradial coronary intervention (TRI) group.Postoperative observation on the two said groups of patients with vascular lesion characteristics,feasibility factors ( success rate of interventional therapy puncture,time of operation and hospitalization)and complications,were made.Results There were no significant differences between the two groups on the characteristics of vascular lesion (P＞0.05).Success rates of the two groups were 97.78％ and 96.67％ respectively.The differences on success rate,time of operation were not statistically significant (P＞0.05) while the average time of puncture,the mean duration of hospitalization and the rates of complications were significantly different ( P＜ 0.05 ).Conclusion The two methods under comparison had similar success rate and feasibility.However,the complications related to radial artery interventional therapy were much less than the femoral artery interventional therapy.As having better safety,radial artery interventional therapv seemed to have applicable value on clinical oractice.

Induction of common knowledge or regularities from large-scale clinical data is a vital task for Chinese medicine (CM). In this paper, we propose a data mining method, called the Symptom-Herb-Diagnosis topic (SHDT) model, to automatically extract the common relationships among symptoms, herb combinations and diagnoses from large-scale CM clinical data. The SHDT model is one of the multi-relational extensions of the latent topic model, which can acquire topic structure from discrete corpora (such as document collection) by capturing the semantic relations among words. We applied the SHDT model to discover the common CM diagnosis and treatment knowledge for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) using 3 238 inpatient cases. We obtained meaningful diagnosis and treatment topics (clusters) from the data, which clinically indicated some important medical groups corresponding to comorbidity diseases (e.g., heart disease and diabetic kidney diseases in T2DM inpatients). The results show that manifestation sub-categories actually exist in T2DM patients that need specific, individualised CM therapies. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that this method is helpful for generating CM clinical guidelines for T2DM based on structured collected clinical data.
Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 ; diagnosis ; therapy ; Diagnosis, Differential ; Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Models, Theoretical

In the present study, an attempt was made to prove the question whether endothelial cell precursors exist in blood circulation during postnatal period. CD34(+) cells were harvested from G-CSF mobilized adult blood and umbilical cord blood and incubated onto fibronectin/gelatin-coated Petric dishes in the presence of recombinant human vascular endothelial cell growth factor(rhVEGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor(rhbFGF). Endothelial cell lineage was identified by von Willebrand factor(vWF) expression and Ulex europous agglutinin I(UEA-I) binding capacity. The results showed that a firmly adherent cell monolayer formed when CD34(+) cells, but not CD34(-) cells, were cultured for 5 - 6 weeks as described before. Immunocytochemistry and flow cytometry analysis showed that almost all of the adherent cells were vWF-positive and around 90% were able to bind UEA-I specifically. These findings demonstrate that angioblasts exist in the circulation during postnatal life and therefore, vasculogenesis might occur in adults.

The aim of this study was to investigate if transfusion of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) could exhibit beneficial effects on rheumatoid arthritis. Human bone marrow MSC were intraperitoneally injected into Wistar rats with collagen-induced arthritis at a dose of 10(7) on the next day (preventive group) or 2 weeks (treatment group) after collagen II induction, once a week for 2 weeks (preventive group) or 4 weeks (treatment group). The control group was given normal saline (NS) at corresponding time. The symptom scorings were documented weekly from the second week of the induction. On week 6, the hind joints of the rats were pathologically examined and the activation status of splenocytes was analyzed by flow cytometry. The results showed that all the rats developed arthritis and subsequent joint abnormality. On the sixth week, symptom scores of the rats that received MSC preventive (9.5 ± 0.5) or therapeutic (9.4 ± 0.6) infusions had no significant difference between each other, but were significantly greater than those of the NS controls (7.6 ± 0.6, P < 0.05). Consistently, pathological examination on the involved knees showed that the synovitis and arthritis scorings of MSC treated rats were greatly elevated compared with NS controls. Furthermore, the ratios of CD86(+) cells in the spleens of MSC prevention, MSC treatment and NS control groups were (4.16 ± 1.48), (4.06 ± 1.97) and (4.15 ± 2.04) respectively, while those of CD11b/c(+)CD86(+) cells were (1.04 ± 0.68), (0.95 ± 0.56) and (0.98 ± 0.44), all of which were significantly higher than those of healthy controls [(0.97 ± 0.18) and (0.30 ± 0.17), P < 0.05 for both parameters]. It is concluded that MSC infusion has little beneficial effects on collagen-induced arthritis in rats, conversely, MSC therapy aggravated the damage of the involved joints, its underlying mechanisms need to be further investigated.
Animals ; Arthritis, Experimental ; pathology ; prevention & control ; therapy ; Bone Marrow Cells ; Cells, Cultured ; Humans ; Male ; Mesenchymal Stem Cell Transplantation ; Mesenchymal Stromal Cells ; cytology ; Rats ; Rats, Wistar ; Transplantation, Heterologous ; Treatment Outcome

OBJECTIVETo investigate the effects of 8-methoxypsoralen on human melanocytes [Ca(2+)]i and cytoskeleton actin organization in vitro.

METHODSHuman melanocytes were obtained from normal foreskins. Laser confocal microscope was employed to measure [Ca(2+)]i and rhodamine-conjugated phalloidin was used to visualize the cytoskeleton actin.

RESULTS8-methoxypsoralen increased [Ca(2+)]i and induced organization of actin stress fiber cytoskeleton.

CONCLUSION8-methoxypsoralen might influence the migration of melanocytes by increasing the intracellular free Ca(2+) concentration and cytoskeleton actin reorganization.

Actins ; biosynthesis ; genetics ; Calcium ; metabolism ; Cell Movement ; drug effects ; Cells, Cultured ; Cytoskeletal Proteins ; biosynthesis ; genetics ; Humans ; Melanocytes ; cytology ; drug effects ; metabolism ; Methoxsalen ; pharmacology ; Skin ; cytology