Objective To investigate the outcome between endoscopically assisted and routine anterior transposition of the ulnar nerve for treatment of cubital tunnel syndrome.Methods From Februray 2008 to June 2010, forty-four patients with cubital tunnel syndrome were treated with routine anterior subcutaneous transposition (routine group,28 cases) and endoscopically assisted anterior subcutaneous transposition (endoscope group,16 cases).The operate time,drug administration,scar and postoperative hospital stay were compared.The patients were followed 1-12 month postoperatively,postoperative time back to work and function of ulner nerve were recorded.Results The results of endoscope group were as follows: operative time was (67.20 ± 19.69)min; postoperative scar length was (1.5％ ± 0.58) cm; rate of administration of anodyne was 6.3％; postoperative hospital stay was (2.4％ ± 1.42) days; postoperative time back to work,(14.6 ± 4.69)days; the results of open surgery group were as follows:operative time (62.8％ ± 11.06) min; postoperative scar length was (8.7％ ± 1.42) cm; rate of administration of anodyne was 42.8％; postoperative hospital stay was (5.7％ ± 2.53) days; postoperative time back to work was (29.40 ± 8.75) days; all differences of the results were significant between two groups (P ＜ 0.05).According to function of ulner nerve scoring system,one year postoperatively, excellent or good results were 82.14％ in routine group and 81.25％ in endoscope group,no significant difference between two groups (P ＞ 0.05). Conclusion Compared with routine anterior transposition of the ulnar nerve,endoscopically assisted anterior transposition has the following advantages: smaller incision and less tissue damage,less postoperative pain and sooner returning to work.And similar outcome was achieved from the two group.

In the original publication Fig. 1D and supplementary material is incorrect. The correct figure and supplementary material is provided in this correction.

Recently we have established a new culture condition enabling the derivation of extended pluripotent stem (EPS) cells, which, compared to conventional pluripotent stem cells, possess superior developmental potential and germline competence. However, it remains unclear whether this condition permits derivation of EPS cells from mouse strains that are refractory or non-permissive to pluripotent cell establishment. Here, we show that EPS cells can be robustly generated from non-permissive NOD-scid Il2rg mice through de novo derivation from blastocysts. Furthermore, these cells can also be efficiently generated by chemical reprogramming from embryonic NOD-scid Il2rg fibroblasts. NOD-scid Il2rg EPS cells can be expanded for more than 20 passages with genomic stability and can be genetically modified through gene targeting. Notably, these cells contribute to both embryonic and extraembryonic lineages in vivo. More importantly, they can produce chimeras and integrate into the E13.5 genital ridge. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of generating EPS cells from refractory mouse strains, which could potentially be a general strategy for deriving mouse pluripotent cells. The generation of NOD-scid Il2rg EPS cell lines permits sophisticated genetic modification in NOD-scid Il2rg mice, which may greatly advance the optimization of humanized mouse models for biomedical applications.

One major strategy to generate genetically modified mouse models is gene targeting in mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells, which is used to produce gene-targeted mice for wide applications in biomedicine. However, a major bottleneck in this approach is that the robustness of germline transmission of gene-targeted ES cells can be significantly reduced by their genetic and epigenetic instability after long-term culturing, which impairs the efficiency and robustness of mouse model generation. Recently, we have established a new type of pluripotent cells termed extended pluripotent stem (EPS) cells, which have superior developmental potency and robust germline competence compared to conventional mouse ES cells. In this study, we demonstrate that mouse EPS cells well maintain developmental potency and genetic stability after long-term passage. Based on gene targeting in mouse EPS cells, we established a new approach to directly and rapidly generate gene-targeted mouse models through tetraploid complementation, which could be accomplished in approximately 2 months. Importantly, using this approach, we successfully constructed mouse models in which the human interleukin 3 (IL3) or interleukin 6 (IL6) gene was knocked into its corresponding locus in the mouse genome. Our study demonstrates the feasibility of using mouse EPS cells to rapidly generate mouse models by gene targeting, which have great application potential in biomedical research.