To investigate the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndromes and their elements in people with subhealth fatigue.

ObjectiveTo investigate the clinical features of infection in patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) and bacterial infection and the influencing factors for 90-day survival rate. MethodsThe patients with ACLF who were admitted to The Fifth Medical Center of Chinese PLA General Hospital from January 2014 to December 2015 were enrolled, and related clinical data were collected and analyzed, including infection time and site, microbial culture, biochemical parameters and inflammatory markers, and 28- and 90-day prognosis after infection. The t-test or the Mann-Whitney U test was used for comparison of continuous data between two groups, and the chi-square test was used for comparison of categorical data between two groups. The life-table method was used to plot survival curves. The indices affecting prognosis in the univariate analysis were further included in the multivariate logistic regression analysis. ResultsA total of 1074 patients with ACLF were admitted, among whom 609 had bacterial infection, and the incidence rate of bacterial infection was 567%. Among these 609 patients, 16 underwent liver transplantation within 90 days and related data statistics were obtained for the remaining 593 patients. As for infection site, among the patients with infection, 70.15% had abdominal infection, 41.15% had pulmonary infection, 11.97% had sepsis, 5.40% had urinary system infection, 4.89% had thoracic infection, and 8.6% had infection at other sites. Among the patients with infection, 64.76% had infection at a single site. The positive rates of microbial culture of ascites, phlegm, urine, and pleural effusion were 22.70%, 52.82%, 40.63%, and 35.71%, respectively. Escherichia coli was the most common bacterium in ascites and accounted for 43.82%; Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Acinetobacter baumannii accounted for 22.67%, 2400%, and 22.67%, respectively, in phlegm; Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Staphylococcaceae accounted for 33.80%, 29.58%, and 15.49%, respectively, in blood culture. The 90-day survival rate after infection was 38.11% (226/593) in the patients with ACLF, and the multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that age (P=0.006), stage of hepatic encephalopathy (HE) (P＜0001), stage of liver failure (P＜0.001), and acute kidney injury (AKI) (P＜0.001) were independent risk factors for 90-day survival in patients with ACLF and infection. ConclusionThere is a high incidence rate of infection in patients with ACLF. The 90-day survival rate is relatively low, and the presence of AKI, HE stage III or above, and advanced liver failure may indicate poor prognosis.

Objective:To propose automatic measurement of global and local tessellation density on color fundus images based on a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) method.Methods:An applied study. An artificial intelligence (AI) database was constructed, which contained 1 005 color fundus images captured from 1 024 eyes of 514 myopic patients in the Northern Hospital of Qingdao Eye Hospital from May to July, 2021. The images were preprocessed by using RGB color channel re-calibration method (CCR algorithm), CLAHE algorithm based on Lab color space, Retinex algorithm for multiple iterative illumination estimation, and multi-scale Retinex algorithm. The effects on the segmentation of tessellation by adopting the abovemetioned image enhancement methods and utilizing the Dice, Edge Overlap Rate and clDice loss were compared and observed. The tessellation segmentation model for extracting the tessellated region in the full fundus image as well as the tissue detection model for locating the optic disc and macular fovea were built up. Then, the fundus tessellation density (FTD), macular tessellation density (MTD) and peripapillary tessellation density (PTD) were calculated automatically.Results:When applying CCR algorithm for image preprocessing and the training losses combination strategy, the Dice coefficient, accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and Jordan index for fundus tessellation segmentation were 0.723 4, 94.25%, 74.03%, 96.00% and 70.03%, respectively. Compared with the manual annotations, the mean absolute errors and root mean square errors of FTD, MTD, PTD automatically measured by the model were 0.014 3, 0.020 7, 0.026 7 and 0.017 8, 0.032 3, 0.036 5, respectively.Conclusion:The DCNN-based segmentation and detection method can automatically measure the tessellation density in the global and local regions of the fundus of myopia patients, which can more accurately assist clinical monitoring and evaluation of the impact of fundus tessellation changes on the development of myopia.

The purpose of this study is to provide a culture for mouse bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDM) and peritoneal macrophages (PM) and to characterize their molecular and cellular biology. The cell number and purity from the primary culture were assessed by cell counter and flow cytometry, respectively. Morphological features were evaluated by inverted microscope. Phagocytosis by macrophages was detected by the neutral red dye uptake assay. Phenotypic markers were analyzed by real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR. Our results show that the cell number was much higher from culture of BMDM than PM, while there was no significant difference regarding the percentage of F4/80+CD11b+ cells (98.30%±0.53% vs. 94.83%±1.42%; P>0.05). The proliferation rate of BMDM was significantly higher than PM in the presence of L929 cell conditioned medium, by using CCK-8 assay. However, PM appeared to adhere to the flask wall and extend earlier than BMDM. The phagocytosis capability of un-stimulated BMDM was significantly higher than PM, as well as lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated BMDM, except the BMDM stimulated by low dose LPS (0.1 μg/mL). Furthermore, Tnfα expression was significantly higher in un-stimulated BMDM than PM, while Arg1 and Ym1 mRNA expression were significantly lower than PM. The expression difference was persistent if stimulated by LPS+IFN-γ or IL-4. Our data indicate that bone marrow can get larger amounts of macrophages than peritoneal cavity. However, it should be aware that the molecular and cellular characteristics were different between these two culture systems.
Animals ; Bone Marrow Cells ; physiology ; Cells, Cultured ; Culture Media, Conditioned ; Lipopolysaccharides ; metabolism ; Macrophages ; classification ; physiology ; Mice ; Phagocytosis