BACKGROUND:Obturation with warm gutta-percha can achieve perfect three-dimensional root canal obturation effect. Due to specific structure of oval canal, particularly in the bypass preparation process, excessive cutting of local tooth tissue may lead to tooth tissue thinning and irregular shape. The separation equipment is the metal with good heat conduction, so the heat caused by the bypassing warm gutta-percha obturation would burn periodontal tissue remains controversial. OBJECTIVE:To investigate the changes of root surface temperature produced by two bypassing warm gutta-percha obturation for the separation instrument in oval canalin vitro by using infrared thermography. METHODS:Forty mandibular first premolars were harvested from oval canals, and were separated using stainless steel 15# K file at apical 3 mm, with the length of 3 mm. The root canal bypassing was prepared using TF nickel-titanium file under operating microscope. The teeth were randomly divided into two groups, with 20 teeth in each group, and were obturated with the Thermafil warm gutter-percha and E&Q plus warm gutta-percha vertical compaction, respectively. An infrared thermoviewer was used to measure the external root surface temperature before and after the obturation. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Two warm gutta-percha obturation methods used for separating instruments bypassing in the oval root canal, had both caused the rise of root surface temperature, which was less than 10℃. In the Thermafil group, the temperature changes were 3.2-8.1℃ and the average change was 4.97℃. In the vertical condensation group, the temperature changes were 5.5-9.8℃ and the average change was 7.35℃. There were significant differences in the change of root surface temperature between the two groups (P < 0.05). Thermafil warm gutter-percha obturation would increase the root surface temperature, but cannot damage periodontal tissues. It is more secure than warm gutta-percha vertical condensation.

Comrade LU Zhi-jun, a famous surgeon and acupuncture expert, was a leading cadre in health field with outstanding achievements, and a leader of western medicine doctors learning traditional Chinese medicine in the Chinese Communist Party, and also he was a main establisher of The China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences and a founder of TCM scientific researches and integrated Chinese and western medicine in new China. The present paper reviews the course of LU Zhi-jun in learning and applying acupuncture and moxibustion therapy and a part of works carried out in faithfully implementing our party's policies for uniting Chinese and Western medicine, and in development of TCM including acupuncture and moxibustion in past tens years.
Acupuncture Therapy ; History, 20th Century ; Humans ; Moxibustion

This article discussed the necessity and research significance of TCM literature digitization from the aspects of features of TCM literature and connotation and advantages of literature digitization. It introduced the research background of TCM literature digitization by using the examples of domestic and foreign digital libraries and digitized periodicals, expounded the research status of TCM modern and ancient literature digitization, elaborated the research condition of TCM ancient literature digitization, and analyzed the existing problems and provided suggestions.

The authors first describe the current situation of cooperative medical care in China, pointing out that due to low levels of guarantee, difficulties in fundraising and insufficient government reimbursement, cooperative medical care in rural areas have come across many hardships. It is, therefore, imperative to set up as soon as possible a health security system for people in rural areas. Firstly, it is necessary to break up the dual social security structure of urban and rural areas and set up a model with transitional goals based on the actual situation of the country. Secondly, it is suggested that security taxes begin to be collected, bringing the health security for people in rural areas into line with the social security framework so as to promote the health security for people in rural areas without lowering the level of social security in urban areas.

Ethics committee in hospitals aims to protect the rights of human subjects and patients,and provide ethical evaluation and justification for guaranteeing the quality of medical research and treatment.Based on experiences in recent years,this paper suggests the following methods in order to manage the activities of ethics committees and push its further development,such as to draft the ethics system,establish the criteria of ethics,implement the process administration and provide ethics training.

Information integration of heterogeneous systems needs implementing to meet the communication requirements of all subsystems of Hospital Information System (HIS). The solution is to introduce Health Level Seven (HL7), an international medical information exchange standard. With extensible Markup Language (XML) as the message-encoding manner, HL7 version 3 follows the object-oriented methodology. Based on the message system of HL7 version 3, this paper introduces an XML-based message processing technology and then testifies its feasibility.

Objective To evaluate the clinical value of three-dimensional contrast-enhanced MR angiography (3D CE-MRA) in the diagnosis and treatment of aortic coarctation. Methods Twenty-one patients with aortic coarctation underwent 3D CE-MRA with a 3D FLASH sequence after injection of 0.2 mmol Gd-DTPA per kg b. w. The source images were subtracted and transferred to computer workstation subsequently post-procession. In six patients, cardioangiography was performed simultaneously. The diagnoses of all patients of them were proven by surgery. Results There were 6 cases (28.6%) of simple type of aortic coarctation and 15 (71.4%) accompanied other cardiovascular abnormalities. 3D CE-MRA could directly demonstrate the stenotic location, degree, extent and extracardiac vascular abnormalities, which accorded with surgical findings. The depiction of the entirety and collateral vessel formation was very helpful for surgery. It can be easier for pre- and post- operative evaluation. Conclusion 3D CE-MRA is a noninvasive and accurate technique in the diagnosis of aortic coarctation. It could replace the cardioangiography for extracardiac vascular abnormalities, and may be one of the first choice examinations.

AIM: To investigate the protective effects of berberine against liver injury induced by lipopolysaccharide in mice and the mechanisms underlying its protective effect.METHODS: The male mice were divided randomly into control,berberine group,LPS group and berberine treatment group.Mice were administered intragastrically with distilled water(0.01 mL/g) or(5 g/L) neutral sulfate berberine(0.01 mL/g) once a day for 5 days and injected intraperitoneally with normal saline or LPS(0.02(mL/g),28 mg/kg)at 1 h after gavage on day 5.Blood was collected for determining alanine aminotransferase(ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase(AST) activities,the content of tumor necrosis factors-?(TNF-?) at 10 h and 2 h after LPS or normal saline injection,respectively.Furthermore,the liver tissue was processed,and histological changes and ultrastructure in liver were observed with light and electron microscopy,malondialdehyde(MDA) content and superoxide dismutase(SOD) activity in liver were also detected.RESULTS: Both ALT and AST activities in serum in LPS group were higher than those in control and berberine treatment group.LPS increased the serum TNF-? content at 2 h after injection,which was reversed by berberine pretreatment.The histological examination showed that LPS caused severe hepatic cell edema,degeneration,apoptosis and even necrosis,and ultrastructure observation demonstrated that LPS induced mitochondrial swelling,condensation and margination of chromatin,irregular nuclear envelope in hepatocytes.The above pathological changes produced by LPS were attenuated by berberine pretreatment.Moreover,MDA contents in liver tissue were higher in LPS group than control and berberine treatment group,but there were no significant difference in SOD activity between berberine treatment and LPS group.CONCLUSION: Berberine has a protective effect on LPS-induced liver injury in mice,the mechanisms may be related to its decreasing the production of TNF-?,inhibiting lipid peroxidation and protecting mitochondria.

Objective To provide ideal endometriosis animal models for research new treatment methods. Methods 64 Sexual mature without pregnant SD rats who has regular oestrous cycle were underwent operation that autologous endometrium were transplanted to peritoneum and subcutaneous with lancet gently cut tissue of where to transplant in the rut, and compared the model of peritoneum and subcutaneous after 4 weeks.Results The general success rate of autologous endometrium transplantation in rat estrus was 93.3%,and the peritoneum transplantation success rate was 51.7%, subcutaneous was 88.3%, the difference of the two place transplantation has statistical significance. Compare the two parts of volume of endometriosis,there was no statistically significant difference.Conclusion Using the lancet to establish the endometriosis model has a high success rate, and subcutaneous model is better than peritoneum.

In order to investigate the effects of vector-based hairpin small interference RNA (shRNA) on the reversal of multi-drug resistance (mdr) of A2780/Taxol cells, a novel vector pEGFP-H1/mdr1 containing mdr1-shRNA targeting at position 2943-2963 of mdr1 was designed and synthesized. Subsequently, A2780/Taxol cells were transfected with pEGFP-H1/mdr1, and the expression of mdr1 mRNA and P-gp was detected by using RT-PCR and Western blot respectively. MTT was used to measure the 50% inhibition concentration (IC(50)) of Taxol to A2780/Taxol cells. The results showed that at the 24th and 48th h after transfection, the expression of mdr1 mRNA was decreased to (52.1+/-1.0)% and (0.01+/-1.7)%, and that of P-gp decreased to (88.3+/-2.1)% and 0%, respectively. At the 48th h after transfection, the relative reversal rate of A2780/Taxol cells to Taxol was 69.54%. In vivo, the nude mice xenografts were injected with pEGFP-H1/mdr1, and then administrated Taxol. The tumor volume in pEGFP-H1/mdr1-transfected group was significantly reduced as compared with that in blank control group or pEGFP-H1-transfected group (807.20+/-103.16 vs 1563.78+/-210.54 or 1480.78+/-241.24 mm(3), both P<0.01). These results suggested that transfection of pEGFP-H1/mdr1 could efficiently down-regulate the expression of mdr1 mRNA and P-gp in A2780/Taxol cells, and effectively restore the sensitivity of A2780/Taxol cells to Taxol both in vitro and in vivo.