Objective To investigate the preventive and therapeutic effects of vesiculation moxibustion on rat hepatic fibrosis (HF).Methods Thirty rats were randomly allocated to treatment, model and control groups, 10 rats each. A rat model of HF was made by intraperitoneal injection of carbon tetrachloride. At three weeks after model making, the treatment group was treated by vesiculation moxibustion 6 hrs twice a week, for a total of 4 weeks. Body weight, liver wet weight, liver index, serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) contents, and serum and liver typeⅢ procollagen (PCⅢ), typeⅣ collagen (Ⅳ-C), hyaluronic acid (HA) and laminin (LN) contents were measured in every group of rats.Results There were statistically significant differences in HF severity grade and HF tissue collagen analysis indices between the model group of rats and the treatment group or the control group (P<0.01,P<0.05). There were statistically significant differences in body weight, liver wet weight and liver index between the model and control groups of rats (P<0.01). There were statistically significant differences in liver wet weight and liver index between the treatment and model groups of rats (P<0.01). There were statistically significant differences in serum ALT and AST contents, and serum and liver PCⅢ,Ⅳ-C, HA and LN contents between the model and control groups of rats (P<0.01,P<0.05). There were statistically significant differences in serum ALT and AST contents, and serum and liverⅣ-C, HA and LN contents between the treatment and model groups of rats (P<0.01,P<0.05). There was a statistically significant difference in serum PCⅢ content between the treatment and model groups of rats (P<0.01).Conclusion Vesiculation moxibustion has some preventive and therapeutic effects on rat hepatic fibrosis.

ObjectiveTo provide a basis for the establishment of an ideal animal model of allergic asthma by statistically analyzing the modeling characteristics and the selection of indicators of the available models. MethodsWe retrieved the relevant articles from China National Knowledge Infrastructure（CNKI）， VIP， Wanfang Data， SinoMed， and PubMed with "allergic asthma" as the keyword and the time interval from January 2019 to January 2024. Through integrating the literature and extracting data， we used Excel 2021 to create a personal database and sorted out the animal strains， genders， allergenic substances， modeling routes， and test indicators and methods. Excel 2021， Cytoscape 3.10.2， and SPSS Modeler 18.0 were then used to analyze the relevant characteristics of the animal models. ResultsA total of 418 articles were included in the database， and the comparative analysis showed that the most frequently used animal strain for modeling was BALB/c mice， and female animals were mostly used. The main modeling method was sensitization by intraperitoneal injection of ovalbumin （OVA）， which was combined with intranasal inhalation. The test indicators mainly included appearance signs， cellular analysis， lung histopathology， lung function indicators， and protein and gene expression in the lung. The test methods mainly involved pathological staining， enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay， immunohistochemistry， immunofluorescence， Western blot， and polymerase chain reaction（PCR） assays. ConclusionThere is no recognized modeling method or evaluation standard for the animal models of allergic asthma. Based on the results of data analysis， the OVA-induced allergic asthma model in BALB/c mice is recommended. The main criteria for evaluating the success of modeling are the general behavioral changes， the morphological changes of the airway and inflammatory cell infiltration in the lung tissue， the changes of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines in the serum， and the alterations of inflammatory cells in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid.