Objectives To analyze the clinical features, diagnosis and treatment of Lemierre syndrome. Methods The clinical data of one case of Lemierre syndrome were retrospectively analyzed. The relevant literatures were reviewed. Results The primary infection of the patient was oral infection, and jugular vein thrombosis and metastatic lung abscess were followed. The blood culture showed that Staphylococcus aureus was positive. Lemierre syndrome was diagnosed. After anticoagulation and anti-infection treatment, the symptoms were improved. Conclusion Lemierre syndrome should be considered in present of jugular vein thrombosis and pulmonary abscess caused by infection.

Objective To analyze magnetic resonance images of medulloblastomas and ependymomas by texture analysis method, and evaluate the texture characteristics of two tumors by support vector machine (SVM).Methods 58 tumors were analyzed retro-spectively,including 31 medulloblastomas and 27 ependymomas,which had been confirmed with operation and pathology.Texture analysis was performed onthese tumors.Results The 5 texture parameters extracted from the gray level co-occurrence matrix and at least 3 parameters which had statistical significance between the two different classes of data sets(P<0.05).For all data sets,the variance parameters of gray value of ROI region have statistical significance.The accuracy of SVM test was (86.15±4.16)%,which had remarkable significance between the ependymomas and medulloblastomas.Conclusion The analysis of texture features can pro-vide a lot of quantitative information,and can be a potential method for the differential diagnosis of medulloblastomas and ependy-momas.

Specnuezhenide(SNZ)is among the main components of Fructus Ligustri Lucidi,which has anti-inflammation,anti-oxidation,and anti-tumor effect.The low bioavailability makes it difficult to explain the mechanism of pharmacological effect of SNZ.In this study,the role of the gut microbiota in the metabolism and pharmacokinetics characteristics of SNZ as well as the pharmacological meaning were explored.SNZ can be rapidly metabolized by the gut microbiome,and two intestinal bacterial metabolites of SNZ,salidroside and tyrosol,were discovered.In addition,carboxylesterase may be the main intestinal bacterial enzyme that mediates its metabolism.At the same time,no metabolism was found in the incubation system of SNZ with liver microsomes or liver homogenate,indicating that the gut microbiota is the main part involved in the metabolism of SNZ.In addition,pharmacokinetic studies showed that salidroside and tyrosol can be detected in plasma in the presence of gut microbiota.Interestingly,tumor development was inhibited in a colorectal tumor mice model administered orally with SNZ,which indicated that SNZ exhibited potential to inhibit tumor growth,and tissue distribution studies showed that salidroside and tyrosol could be distributed in tumor tissues.At the same time,SNZ modulated the structure of gut microbiota and fungal group,which may be the mechanism governing the antitumoral activity of SNZ.Furthermore,SNZ stimulates the secretion of short-chain fatty acids by intestinal flora in vitro and in vivo.In the future,targeting gut microbes and the interaction between natural products and gut microbes could lead to the discovery and development of new drugs.

At present, clinical interventions for chronic kidney disease are very limited, and most patients rely on dialysis to sustain their lives for a long time. However, studies on the gut-kidney axis have shown that the gut microbiota is a potentially effective target for correcting or controlling chronic kidney disease. This study showed that berberine, a natural drug with low oral availability, significantly ameliorated chronic kidney disease by altering the composition of the gut microbiota and inhibiting the production of gut-derived uremic toxins, including p-cresol. Furthermore, berberine reduced the content of p-cresol sulfate in plasma mainly by lowering the abundance of g_Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1 and inhibiting the tyrosine-p-cresol pathway of the intestinal flora. Meanwhile, berberine increased the butyric acid producing bacteria and the butyric acid content in feces, while decreased the renal toxic trimethylamine N-oxide. These findings suggest that berberine may be a therapeutic drug with significant potential to ameliorate chronic kidney disease through the gut-kidney axis.