This paper aims to analyze Professor Guo Rongjuan's medication experience on insomnia therapy based on the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Inheritance Support Plat. First, TCM formulae prescribed by Professor Guo for insomnia therapy were collected from the TCM Inheritance Support Plat. Next, unsupervised data mining algorithms, including apriori, modified mutual-information, and entropy clustering of complex system were applied to obtain the frequencies for different herbs and identify the association rules among the herbs. Accordingly, we can gain new insights into Professor Guo's medication experience on insomnia therapy. Based on analysis of 3 084 formulae, we determined the frequencies for herbs in the formulae and identified the association rules among these herbs. At last, 41 core combinations and 7 new formulae were obtained. The identified medication experience conform with Professor Guo's views on the etiology and pathogenesis of insomnia: "pathogenic fire derived from stagnation of liver-QI (Gan Yu Hua Huo)" is the core pathogenesis of insomnia; "liver stagnation and spleen deficiency" and "chronic illness transferred to kidney" are the main features for insomnia. The TCM Inheritance Support Plat is of great practical value for mining clinical experience of famous TCM doctors.
Algorithms ; Data Mining ; Databases, Bibliographic ; Drug Therapy, Combination ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; administration & dosage ; chemistry ; Humans ; Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders ; drug therapy

Snake antivenomimmunoglobulins are considered to be the most efficient drugs in snake envenomings. Most snake antivenomimmunoglobulins all over the world are still prepared by fragmentation of polyclonal antibodies isolated from hyper-immunized horse serum till now. In this review, we retrospect the history of snake antivenomimmunoglobulins, analysis the present situation and pay the close attention on the key technological links in the process of research and manufacturing, such as properties of IgG and its fragments, selection and preparation of immunogen, optimization of immunization schedule and protein isolation and purification, which can be available for the reference in the research and development of snake antivenom.
Animals ; Antivenins ; pharmacology ; Humans ; Immunoglobulin G ; pharmacology ; Snake Bites ; drug therapy ; Snakes

Objective To analyze the prognostic value of baseline serum free light chain (sFLC) in light-chain (AL) cardiac amyloidosis.Methods Twenty-seven patients with AL cardiac amyloidosis were retrospectively reviewed from January 2014 to January 2015.sFLC was measured by immuoturbidimetric assay.Baseline characteristics,echocardiographic parameters and electrocardiogram data were analyzed.According to the median baseline dFLC (involved sFLC minus uninvolved sFLC),patients were categorized into either the low dFLC(≤307mg/L) or the high dFLC group (＞307mg/L).Results More subjects in the high dFLC group with early/late diastolic mitral velocity ratio (E/A ratio) over 2 (71.4％ vs 30.8％,P =0.035),and subjects in this group had a shorter median survival time than those in the low dFLC group (3 months vs 17 months,P =0.004).A similar phenomenon for median survival time was observed when the subjects were redivided either by a new cut-off value of 180mg/L for dFLC (low dFLC group:17 months;high dFLC group:4 months,P =0.014) or a κ/λ ratio,in which subjects with κ type sFLC-ratio ≤ 19.6 and λ type sFLC-ratio ＞0.065 were in the low sFLC-ratio group (17 months) and those with κ type sFLC-ratio ＞ 19.6 and λ type sFLC-ratio ≤0.065 were in the high sFLC-ratio group (4 months,P=0.023).In multivariate analysis,dFLC and New York Heart Association (NYHA) classification of cardiac function were two risk factors associated with all-cause mortality in patients,among which the hazard ratio for higher dFLC was 4.28 (95％ CI 1.55-11.8,P =0.005).Conclusion The level of sFLC could be a marker for the prognosis of AL cardiac amyloidosis.

Amyloidosis ; Heart Diseases ; Humans

Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Tracheal Stenosis

Adolescent ; Adult ; Aged ; Carbon-Nitrogen Ligases ; genetics ; Female ; Gene Expression ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms ; genetics ; pathology ; Nasopharynx ; pathology ; Young Adult

Adult ; Device Removal ; Equipment Failure ; Female ; Foreign-Body Migration ; surgery ; Heart Septal Defects, Atrial ; surgery ; Humans ; Myocardial Revascularization ; adverse effects ; instrumentation ; Postoperative Complications ; etiology

Adult ; Carcinoma, Squamous Cell ; surgery ; Humans ; Hypopharyngeal Neoplasms ; surgery ; Male ; Middle Aged

Objective:CD4+CD25+regulatory T cells (Treg) may contribute to tumor progression by suppressing antitumor im-munity. The function of Treg in antitumor immunity regulation in the peritoneal microenvironment of ovarian cancer (OC) was investi-gated and compared with the circulating Treg to elucidate OC immune escape. Methods: Flow cytometry was used to determine the proportion of CD4+CD25+T cells in CD4+T cells in ascites of 27 patients with OC and in peripheral blood lymphocytes of 28 patients with OC. The samples were analyzed and classified in three stages:primary disease (PD), after chemotherapy (AC), and recurrence dis-ease (RD), according to the clinical conditions of the OC patients upon donating the samples. The percentage of Treg in the three groups was determined in ascites and blood. CD4+CD25+T cells were isolated from ascites and peripheral blood of patients with OC us-ing magnetic sorting (MACS) system. The cells were then tested for regulatory function through coculture with carboxyfluorescein diac-etate succinimidyl ester-labeled autologous CD4+ CD25- responder cells. Results:The proportion of CD4+ CD25+T cells in CD4+T cells significantly increased in ascites (28.25%± 14.06%) compared with that in blood (14.6%± 4.74%;P<0.0001). The Treg in ascites and blood in AC showed higher proportion (P<0.0001) than those in the PD and RD;the proportion in RD was higher than that in PD (P<0.0001). Moreover, the Treg in ascites mediated a significantly higher suppression compared with the Treg in peripheral blood (P<0.001). Conclusion:The frequency and suppressor function of Treg were significantly higher in ascites than in peripheral blood. This finding suggests more possibility for escape immune surveillance in the peritoneal microenvironment. Moreover, the proportion of Treg in AC was higher than that in PD or RD;the proportion in RD was higher than that in the PD. Chemotherapy may favor the expansion of Treg, which may promote the recurrence of cancer.

Objective: This research explores the relationship between the immuno-suppression function of regulatory T cells (Treg) in the ascites of ovarian cancer (OC) patients, the clinico-pathologic features of these patients, and the correlation of the function of Treg with initial treatment and relapse status of the patients to further investigate the specific mechanism of immuno-regulatory func-tion of CD4+ CD25+ Treg in the ascites of OC. Methods: Immuno-magnetic activated cell sorting (MACS) was conducted to sort CD4+CD25+Treg and autologous CD4+CD25-Treg from the ascites of 28 OC patients. Carboxyfluorescein-diacetate succinimidyl ester (CFSE) was used to label the autologous CD4+CD25-Treg. These labeled cells were then used as controls and co-cultured with autologous CD4+CD25+Treg at the ratio of 1∶1 or 1∶2. The mean inhibition ratio of Treg in specimens to the proliferation of autolo-gous CD4+ CD25-Treg was calculated after the flow cytometry of the CFSE expression and Modfit software analysis of the CD4+CD25-Treg proliferation index (PI) were performed. Anti-IL-10 and/or anti-TGF-β1 antibodies were neutralized to investigate whether the CD4+CD25+Treg-mediated immuno-suppression escaped through the ascites can produce a marked effect by the inhibitory cyto-kine IL-10 or TGF-β1. Results: The mean inhibition ratio of CD4+ CD25- Treg in the ascites of stage Ⅲ to Ⅳ OC patients was (75.72±17.04)%, which is significantly higher than that of stageⅠtoⅡOC patients (59.61±16.97)%;P<0.05. In addition, Treg in the as-cites of OC patients with recurrent disease showed a significantly higher inhibition ratio than that of patients with primary disease;P<0.001. Moreover, Treg in groups added into neutralizing anti-IL-10 and/or anti-TGF-β1 antibodies displayed significantly lower depres-sant effect than the control group;P<0.05. Conclusion:The immuno-suppression of CD4+CD25+Treg in the ascites of OC patients is correlated with the tumor staging and status of the primary or recurrent diseases. Moreover, Treg may indicate a suppressor function by secreting cytokine IL-10 and TGF-β1.