Objective To examine osteopontin (OPN) levels in both synovial fluid and articular cartilage of patients with primary knee osteoarthritis (OA) and to investigate their relationship with severity of the disease. Methods Fifty patients with knee OA and 10 healthy controls were enrolled in this study.There were 15 males and 35 females with an average age of 61.8±7.4 years in OA group. The control group included 4 males and 6 females with an average age of 63.2±6.0 years. Mankin score were taken to determine the disease severity of the affected knee. The radiographic grading of OA in the knee was performed using the Kellgren-Lawrence criteria. OPN levels in synovial fluid were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. OPN levels in articular cartilage were assessed by immunohistochemical methods. Results Compared to healthy controls, the knee OA patients had higher OPN concentration in synovial fluid ([4519.60±1830.37] pg/ml vs. [1179.70±303.39] pg/ml) and articular cartilage([0.60±0.06] vs. [0.43 ±0.07]). In addition, synovial fluid OPN levels showed a positive correlation with articular cartilage OPN levels (r=0.411,P=0.003). Subsequent analysis showed that the OPN levels in synovial fluid significantly had been correlated with severity of disease using Kellgren-Lawrence criteria (r=0.581, P＜ 0.001). Furthermore,the levels of OPN in the articular cartilage also were correlated with disease severity using Mankin score (r=0.675, P＜ 0.001).Conclusion The data suggest that OPN in synovial fluid and articular cartilage is related to progressive joint damage and could be a predictive biomarker respect to disease severity and progression in knee OA.

Objective To evaluate the value of intra-cavitary contrast-enhanced ultrasound (IC-CEUS) via abdomen in fistulas difficult to diagnose before operation.Methods Clinical data of 12 patients with preoperative clinical suspicion of Crohn's Disease (CD) complications of fistula were enrolled in the study.Colonoscopy,cystoscope,or CT/MR has not confirmed the diagnosis of intra abdominal fistulas.IC-CEUS were performed by locally-injection of contrast agent in abdominal abscess,observing fistula and the relationship with the adjacent organs in CEUS mode.Diagnostic criteria were surgical findings.Results Fistulas in 10 patients were detected by IC-CEUS,including 7 cases of Ileo-mesenteric fistuls,2 cases of il eo-vesical fistulas,and 1 case of colo-vesical fistula.The accuracy rate of IC-CEUS in diagnosis of fistulas difficult to diagnose before operation in Crohn's disease was 83.3％ (10/12).No severe adverse events occurred during and after IC-CEUS procedure.Conclusions Our preliminary study shows that IC-CEUS is feasible in detecting abdominal fistula with high accuracy.It might be used as the alternative imaging tech nique for detecting fistulas when CT and MR are insufficient.

Objective To investigate the value of shear wave elastography (SWE) and quasi-static elastography in the evaluation of radiofrequency ablation of pork.Methods Twelve pieces of fresh pork were underwent radiofrequency ablation (RFA) with different target temperatures.Before and after RFA,conventional ultrasound (US),SWE and quasi-static elastography were conducted to visualize the boundaries of RFA zones.The size of ablation zones obtained from conventional ultrasound,SWE and quasi-static elastography measurement were observed and detected the correlativity with pathology findings.Moreover,the Young's modulus and stain ratio of ablated zone were recorded.Results Most ablated boundaries were clearly delineated by both elastography techniques,except one with a low target temperature of 70 ℃.The sizes of ablated zones measured by SWE and quasi-static elastography were closely correlated with pathological findings.However,no ablated zones could be visualized by conventional US.Before and after RFA,the mean,minimum and maximum values of Young's modulus were (24.2 ± 3.8) kPa vs (97.6 ± 29.1) kPa,(9.2 ± 0.7)kPa vs (44.5 ± 7.7)kPa and (29.9 ± 3.8)kPa vs (181.5 ± 36.7)kPa,respectively (all P ＜0.001).With the increase of target temperature of RFA,the Young's modulus values and the mean strain ratio were significantly increased (all P ＜ 0.01).Conclusions Both SWE and quasi-static elastography are useful tools for evaluating the ablation,which are superior to conventional US.Moreover,SWE can be used to monitor the procedure of ablation.

Identification of components and metabolites of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) employing liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF MS) techniques with information-dependent acquisition (IDA) approaches is increasingly frequent. A current drawback of IDA-MS is that the complexity of a sample might prevent important compounds from being triggered in IDA settings. Sequential window acquisition of all theoretical fragment-ion spectra (SWATH) is a data-independent acquisition (DIA) method where the instrument deterministically fragments all precursor ions within the predefined m/z range in a systematic and unbiased fashion. Herein, the superiority of SWATH on the detection of TCMs' components was firstly investigated by comparing the detection ef-ficiency of SWATH-MS and IDA-MS data acquisition modes, and sanguisorbin extract was used as a mode TCM. After optimizing the setting parameters of SWATH, rolling collision energy (CE) and variable Q1 isolation windows were found to be more efficient for sanguisorbin identification than the fixed CE and fixed Q1 isolation window. More importantly, the qualitative efficiency of SWATH-MS on sanguisorbins was found significantly higher than that of IDA-MS data acquisition. In IDA mode, 18 kinds of sangui-sorbins were detected in sanguisorbin extract. A total of 47 sanguisorbins were detected when SWATH-MS was used under rolling CE and flexible Q1 isolation window modes. Besides, 26 metabolites of sangui-sorbins were identified in rat plasma, and their metabolic pathways could be deduced as decarbonylation, oxidization, reduction, methylation, and glucuronidation according to their fragmental ions acquired in SWATH-MS mode. Thus, SWATH-MS data acquisition could provide more comprehensive information for the component and metabolite identification for TCMs than IDA-MS.