Nerve injury including peripheral nerve injury and central nerve injury has been a global problem. With the development of technology, many innovative approaches for nerve repair have been tested and some of the results are meaningful. It becomes a hot point that repair nerve injured by biological scaffold (nerve conduit). This article reviewed and analyzed several kinds of biological scaffold materials and microenvironment with better effect in recent years. Some new ideas were raised from the three aspects: appropriate materials, microstructure, and bionic microenvironment. It is better to combine multiple measures and achieve the best effect. In addition, nerve scaffold have a bright future in repair of central nervous system.
Cellular Microenvironment ; Humans ; Neurobiology ; methods ; Tissue Scaffolds ; Trauma, Nervous System ; pathology ; therapy

Spinal cord injury is a serious disabling disease caused by a series of internal and external factors in the field of orthopaedics and neuroscience, which is a big problem for doctors all over the world. Lithium has been used to treat dipolar disorder for over 100 years. It has been reported that lithium is benefit for brain neuron. The treatment effect for spinal cord injury gets more and more attention. Researches indicate that lithium is benefit for spinal cord injury by protecting neuron,reducing after-injury inflammation increasing the produce and release of neurotrophins, stimulating neurogenesis, enhancing autophagy and inhibiting apoptosis. This article summaries advances in mechanism of treatment for spinal cord injury with lithium by reviewing and analyzing researches. Therapy combined with lithium has a good application prospect.
Animals ; Apoptosis ; drug effects ; Humans ; Lithium ; therapeutic use ; Neurons ; cytology ; drug effects ; Spinal Cord Injuries ; drug therapy ; physiopathology

Acupressure ; Acupuncture Points ; Acupuncture Therapy ; Adolescent ; Adult ; Child ; Combined Modality Therapy ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Spasm ; therapy ; Stomach Diseases ; therapy ; Young Adult

OBJECTIVETo evaluate the effects on health-related quality of life after short-segment pedicle fixation of thoracolumbar fractures without neurologic injury.

METHODSA total of 55 patients suffered from thoracolumbar fractures without neurological deficit from January 2007 to October 2010 were included in this retrospective study. Of the 55 patients, 35 were male and 20 were female. The mean age was (44.0±10.5) years old (ranged, 7 to 75). Preoperatively, the main clinical symptoms in patients were thoracolumbar pain without neurologic injury and the imaging findings mainly showed that the injured vertebra became wedging or flat with the loss of height. Three questionnaires (ODI, EQ-5D and SF-36) were applied to follow-up in this study.

RESULTSAll operations were successful and incisions got primary healing. The function of thoracolumbar spine fully or basiclly restored and postoperative imagings showed fractures healed without loose screws, broken screws or broken rods. The completion rates of all the queasionnaires were 100% while the mean follow-up period was 4.2 years (ranged, 3 to 6). The ODI scores were 25.8±18.7, which were statistically higher than those of the general population in our country (P<0.05). The EQ-5D index scores were 0.70, which were statistically lower than those of the normal Chinese population (P<0.05). Compared with the normal scores in our country, the scores of 8 items in the SF-36 questionnaire were obviously lower with significant difference (P<0.05).

CONCLUSIONCompared with the normal Chinese population, it should be paid more attention to that the health-related quality of life in patients after short-segment pedicle fixation of thoracolumbar fractures without neurologic injury because of lower scores.

Adolescent ; Adult ; Aged ; Child ; Female ; Fracture Fixation, Internal ; methods ; Humans ; Lumbar Vertebrae ; injuries ; surgery ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Quality of Life ; Retrospective Studies ; Spinal Fractures ; psychology ; surgery ; Thoracic Vertebrae ; injuries ; surgery ; Young Adult

Because of the long acquisition time and spin-echo planar imaging sequence, diffusion weight magnetic resonance image (DWI) should be denoised effectively to ensure the follow-up applications. The commonly used denoising methods which induced from gray level image lack the use of the specific information from multiple magnitude directions. This paper, therefore, proposes a modified linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) denosing method used for DWI. The proposed method uses the local information to estimate the parameter of the Rician noise and modifies the LMMSE using the information of multiple magnitude directions synthetically. The simulation and experiment of the synthetic DWI and real human brain DWI dataset demonstrate that the proposed method can more effectively remove the Rician noise compared to the commonly used denoising method and improve the robustness and validity of the diffusion tensor magnetic resonance image (DTI).
Algorithms ; Brain ; anatomy & histology ; Computer Simulation ; Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging ; Diffusion Tensor Imaging ; Humans ; Image Enhancement ; methods ; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted ; methods ; Least-Squares Analysis ; Reproducibility of Results

Objective To discuss the effect of applying evidence-based medicine (EBM) in orthopedic clinical teaching for eight-year program medical students in military medical university. Methods Totally 50 eight-year medical students in Shanghai Changzheng Hospital were equally divided into two groups:experimental group(EBM teaching group) and control group. The teacher of experimental group selected appropriate cases and set up the questions according to the difficulties encountered in clinical situation. Students retrieved the relevant medical literature and found out the most useful information for EBM system analysis. The results combined with the current cases were discussed. The teachers summarized clinical experiences and data according to the relevant depart-ment. Traditional direct infusion teaching mode was used in control group. Clinical work experiences were used to guide the students . After-department examination was conducted for both group after finishing the internship and questionnaire investigation was made among students in experiment group. Statistical analysis was carried out on the examination results with SPSS 17.0 software. Mea-surement data were expressed as x±s and comparison on mean differences between two groups was analyzed by t test. Results Average scores of subjective topic and military related topic in the theory exam were higher in experimental group than in traditional teaching group, with statistically significant differences(P<0.001). Excellent rate was 80%(20/25) in case discussion in experimental group and 60%(15/25) in control group. Experimental investigation questionnaire showed that: students got enhanced in learning initiative and broadened knowledge. 96%(24/25) students strengthened the learn-ing efficiency of military related chapters. 88%(22/25) students accepted this method and expected to continue. Conclusions Using the method of evidence-based medicine in eight-year program medical students in military medical university can cultivate the spirit of the stu-dents' self-study actively and rigorous earnest attitude. Students can grasp learning methods and sci-entific thinking. It also can strengthen students' awareness of military medicine and research.

OBJECTIVETo explore the value of the application of oil red O staining in spinal cord injury (SCI) of rats.

METHODSWith simple randomization, 24 Spargue-Dawley male rats were divided into normal control group including 6, and SCI group including 18. Spinal cord was transected at spinal lever T10 to build SCI model. Six rats of SCI group were sacrificed randomly at 1, 2, 4 weeks after surgery. After the spinal cord tissue sections were made, oil red O staining methods were used to observe the changes at the end of transected spinal cord. Images were analyzed by Image-Pro Plus 6.0 and SPSS 20.0 software.

RESULTSThe oil red O staining of normal control group showed that white matter surrounded by myelin sheath was clear and obviously distinctive from grey matter. Uneven and strengthened staining in oil O was observed in grey matter of SCI group at 1, 2, 4 weeks post-SCI.

CONCLUSIONIt is a good method to label the myelin sheath in spinal cord and distinct white matter from grey matter by oil red O staining. Analysis of the images showed that lipid may become another target for drugs, which needs more researches.

Animals ; Azo Compounds ; Gray Matter ; pathology ; Male ; Nerve Fibers ; physiology ; Nerve Regeneration ; Rats ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Spinal Cord Injuries ; pathology ; Staining and Labeling

?Corneal collagen cross-linking ( CXL ) could increase the mechanical strength, biological stability and halt ectasia progression due to covalent bond formed by photochemical reaction between ultraviolet - A and emulsion of riboflavin between collagen fibers in corneal stroma. Corneal melting is an autoimmune related noninfectious corneal ulcer. The mechanism of corneal melting, major treatment, the basic fundamental of ultraviolet- A riboflavin induced CXL and the clinical researches status and experiment in CXL were summarized in the study.

Objective To assess excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) and to examine the main cause of EDS. Methods 96 consecutive PD patients and 98 age-matched healthy controls participated in the study. The severity of the disease was evaluated by Hoehn and Yahr stage (H&Y) and Unified Parkinson's disease Rating Scale-Ⅲ (UPDRS-Ⅲ), and information of anti-PD medications was collected. The correlations among EDS and age, severity of PD, PQSI score, duration of illness and medications were analyzed. Results The mean ESS score was 6.05 (S.D.3.83) in PD patients and 4.24 (S.D.3.21) in controls (P