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

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

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

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

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

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

?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.

Animals ; Humans ; Ischemic Preconditioning, Myocardial ; MicroRNAs ; Myocardial Ischemia ; genetics ; prevention & control

Adult ; Female ; Hexanes ; poisoning ; Humans ; Immunity, Humoral ; Male ; Myelin Proteins ; blood ; immunology ; Peripheral Nervous System Diseases ; chemically induced ; immunology ; Young Adult

Objective To explore the anti-inflammatory mechanisms of purslane by evaluating its effects on the expression of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM-1).Methods A model of inflammation was developed in 45 mice by painting xylene to the auricle of the right ears,which were then divided into 3 groups to receive no treatment (negative control group),be topically treated with the extraction of purslane from South Korea (positive control group) or Yunnan province (experimental group).Fifteen mice receiving no sensitization nor treatment served as the blank control group.Two hours after the single topical treatment,skin tissue samples were obtained from the site of experimental inflammation and subjected to pathological examination by using hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining.Immunohistochemistry was performed to quantify the expression of TNF-α and ICAM-1 in the tissue samples.Results Pathological examination showed blood vessels and a small quantity of lymphocytes in murine dermis of the blank control group as well as loose and edematous dermis infiltrated with massive lymphocytes in the negative control group.However,there was only mild edema and perivascular infiltration with some inflammatory cells in the dermis of the positive control group and experimental group.Neither TNF-α nor ICAM-1 was expressed in the skin tissue of the blank control group,but an intense expression was observed for TNF-α in the vascular endothelial cell membrane and for ICAM-1 in the vascular endothelial cell membrane and lymphocyte membrane in the negative control group,which was significantly downregulated by the purslane from South Korea in the positive control group and by the purslane from Yunnan province in the experimental group (all P ＜ 0.01).Rank sum test showed a statistical difference in the expression level of TNF-α and ICAM-1 between the blank control group and experimental group (both P ＜0.01).Conclusion The purslane from Yunnan province may counteract inflammation by affecting the expression of TNF-α and ICAM-1.