This paper discusses the relationship between stimulating pulse width and the threshold of electrically evoked compound action potential (ECAP). Firstly, the rheobase and chronaxy from strength-duration curve of nerve fiber was computed using the shepherd's experiment results. Secondly, based on the relationship between ECAP and the action potential of nerve fiber, a mathematical expression to describe the relationship between stimulating pulse width and ECAP threshold was proposed. Thirdly, the parameters were obtained and the feasibility was proved to the expression with the results of experiment using guinea pigs. Research result showed that with ECAP compared to the action potential of nerve fiber, their threshold function relationship with stimulating pulse width was similar, and rheobase from the former was an order smaller in the magnitude than the latter, but the chronaxy was close to each other. These findings may provide meaningful guidance to clinical ECAP measurement and studying speech processing strategies of cochlear implant.
Action Potentials ; Animals ; Auditory Threshold ; Cochlear Implantation ; Cochlear Implants ; Electricity ; Evoked Potentials ; Guinea Pigs ; Neural Conduction

Orally disintegrating tablets (ODT), a kind of new solid tablet that rapidly disintegrates to work in the mouth, has became the hot form of new drug research in recent years with many advantages, such as the convenient taking, a widely applicable people, fast acting, high bioavailability, good compliance, and so on. ODT has been widely used in chemical medicines, while the application of it in traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) is still in the stage of development The development of TCMs ODT provides a new direction for the research of Chinese medicine new dosage, accelerates the pace of connecting to the world and modernization of Chinese medicine. This dosage has a broad market prospect, and its quality control and assessment standards, taste, the disintegration time in vitro and evaluation method are the key factors that affect the industrialization, standardization of Chinese medicine ODT. Therefore, this paper reviewed the characteristics, preparation, taste masking technology and quality evaluation with new technology of ODT. Meantime, numerous application examples of ODT used in traditional Chinese medicine were described. We expect to provide the reference and utilization for the development of traditional Chinese medicine orally disinteeratine tablets.
Administration, Oral ; Drug Compounding ; methods ; Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Solubility ; Tablets ; administration & dosage ; chemistry ; Taste

Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of 308-nm excimer light in the treatment of stable vitiligo. Methods Thirty patients with stable vitiligo were enrolled in this clinical trial. All the subjects received the treatment with 308-nm excimer light on a twice-weekly schedule for 3 months. Results The repigmentation rate was 95.0%, 75.0% and 66.7% for lesions in the face and neck, trunk and limbs, with the treatment sessions averaging 10.22 ± 1.60, 19.10 ± 2.38, 37.74 ± 3.06, respectively, and accumulative irradiation dose averaging 7.50 ± 3.45, 10.60 ± 1.01, 18.56 ± 3.05 J/cm2 respectively. Significant differences were observed in the repigmentation rate and treatment sessions between the lesions in the face and neck, trunk and limbs (all P ＜ 0.05). No severe side effects were seen during the treatment. Conclusion 308-nm excimer light is effective and safe for the treatment of vitiligo.

OBJECTIVETo study the effect of different composition structures of total paeony glycoside (TPG) component and total phenolic acid of Ligusticum chuanxiong ( TLPA) on sodium dithionite (Na2S2O4) -induced human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) hypoxic injury. The baseline geometric proportion was used to design different components structure. And then the best structure of components by cell injury model were optimized.

METHODA HUVEC hypoxic injury model was established by being induced of Na2S2O4. Cell viability was measured by MTI colorimetric method, intracellular superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, malondialdehyde (MDA), lactate dehydrogenase( LDH) levels, nitric oxide (NO) contents were measured by kits. At last, Western blot analysis was used to detect the expression of two proteins, Bcl-2 and Bax.

RESULTCompared with the model group, TPG component, TLPA component at different composition structures can significantly increase SOD activity and decrease MDA, LDH, NO levels (P < 0.01, P < 0.05). Paeoniae Radix Rubra and Chuanxiong Rhizoma components can downregulate the expression of Bax protein and upregulate the expression of Bcl-2 protein. The ratio of Bcl-2 and Bax was significantly increased (P < 0 01, P < 0 05), it means that cell apoptosis was inhibited. The results indicate that among all the component composition structures, TPG and TLPA component at the proportion of 8: 2 had the best protection on hypoxic injury of endothelial cells.

CONCLUSIONTPG component and TLPA component can resist HUVEC hypoxia injury, the protective effect was the most evident under the structure of 8: 2, which may be due to the inhibition of intracellular lipid peroxidation and cell apoptosis.

Apoptosis ; drug effects ; Cell Line ; Cell Survival ; drug effects ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; analysis ; pharmacology ; Glycosides ; analysis ; pharmacology ; Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells ; drug effects ; metabolism ; Humans ; Hydroxybenzoates ; analysis ; pharmacology ; Hypoxia ; drug therapy ; genetics ; metabolism ; physiopathology ; Malondialdehyde ; metabolism ; Oxygen ; metabolism ; Paeonia ; chemistry ; Proto-Oncogene Proteins c-bcl-2 ; genetics ; metabolism ; Rhizome ; chemistry

AlM:To explore treatment efficacy of the lower eyelid twitch muscle transposition surgery in senile entropion.METHODS:Fifty cases (86 eyes) of senile lower eyelid entropion patients underwent lower eyelid twitch muscle transposition correction surgery as the experimental group, and the other 42 cases (68 eyes) of senile lower eyelid entropion patients received orbicularis muscle shortening correction as controls group. The correction rate, double eyelid symmetry and overcorrection rate of patients were observed one week after surgery. The patients were followed up for 6~12mo to be observed the long-term recurrence rate, double eyelid symmetry and overcorrection rate.RESULTS: One week after operation, eyelid symmetry, overcorrection rate of experimental group and control group had significant difference (P<0. 05); After followed up for 6 ~12mo, eyelid symmetry, overcorrection rate of experimental group and control group had significant difference (P<0. 05). CONCLUSlON: Folding and orbicularis muscle shortening treatment of senile entropion was compared with the lower eyelid twitch muscle transposition surgery treatment of senile entropion, We can find that clinical results in double eyelid surgery symmetry and overcorrection rate are of obvious advantage.

Objective To study the prevalence of fatty liver and its risk factors in adult population of Pudong New District,Shanghai detected by combination of B-type uhrasonographic features and elevated serum activity of alanine aminotransferase (ALT).Methods A cross-sectional survey was performed in 2017 residents aged 16 years over recruited from four neighborhoods of Prdong New District of Shanghai with multi-phase cluster sampling,including interview with questionnaire,physical check-up,anthropometry, measurement of plasma glucose and lipid profile,ALT activity and real-time B-type ultrasnnography.Serum hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) was further detected for those with elevated ALT activity.Results Prevalence of fatty liver was 21.32 percent (430/2017) in the residents of the District participated in this survey.Prevalence of abdominal obesity,hypertriglyceridemia,hyperlipoproteinemia (low-density lipoprotein-cholecterol),essential hypertension,impaired glucose tolerance,diabetes and metabolic syndrome were 71.16,71.16,11.86,66.74,35.58,24.40 and 47.21 percent in those with fatty liver, respectively,as compared to 26.34,12.73,4.79,39.57,24.01,6.81 and 11.28 percent in those without fatty liver (controls),respectively.Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that body mass index, 2-h postprandial glucose level,diastolic blood pressure,serum level of triglyceride,abdominal obesity and diabetes all were independent risk factor for tatty liver,with odds ratio (OR) of 1.080,1.149,1.035, 1.526,1.960 and 1.391,respectively.Conclusions Prevalence of fatty liver was relatively high in Shanghai Pudong New District.Fatty liver closely associates with disturbance of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism.

Humans ; Acupuncture Therapy ; Neck Injuries ; Vertigo

Pregnane X receptor (PXR), a member of nuclear receptor superfamily, plays an important role in xenobiotic and endogenous metabolism, endocrine balance, and cell proliferation, etc. Previous study has shown that pregnenolone 16α-carbonitrile (PCN), a mouse PXR agonist, could induce liver enlargement. And we found that the change in hepatocytes exhibits regional distribution characteristics: hepatocyte enlargement occurs around the central vein (CV) area, while hepatocyte proliferation occurs around the portal vein (PV) area. In this study, the dynamic changes of hepatocytes during PXR-induced liver enlargement were determined. Serum and liver samples from male C57BL/6 mice were collected for biochemical and pathological analysis after PCN treatment for 1, 2, 3, 5 days, respectively. The animal experiment was approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of Sun Yat-Sen University. The results showed that with the increase in the PCN treatment days, the feature of this regional change of hepatocyte around the CV and PV areas became more and more obvious. At the same time, the factors related to hepatocyte enlargement, such as the expression of PXR downstream genes and the hepatic content of triglyceride (TG), has gradually increased. The upregulation of proliferation-related proteins and downregulation of cyclin-dependent kinases inhibitor proteins were observed in the early stage of PCN treatment, suggesting that hepatocyte proliferation occurs earlier than hepatocyte enlargement during PXR-induced liver enlargement. This study reveals the dynamic change of hepatocytes during PXR-induced liver enlargement and provides a new insight in liver enlargement promoted via PXR activation.

OBJECTIVETo establish an efficient and stable method for protein extraction of Streptococcus mutans.

METHODSThe collected bacteria were treated by freeze-thaw and ultrasonic (method 1), ultrasonic (method 2), boiling (method 3), boiling and ultrasonic (method 4), respectively. The index such as state of bacteria broken, concentration of extracted protein and SDS-PAGE of protein were employed to evaluate the effects of above four methods.

RESULTSBeside the method 3, the other three methods could break the bacteria effectively, of which ultrasonic was the key factor. The pattern of SDS-PAGE which treated by method 1, method 2 and method 4 was almost same, but method 1 resulted in the best abundance. There was significantly difference among the four protein concentration extracted by four methods (P < 0.05). All methods exhibited good stability and reproducibility.

CONCLUSIONMethod of freeze-thaw and ultrasonic resulted in an efficient proteins extraction of Streptococcus mutans which demonstrated good stability and reproducibility and easy to handle.

Bacterial Proteins ; Reproducibility of Results ; Streptococcus mutans

Development of the disease is the result of several factors involved in biological network changes. The nature of drug intervention is to regulate these pathological changes to the normal range. Advantages of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are to integrally and systematically regulate this biological networks and systematic pathology through multi-targets, multi-levels, multi-channels. Structural components TCM provides the controlled and precise basis "substance" for this regulation and also to clarify the "truth" of the nature of the regulation by the network pharmacology. Network pharmacology provides new strategy for the research on mechanism of structural components TCM. This study not only reflects the overall characteristics of the development of the disease, but also fully embodies the essence of TCM for preventing and treating diseases through changing traditional model on "one drug, one gene, one disease". This paper explores systematically the integration essence, features and research strategies of structural components TCM and the network pharmacology, understand the interaction of structural components TCM and body from the perspective of the overall concept of improving or restoring the balance of.biological networks. It is effective measure to reveal the structure of a multi-component for regulating biological networks mechanisms, and also provide new ideas and methods for further scientific research and innovation of structural component TCM.
Drug Interactions ; Drug Therapy ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; chemistry ; pharmacology ; Gene Regulatory Networks ; drug effects ; Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional