Objective To investigate the change of cognitive function and cerebral blood flow in patients with transient ischemic attack(TIA).Methods 35 patients with TIA and 33 normal controls who matched in sex, age, right handed and education were tested by events related potential(ERP), the scale of elderly cognitive function(SECF) and magnetic resonance angiography(MRA).Results The peak latencies of P 3 components of ERP in the patients were significantly delayed as compared with the control group( P

Objective To study and compare the protective effects of pmtease inhibitor and corticosteroid on endotoxin-indueed acute lung injury in order to guide the choice of appropriate drugs. Method Thirty-two New Zealand rabbits were randomly divided(random number) into four groups with 8 rabbits in each, namely normal controls(C) ; lipopolysaecharide(LPS) group(L) ; ulinastatin(UTI) group(U) and dexamcthasone(DEX) group (D) .Except group C, all rabbits were injected with a dose of LPS 600 μg/kg iv. Meanwhile the rabbits in group U,group D received UTI(100 000 μ/kg), DEX(5 mg/kg), respectively. The specimens were collected 4 hours later for detecting the levels of TNF-α and NO in serum, and blood gas analysis, histological manifestations, the lung wet/dry weight ratio, lung tissue MPO and SOD activity, lung tissue MDA. Data were analyzed by ANOVA (SNK- q test), and P < 0.05 was considered as significantly different. Results Compared with group C, the lungs of the rabbits in group L had inflammatory granulocyte infdtration, diffused alveolar septum thickening and hemorrhagic spots were observed in pathological examinations. The histological changes of group U and group D were much lessened than those in group L. As groups U and D were compared with group L, there were significant differences inmany biomarkers including lung wet/dry weight ratio[(5.02±0.11),(4.93±0.13) vs.(5.37 ±0.29)],lung tissue MPO activity[(0.51 ± 0.05),(0.54±0.07) vs.(0.82 ± 0.09)] and MDA[(0.82 ±0.05),(0.81 ±0.04) vs.(0.96±0.05)], NO[(296.2± 11.7),(291.7 ± 15.8) vs.(351.8±19.6)] and TNF-α[group D(2.021 ± 0.122) vs. group L(4.999 ± 0.139)],lung tissue SOD activity[(120.3 ± 6.1),(122.6±3.5) vs.(105.1 ± 8.5)] and blood gas analysis[pH(7.30±0.23),(7.30±0.17) vs.(7.22±0.45) and PaO_2( 101.9 ± 6.8).( 102.5 ± 4.7) vs.(80.3 ± 3.3)] ; but there were no differences of above mentioned biomarkers between group U and D( P > 0.05). And there were no significant differences in PaCO_2 betweeu group U and D and group L[(37.0 ± 3.3),(37.6 ± 3.0) vs.(34.8 ± 2.3)]( P > 0.05). Conclusions The protective effects of ulinastatin on endotoxin-induced acute lung injury is comparable to those of dexamethasone, thus the former may be a clinical substitute for the latter with less side effects.

Nrf2,a key transcriptional factor in regulating endog-enous antioxidant signaling pathway,maintains the redox bal-ance by controlling the expression of a battery of antioxidant en-zymes,phase-Ⅱ detoxification enzymes and phase-Ⅲ transport-ers.Furthermore,Nrf2 regulates inflammation.Recent resear-ches have confirmed that Nrf2 provides a vital physiological role in kidney diseases,activation of Nrf2 enhances the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory ability in cellular and tissue levels,thusalleviates renal injury.Here,this article aims to summarize the protective effect of Nrf2 on various models of kidney impairment and explore the potential of Nrf2 as a therapeutic target to pre-vent kidney diseases.

BACKGROUND: Researches suggest that transient ischemic attack (TIA)can induce cognitive dysfunction, and cerebral blood flow and its distribution are hypothesized to be closely related to cognitive activities.OBJECTIVE: To investigate the alteration of cognitive function and provide insights into its relations with cerebral perfusion in TIA patients.DESIGN: A case-control study.SETTING: Departments of Geriatrics, Electrophysiology and Magnetic Resonance of Urumqi General Hospital of Lanzhou Military Area Command of Chinese PLA.PARTICIPANTS: Totally 35 male right-handed TIA patients aged 45-78 years with an average of (68.1±8.4) years were selected from the inpatients and outpatients in the Department of Geriatrics, Urumqi General Hospital of Lanzhou Command of Chinese PLA between January 2002 and June 2003. Another 33 healthy right handed male subjects aged 45-77 years with an average of (67.8±8.6) years coming for physical examination were recruited to serve as the control group.METHODS: Patients and control subjects were tested with event-related potentials (ERPs) and the scale of elderly cognitive function (SECF) to examine the orientation, learning and memory, span, recall 1 (association),long-term memory, naming of animals, calculation, classification, copying,language and recall 2 (relation). According to the T score transformation table, the original scores were transformed into T scores relative to the age to eliminate the impact of age, and also into T'score to eliminate the interference by the patients'education, so that cognitive function of the patients could be evaluated with T'score, and the lower the score, the poorer the cognitive function. Cases in the two groups were all tested, and TIA patients were also examined with magnetic resonance angiography (MRA).MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Results of ERPs, SECF and MRA.RESULTS: Of the 35 TIA patients and 33 control subjects all completed the trial. Examination of ERPs reveled significantly prolonged latency of P300 components of ERP in the TIA group [(336.2±34.2) ms] than that in the control group [(311.3±44.2) ms, P ＜ 0.05]. The scores of span, recall 1,long-term memory, naming of animals, calculation, and recall 2 in SECF in TIA group were all lower than those in control group (39.7±11.9 vs 47.4±12.0; 54.5±14.8 vs 61.8±14.5; 61.1±7.8 vs 64.7±1.7; 59.4±11.0 vs 64.7±8.8; 50.0±14.7 vs 58.1±14.2; 44.6±15.4 vs 53.2±17.8, t=4.151 0-7.292 8, P ＜ 0.05-0.01). MRA identified abnormalities in 33 of the 35 TIA patients (94%), manifested mainly by stenosis and occlusion involving the vertebral artery (54%, 19/35), bilateral anterior, middle and posterior cerebral arteries (40% ,28/70;59% ,41/70;47% ,33/70), basilar artery (5.71%, 2/35) and bilateral internal carotid artery (5.71%, 4/70) respectively.CONCLUSION: TIA patients are characterized by prolonged P300 latency with multiple cognitive impairments especially in memory and cerebral artery stenosis and occlusion as shown by MRA, suggests that TIA patients have persistent low cerebral perfusion and frequently, cognitive dysfunction in the presence of local blood supply disorder in the hemispheres.

Based on the analysis of the management of Director 's target responsibility system in China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences these years, the methods and experience were introduced in this paper. How to further improve the management was also discussed, providing a certain reference for the target responsibility system management of scientific research institutes.

OBJECTIVETo study the effects of chlorpromazine combined with Platycodon grandiflorum on the striatal extracellular dopamine level in rats and to research the interaction and the mechanism of action after combining traditional Chinese medicine with western medicine.

METHODTwenty four rats were randomly assigned into four groups: the control group, Platycodon group, chlorpromazine group and chlorpromazined combined with P. grandiflorum group. The level of dopamine in CSF microdialysis samples was detected with high performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detector after administration for 10 days.

RESULTThe CSF level of DA (1.52 +/- 0.34) microg x L(-1) was significantly higher (P < 0.01) in chlorpromazine combined with P. grandiflorum group than that in the chlorpromazine group (1.25 +/- 0.22) microg x L(-1) (P < 0.05) and that in the normal control (1.06 +/- 0.24) microg x L(-1) (P < 0.01).

CONCLUSIONThe combining utilization of P. grandiflorum and chlorpromazine may increase the DA concentration of monoamine neurotransmitters, which results in under the therapeutic effect is maintained, the dosage of chlorpromazine used to individuals are decreased and the incidence rate of the adverse reactions of chlorpromazine will descend.

Animals ; Chlorpromazine ; chemistry ; Corpus Striatum ; drug effects ; metabolism ; Dopamine ; metabolism ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; pharmacology ; Male ; Microdialysis ; Platycodon ; chemistry ; Random Allocation ; Rats ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley

Objective: Predefining the most effective treatment for patients with depressive disorders remains a problem. We will examine the differential brain regions of gray matter (GM) in major depressive disorder (MDD) patients and the relationship between changes in their volume and the efficacy of early antidepressant treatment using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Methods: 159 never-medicated patients with first-episode MDD and 53 normal control subjects (NCs) were enrolled. The brains were scanned by MRI and measured with the 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD-17) at baseline and after 2 weeks of treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)s, and the non-responder group and responder group were obtained. The patients were analyzed by voxel-based morphological (VBM) and SPSS software. Receiver operator characteristics (ROC) analysis was performed for the difference between the responder group and the non-responder group in the differential brain regions, and Pearson correlations were computed between volume size and HAMD score reduction rate. Results: Smaller GM volume of the right superior temporal gyrus (STG), and the orbital parts of the right medial frontal gyrus and right inferior frontal gyrus were observed in MDD versus the NCs. The non-responder group demonstrated a significant volume reduction at the right STG compared with the responders, but no corresponding change in orbital part of right medial frontal gyrus and right inferior frontal gyrus. ROC analysis showed that Accuracy=71.2%. There was a positive correlation between the STG gray matter volume and the HAMD-17 score reduction rate (r=0.347, p=0.002). Conclusion The study results confirmed the local changes in brain structure in MDD and may initially predict the early treatment response produced by SSRIs as antidepressants.

OBJECTIVETo compare the heart rate variability (HRV) measurements between ballistocardiogram (BCG) and electrocardiography (ECG).

METHODSThe signals of BCG and ECG of 21 patients were collected synchronously. JJ intervals of BCG and RR intervals of ECG were used to calculate the cardiac periods. The parameters of HRV analysis were calculated in time domain analysis, frequency domain analysis and nonlinear analysis. The results derived from BCG and ECG were compared.

RESULTSThe parameters of HRV analysis calculated from BCG and ECG had high similarity. The correlation coefficients of SDNN, TP, LF, HF and SD2 between the BCG and ECG methods were high (r = 1). The correlation coefficients of rMSSD and SD2 were 0.99 and of PNN50 and LF/HF were 0.98 between the two methods. HRV analysis results derived from the two methods were similar (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONHRV could also be measured reliably by calculating the JJ interval from BCG.

Ballistocardiography ; Electrocardiography ; Heart ; physiology ; Heart Rate ; Humans

Fast optic disk localization and boundary segmentation is an important research topic in computer aided diagnosis. This paper proposes a novel method to effectively segment optic disk by using human visual characteristics in analyzing and processing fundus image. After a general analysis of optic disk features in fundus images, the target of interest could be located quickly, and intensity, color and spatial distribution of the disc are used to generate saliency map based on pixel distance. Then the adaptive threshold is used to segment optic disk. Moreover, to reduce the influence of vascular, a rotary scanning method is devised to achieve complete and continuous contour of optic disk boundary. Tests in the public fundus images database Drishti-GS have good performances, which mean that the proposed method is simple and rapid, and it meets the standard of the eye specialists. It is hoped that the method could be conducive to the computer aided diagnosis of eye diseases in the future.

The count and recognition of white blood cells in blood smear images play an important role in the diagnosis of blood diseases including leukemia. Traditional manual test results are easily disturbed by many factors. It is necessary to develop an automatic leukocyte analysis system to provide doctors with auxiliary diagnosis, and blood leukocyte segmentation is the basis of automatic analysis. In this paper, we improved the U-Net model and proposed a segmentation algorithm of leukocyte image based on dual path and atrous spatial pyramid pooling. Firstly, the dual path network was introduced into the feature encoder to extract multi-scale leukocyte features, and the atrous spatial pyramid pooling was used to enhance the feature extraction ability of the network. Then the feature decoder composed of convolution and deconvolution was used to restore the segmented target to the original image size to realize the pixel level segmentation of blood leukocytes. Finally, qualitative and quantitative experiments were carried out on three leukocyte data sets to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm. The results showed that compared with other representative algorithms, the proposed blood leukocyte segmentation algorithm had better segmentation results, and the mIoU value could reach more than 0.97. It is hoped that the method could be conducive to the automatic auxiliary diagnosis of blood diseases in the future.
Algorithms ; Leukocytes