Objective To investigate the effect of contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) on the treatment of knee synovial lesions in rheumatoid arthritis (RA).Methods The results of routine ultrasonography (US) and CEUS were observed in 37 patients with RA.Among them 26 knees were underwent review after treatment.The results before and after treatment were compared.Results Routine US showed that the synovial thickness of patella,medial and lateral condylar and the depth of suprapatellar bursa effusion in 37 knee joints were (0.47 ± 0.26)cm,(0.31 ± 0.15)cm,(0.36 ± 0.21)cm and (0.72 ± 0.42)cm before treatment,and (0.36± 0.16)cm,(0.28 ± 0.17)cm,(0.30 ± 0.19)cm and (0.41 ± 0.19)cm in 26 knee joints after treatment,respectively,the differences were statistically significant(P ＜0.05).The synovial blood flow classification of patella,medial and the lateral condyle in the 26 knee joints had difference between before and after treatment (P ＜0.05).CEUS showed that the peak intensity decreased,the area under the curve reduced,the time from peak to one half decreased,the wash in slope decreased and the time to peak prolonged in synovial after treatment,the differences of the parameters between before and after treatment were statistically significant(P ＜0.05).The area of synovial had some influence on the CEUS parameters and could improve the reliability of the evaluation to CEUS for treatment.Conclusions CEUS is an objective method to evaluate the efficacy of RA,which provides a reliable basis for clinical treatment of RA.

Determining effective traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatments for specific disease conditions or particular patient groups is a difficult issue that necessitates investigation because of the complicated personalized manifestations in real-world patients and the individualized combination therapies prescribed in clinical settings. In this study, a multistage analysis method that integrates propensity case matching, complex network analysis, and herb set enrichment analysis was proposed to identify effective herb prescriptions for particular diseases (e.g., insomnia). First, propensity case matching was applied to match clinical cases. Then, core network extraction and herb set enrichment were combined to detect core effective herb prescriptions. Effectiveness-based mutual information was used to detect strong herb-symptom relationships. This method was applied on a TCM clinical data set with 955 patients collected from well-designed observational studies. Results revealed that groups of herb prescriptions with higher effectiveness rates (76.9% vs. 42.8% for matched samples; 94.2% vs. 84.9% for all samples) compared with the original prescriptions were found. Particular patient groups with symptom manifestations were also identified to help investigate the indications of the effective herb prescriptions.
Adolescent ; Adult ; Aged ; Aged, 80 and over ; Case-Control Studies ; Child ; China ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; therapeutic use ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Middle Aged ; Propensity Score ; Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders ; drug therapy ; Young Adult

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide. It is urgent to develop new drugs to improve the prognosis of ESCC patients. Here, we found benzydamine, a locally acting non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, had potent cytotoxic effect on ESCC cells. Benzydamine could suppress ESCC proliferation in vivo and in vitro. In terms of mechanism, CDK2 was identified as a target of benzydamine by molecular docking, pull-down assay and in vitro kinase assay. Specifically, benzydamine inhibited the growth of ESCC cells by inhibiting CDK2 activity and affecting downstream phosphorylation of MCM2, c-Myc and Rb, resulting in cell cycle arrest. Our study illustrates that benzydamine inhibits the growth of ESCC cells by downregulating the CDK2 pathway.
Humans ; Benzydamine ; Esophageal Neoplasms/drug therapy* ; Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma/drug therapy* ; Molecular Docking Simulation ; Phosphorylation ; Cell Proliferation ; Cell Line, Tumor ; Apoptosis ; Cyclin-Dependent Kinase 2