Objective: To investigate the effect of astragalus on the serum levels of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), renal function and the damage of renal morphology in ischemic acute renal failure (IARF). To study the protective mechanism of astragalus in IARF. Methods: The rats were pretreated with astragalus or vehicle for 3 days. IARF was induced by left renal artery clipping for 60 min, after the right kidney was removed. Biochemical parameters for serum HGF,blood urea nitrogen(BUN),creatinine(Cr) were measured and histological analyses of the kidneys were performed by tubular grading. Results: There have no significant difference between the serum HGF levels of I/R controls and the levels observed in sham-operated group (P > 0.05). Serum HGF levels in astragalus treated group was significantly increased than those of I/R control group(P < 0.01) .After 4 h of I/R, serum levels of BUN and Cr were increased in I/ R control rats compare with Sham-operated rats(P < 0.01). Astragalus treatment reduced the levels elevation(P < 0.05). Simultaneously,. I/R-induced severe damage in renal morphology were significantly ameliorated by astragalus treatment(P < 0.01). Conclusions: Astragalus pretreatment can alleviate the damage of renal function in IARF. It is may be one of the mechanisms of astragalus for protecting renal tissue in IARF that astragalus can induce the expression of HGF.

Background and purpose:Exploration of the effective early diagnostic and prognostic markers of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has important scientiifc signiifcance and clinical value. Recently, the role of long chain non-coding RNA (lncRNA) in the tumor attracts widespread attention. This study intended to investigate the level of lncRNA HOTTIP in NSCLC, the effect of HOTTIP on cell proliferation and its mechanisms.Methods:Expression of lncRNA HOTTIP in tumor and their matched non-tumor tissues were determined by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) in NSCLC patients. Then, we analyzed the potential correlation of lncRNA HOTTIP expression levels in tumor tissues with clinicopathological features of NSCLC and clinical outcome. The effects of HOTTIP on NSCLC cell proliferation and apoptosis were tested usingin vitro MTT and lfow cytometric assays. Western blot method was uesd to detect the expressions of proteins.Results:LncRNA HOTTIP expression level was signiifcantly decreased in NSCLC tissues in comparison to adjacent non-tumor tissues (P<0.05). It was also proved that HOTTIP expression was associat-ed with NSCLC histological grade and lymph node metastasis. Moreover, knockdown of HOTTIP expression in A549 cell line decreased proliferation and enhanced apoptosis compared with transfected negative control. Western blot assay showed that the level of Bax protein was signiifcantly increased, whereas Bcl-2 was signiifcantly decreased in HOT-TIP-silencing A549 cell.Conclusion:HOTTIP is a novel prognostic biomarker and a potential therapeutic candidate forNSCLC.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurological disease in elderly people, and its morbidity and mortality are increasing with the advent of global ageing. The traditional paradigm of moving from small data to big data in biomedical research is shifting toward big data-based identification of small actionable alterations. To highlight the use of big data for precision PD medicine, we review PD big data and informatics for the translation of basic PD research to clinical applications. We emphasize some key findings in clinically actionable changes, such as susceptibility genetic variations for PD risk population screening, biomarkers for the diagnosis and stratification of PD patients, risk factors for PD, and lifestyles for the prevention of PD. The challenges associated with the collection, storage, and modelling of diverse big data for PD precision medicine and healthcare are also summarized. Future perspectives on systems modelling and intelligent medicine for PD monitoring, diagnosis, treatment, and healthcare are discussed in the end.

Objective To investigate the relationship between the volume of left atrial appendage and recurrence of atrial fibrillation(AF)after radiofrequency ablation. Methods In this retrospective cohort study, 66 cases of first atrial fibrillation radiofrequency catheter ablation in the Department of cardiovascular medicine of the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University were enrolled from June 2014 to June 2016 and divided into the recurrence group(n=18)and the non recurrent group(n=48)based on the 1 year follow-up results ,Collecting the patient's clinical data and following up.64 layers of spiral CT scans were performed for all patients before operation,and the volume of left atrium( LAV)and left atrial appendage volume(LAAV)were measured. The general data ,laboratory examinationresults ,echocardiographic parameters and left atrial CT parameters of two groups were compared. The relationship between patient parameters and recurrence of atrial fibrillation after radio-frequency ablation were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analysis. Results There was no significant difference in blood lipid and left ventricular ejection fraction(LVEF%)between the two groups in terms of sex, age ,hypertension ,coronary heart disease and other common diseases (P > 0.05).The volume of left atrial appendage and left atrial volume in the recurrent group were larger than those in the non recurrence group (P <0.05). The left atrial appendage volume(OR=1.518,95%CI:1.151-2.000,P = 0.003)can be used as an independent risk factor for postoperative recurrence of atrial fibrillation. The area under the ROC curve of left atrial appendage volume in predicting the recurrence of atrial fibrillation after radiofrequency ablation is 0.806(95%CI:0.689-0.922 ,P < 0.001). Conclusion Greater left ventricular volume is an independent risk factor for recurrence of atrial fibrillation after radiofrequency catheter ablation ,whether in paroxysmal atrial fibrillation or persistent atrial fibrillation.

The nursing students of Grade 2009 to Grade 2016 were selected.Their skills,midterm,usual and final performances as well as comprehensive scores of normal human morphology course were analyzed by one-way ANOVA in combination with different stages of curriculum integration in order to compare the teaching effect between traditional teaching mode + evaluation system and mixed teaching mode + formative evaluation in the course of normal human morphology.Statistical analysis by SPSS 17.0 showed that the average score of formation stage (traditional teaching mode) was 67.55 ± 12.72,the average score of integration stage (mixed teaching mode) was 72.79 ± 10.93 and the average score of development stage (formative evaluation +mixed teaching mode) was 83.94 ± 9.58.After making comparisons,the P values of ANOVA of the course of normal human body morphology in all stages were all less than 0.001,having statistical significance.The results showed that the overall development of the curriculum is becoming mature and the new teaching model can help students who usually do not like to review.

Objective:To investigate the knowledge, attitude and practice status of ophthalmic nurses on prevention and control of intraocular infection in grade Ⅲ class A hospitals.Methods:A self-made questionnaire was used to investigate the knowledge, attitude and practice of 236 nurses on prevention and control of intraocular infection in the ophthalmology department of 8 grade Ⅲ class A hospitals in Zhengzhou from January to June 2020. The correlation between the knowledge, attitude and practice were analyzed by Pearson correlation analysis and the influencing factors of each term were analyzed by multivariate Logistic regression.Results:The scores of knowledge, attitude, practice of all nurses were (26.08 ± 2.46), (67.45 ± 8.48), (50.31 ± 6.67) points, and the scoring rate were (87.0 ± 8.2)%, (84.3 ± 10.1)%, (83.9 ± 9.8)%, respectively. The scores of each dimension of knowledge, attitude and practice were significantly positively correlated ( r values were 0.26-0.42, all P<0.05), respectively. Multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that education background, professional title and training experience of infection were the influencing factors of knowledge score ( P<0.05), education background, professional title, training experience of infection and demand were the influencing factors of attitude score ( P<0.05), and nursing age and work post were the influencing factors of practice score ( P<0.05). Conclusions:The level of knowledge, attitude and practice of ophthalmic nurses in grade Ⅲ class A hospitals on prevention and control of intraocular infection is overall good. Hospital management department still needs to make reasonable management countermeasures according to personnel characteristics to improve the knowledge, attitude and practice level of ophthalmic nurses and to reduce post-operative intraocular infection.

The efficient clinical treatment of oral squamous cell carcinoma(OSCC)is still a challenge that demands the development of effective new drugs.Phenformin has been shown to produce more potent anti-tumor activities than metformin on different tumors,however,not much is known about the influence of phenformin on OSCC cells.We found that phenformin suppresses OSCC cell proliferation,and promotes OSCC cell autophagy and apoptosis to significantly inhibit OSCC cell growth both in vivo and in vitro.RNA-seq analysis revealed that autophagy pathways were the main targets of phenformin and identified two new targets DDIT4(DNA damage inducible transcript 4)and NIBAN1(niban apoptosis regulator 1).We found that phenformin significantly induces the expression of both DDIT4 and NIBAN1 to promote OSCC autophagy.Further,the enhanced expression of DDIT4 and NIBAN1 elicited by phenformin was not blocked by the knockdown of AMPK but was suppressed by the knockdown of transcription factor ATF4(activation transcription factor 4),which was induced by phenformin treatment in OSCC cells.Mechanistically,these results revealed that phenformin triggers endoplasmic reticulum(ER)stress to activate PERK(protein kinase R-like ER kinase),which phosphorylates the transitional initial factor eIF2,and the increased phosphorylation of eIF2 leads to the increased translation of ATF4.In summary,we discovered that phenformin induces its new targets DDIT4 and especially NIBAN1 to promote autophagic and apoptotic cell death to suppress OSCC cell growth.Our study supports the potential clinical utility of phenformin for OSCC treatment in the future.

Objective:To explore the risk factors of microvascular invasion (MVI) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and to predict MVI preoperatively, non-invasively and accurately.Methods:A total of 150 HCC patients (183 HCC lesions) were retrospectively collected in the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi′an Jiaotong University from January 2016 to June 2022.The clinical data and hematological data, gray-scale ultrasonography (US), contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS), enhanced magnetic resonance imaging with gadolinium ethoxybenzyl diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (EOB-MRI) and pathological data of these patients were recorded. According to the pathological diagnosis of MVI, the lesions were divided into MVI (+ ) group and MVI (-) group. The indicators between the two groups were compared. All 183 lesions were put into the training set, and the prediction model with nomogram was constructed according to the risk factors of MVI selected by multivariate Logistic regression. The internal verification was carried out by ten-fold cross-validation method.Results:There were significant statistical differences in the following parameters between MVI (+ ) group ( n=109) and MVI (-) group ( n=74) (all P<0.05). These were cirrhosis, serological parameters (alpha-fetoprotein, albumin, total bilirubin), qualitative indexes of US (size, boundary, internal echo), qualitative indexes of CEUS (hyper/iso/hypovascularity of lesions in arterial phase, portal phase, and delayed phase compared with hepatic parenchyma), and quantitative indexes of EOB-MRI [post enhancement rate (post ratio) and gadolinium disodium rate (EOB ratio)] calculated mainly in terms of lesions and surrounding liver parenchyma in hepatobiliary phase and unenhanced T1 images). Finally, cirrhosis of patients, the size, boundary, internal echo of lesions in US; arterial phase (AP), portal phase (PP), post-vascular phase (PVP) features in CEUS; the EOB rate and post rate of EOB-MRI entered the prediction model of MVI. The training set exhibited good calibration and net gain rate. The areas under the ROC curve for the training set and the validation set were 0.981 and 0.961, respectively, while the diagnostic accuracy were 92.9% and 85.8%, respectively. Conclusions:The model constructed mainly by multimodality imaging methods can achieve favorable predictive performance for MVI, which provides valuable ideas for noninvasively predicting the incidence of MVI and optimizing the MVI-related treatment of MVI in HCC patients.

Objective To study the antioxidant activities and chemical compositions of Thymus quinque-costatus Celak ( dijiao ) . Methods The antioxidant activities of five polar fractions of dijiao were screened and evaluated using DPPH and ABTS free radical scavenging assays. After the chemical compo-sitions were separated and purified by using silica gel chromatography, Sephadex LH-20 chromatography and MCI GEL CHP-20P column chromatography, the chemical compositions were identified by MS and NMR spectrometers, and records of literature. Results From the EtOAc and n-BuOH fractions which showed high antioxidant activity, total 18 compositions were separated and identified: scutellarin (“1 ”short for peak No. 1, the same below), scutellarein (2), 5,6,7-trihydroxy-4′-methoxyflavone (3), xanthomicrol (4), apigenin (5), 4′-methoxyluteolin (6), luteolin-7-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (7), lute-olin (8),and rutin (9), danshensu (10), vanillic acid (11), protocatechuic acid (12), chlorogenic acid (13), caffeic acid (14), ferulic acid (15), 2,6-dihydroxy-4-isopropylphenyl-β-D-glucopyranoside(16), olenolic cid (17) and daucosterol (18). Conclusion The composition 1,2, 3 and 16 were the first reported in the genus Thymus, and 4~8, 10~12, 14~15 and 17~18 were found first in dijiao.

Objective To explore the efficacy and safety of platelet-derived growth factor(PDGF)combined with allograft bone transplantation in the treatment of spinal tuberculosis.Methods A total of 177 patients with lumbar tuberculosis admitted to the 4th People's Hospital of Qinghai Province from August 2018 to August 2023 were selected as the research subjects.Patients were divided into control group(n=49)and observation group(n=128)based on the source of the transplanted bone.All patients underwent at least 2 weeks of standard quadruple anti-tuberculosis chemotherapy before surgery.Patients in the control group received PDGF combined with autograft bone transplantation,while patients in the observation group received PDGF combined with allograft bone transplantation.The surgical duration,intraoperative blood loss,and length of hospital stay of patients in the two groups were recorded;the erythrocyte sedimentation rate(ESR)and serum C-reactive protein(CRP)levels of patients in the two groups were compared before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery.Preoperative CT and magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)examinations were performed,and postoperative CT and MRI were performed after bone fusion was completed to compare the changes in Cobb angle before and after surgery.The visual analogue scale(VAS)was used to assess the pain degree in the lumbar region before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery.The VAS scores of patients in the two groups,VAS scores of male patients in the two groups,and VAS scores of female patients in the two groups were compared before and after surgery,respectively.Results There was no statistically significant difference in surgical duration and length of hospital stay between the observation group and the control group(P＞0.05).The intraoperative blood loss of patients in the observation group was significantly less than that in the control group(P＜0.05).There was no statistically significant difference in Cobb angle before and after surgery between the two groups(P＞0.05).The postoperative Cobb angle significantly decreased in both groups when compared to preoperative values(P＜0.05).The VAS scores of patients in both groups decreased sequentially before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery,with statistically significant differences in intra-group pairwise comparisons(P＜0.05).The VAS scores of male patients in both groups decreased sequentially before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery,with statistically significant differences in intra-group pairwise comparisons(P＜0.05).The VAS scores of female patients in both groups also decreased sequentially before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery,with statistically significant differences in intra-group pairwise comparisons(P＜0.05).There was no statistically significant difference in VAS scores between the observation group and the control group before surgery and at 1,6 months after surgery(P＞0.05);the VAS score of patients in the observation group was significantly lower than that in the control group at 3 months after surgery(P＜0.05).There was no statistically significant difference in VAS scores between male patients in the observation group and male patients in the control group before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery(P＞0.05);the VAS score of male patients in the observation group was significantly lower than that in the control group at 3 months after surgery(P＜0.05).There was no statistically significant difference in VAS scores between female patients in the observation group and female patients in the control group before surgery and at 1,6 months after surgery(P＞0.05);the VAS score of female patients in the observation group was significantly lower than that in the control group at 3 months after surgery(P＜0.05).The ESR of patients in both groups decreased sequentially before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery,with statistically significant differences in intra-group pairwise comparisons(P＜0.05).The serum CRP levels of patients in both groups also decreased sequentially before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery,with statistically significant differences in intra-group pairwise comparisons(P＜0.05).There was no statistically significant difference in ESR between the observation group and the control group before surgery and at 1,3,6 months after surgery(P＞0.05).There was no statistically significant difference in serum CRP level between the observation group and the control group before surgery and at 1,6 months after surgery(P＞0.05);the serum CRP level of patients in the observation group was significantly higher than that in the control group at 3 months after surgery(P＜0.05).Conclusion The effect of PDGF combined with allograft bone transplantation in the treatment of spinal tuberculosis is comparable to that of autograft bone transplantation,but PDGF combined with allograft bone transplantation can significantly reduce postoperative pain degree,improve patient comfort,avoid additional damage caused by autograft bone transplantation,and reduce the physical burden on patients.It can be considered a safe and reliable surgical method for bone grafting in lumbar tuberculosis surgery.