This study aims to investigate the effect of Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula on the neuroinflammation of rats with insomnia complicated with depression through the regulation of triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2(TREM2)/complement protein C1q signaling pathway. Rats were randomly divided into a normal group, a model group, a positive drug group, as well as a high, medium, and low-dose groups of Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula, with 10 rats in each group. Except for the normal group, the other groups were injected with p-chlorophenylalanine and exposed to chronic unpredictable mild stress to establish the rat model of insomnia complicated with depression. The sucrose preference experiment, open field experiment, and water maze test were performed to evaluate the depression in rats. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was employed to detect serum 5-hydroxytryptamine(5-HT), dopamine(DA), and norepinephrine(NE) levels. Hematoxylin and eosin staining and Nissl staining were used to observe the damage in nucleus accumbens neurons. Western blot and immunofluorescence were performed to detect TREM2, C1q, postsynaptic density 95(PSD-95), and synaptophysin 1(SYN1) expressions in rat nucleus accumbens, respectively. Golgi-Cox staining was utilized to observe the synaptic spine density of nucleus accumbens neurons. The results show that, compared with the model group, Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula can significantly increase the sucrose preference as well as the distance and number of voluntary activities, shorten the immobility time in forced swimming test and the successful incubation period of positioning navigation, and prolong the stay time of space exploration in the target quadrant test. The serum 5-HT, DA, and NE contents in the model group are significantly lower than those in the normal group, with the above contents significantly increased after the intervention of Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula. In addition, Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula can alleviate pathological damages such as swelling and loose arrangement of tissue cells in the nucleus accumbens, while increasing the Nissl body numbers. Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula can improve synaptic damage in the nucleus accumbens and increase the synaptic spine density. Compared to the normal group, the expression of C1q protein was significantly higher in the model group, while the expression of TREM2 protein was significantly lower. Compared to the model group, the intervention with Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula significantly downregulated the expression of C1q protein and significantly upregulated the expression of TREM2. Compared with the model group, the PSD-95 and SYN1 fluorescence intensity is significantly increased in the groups receiving different doses of Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula. In summary, Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula can reduce the C1q protein expression, relieve the TREM2 inhibition, and promote the synapse-related proteins PSD-95 and SNY1 expression. Chaijin Jieyu Anshen Formula improves synaptic injury of the nucleus accumbens neurons, thereby treating insomnia complicated with depression.
Animals ; Male ; Rats ; Nucleus Accumbens/metabolism* ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/administration & dosage* ; Depression/complications* ; Membrane Glycoproteins/genetics* ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders/complications* ; Neurons/metabolism* ; Receptors, Immunologic/genetics* ; Signal Transduction/drug effects* ; Synapses/metabolism*

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the dynamic changes of glucocorticoid (GC) dose and the feasibility of GC discontinuation in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients under the background of Chinese medicine (CM). METHODS: This multicenter retrospective cohort study included 1,196 RA patients enrolled in the China Rheumatoid Arthritis Registry of Patients with Chinese Medicine (CERTAIN) from September 1, 2019 to December 4, 2023, who initiated GC therapy. Participants were divided into the Western medicine (WM) and integrative medicine (IM, combination of CM and WM) groups based on medication regimen. Follow-up was performed at least every 3 months to assess dynamic changes in GC dose. Changes in GC dose were analyzed by generalized estimator equation, the probability of GC discontinuation was assessed using Kaplan-Meier curve, and predictors of GC discontinuation were analyzed by Cox regression. Patients with <12 months of follow-up were excluded for the sensitivity analysis. RESULTS: Among 1,196 patients (85.4% female; median age 56.4 years), 880 (73.6%) received IM. Over a median 12-month follow-up, 34.3% (410 cases) discontinued GC, with significantly higher rates in the IM group (40.8% vs. 16.1% in WM; P<0.05). GC dose declined progressively, with IM patients demonstrating faster reductions (median 3.75 mg vs. 5.00 mg in WM at 12 months; P<0.05). Multivariate Cox analysis identified age <60 years [P<0.001, hazard ratios (HR)=2.142, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.523-3.012], IM therapy (P=0.001, HR=2.175, 95% CI: 1.369-3.456), baseline GC dose ⩽7.5 mg (P=0.003, HR=1.637, 95% CI: 1.177-2.275), and absence of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs use (P=0.001, HR=2.546, 95% CI: 1.432-4.527) as significant predictors of GC discontinuation. Sensitivity analysis (545 cases) confirmed these findings. CONCLUSIONS RA patients receiving CM face difficulties in following guideline-recommended GC discontinuation protocols. IM can promote GC discontinuation and is a promising strategy to reduce GC dependency in RA management. (Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, No. NCT05219214).
Adult ; Aged ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Arthritis, Rheumatoid/drug therapy* ; Glucocorticoids/therapeutic use* ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Retrospective Studies

Low-level patent foramen ovale nonocclusion(PFO)is a rare type of PFO in which the PFO opening is low during transcatheter closure of PFO and the distance between the PFO left atrial opening and the root of the septal side of the mitral valve is less than 9 mm,and the smallest model of the current double-disk PFO occluder(18/18)commonly used in clinical practice for low-level PFOs can touch the mitral valve,resulting in increased risk of mitral regurgitation or leaflet abrasion.The risk of mitral regurgitation or leaflet abrasion is increased,and transcatheter closure of PFO procedure can only be abandoned when encountered intraoperatively.In this article,we present a case of successful transcatheter closure of a low-level PFO using the Amplatzer ADOⅡ occluder,which provides new ideas and strategies to deel wtih this rare type of PFO.

With the ongoing epidemic of the Coronavirus disease in China and the widespread development of radiotherapy, radiation-induced lung injury has gradually become a clinical problem that has attracted much attention. The pathogenesis of radiation-induced lung injury is complex, involving an imbalance in the polarization state of alveolar macrophages and an upregulation of alveolar epithelial cell apoptosis. Previous studies have shown that vitamin C is an important antioxidant substance, and preventive use of vitamin C can effectively treat acute lung injury. However, whether prophylactic use of vitamin C can effectively prevent or treat lung injury caused by radioactive substances, and its specific molecular mechanism remains to be studied. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the prophylactic use of vitamin C to treat the alveolar macrophage cell line RAW 264. 7 and human lung epithelial cells BEAS-2B can effectively control the abnormal polarization of macrophages and the abnormal apoptosis of lung epithelial cells. This study found that after 4 weeks and 8 weeks of radioactive X-ray irradiation, the expression of macrophage M1 polarization state markers such as iNOS was significantly up-regulated (P< 0. 05), and preventive use of vitamin C to treat macrophages and lung epithelial cells can alleviate the polarization state disorder of macrophages and the apoptosis of alveolar epithelial cells caused by external radiation exposure, which is manifested in the down-regulation of the expression of Cleaved Caspase3. In addition, the preventive application of vitamin C treatment can inhibit the MAPK signaling pathway activated by external radiation exposure. Further experimental results showed that the inhibition of the MAPK pathway is the key to inhibiting the M1 polarization of macrophages and the apoptosis of lung epithelial cells. In summary, our findings suggest that vitamin C may play a protective role in acute radiation-induced lung injury by inhibiting macrophage M1 polarization/ promoting macrophage M2 polarization and alleviating alveolar epithelial cell apoptosis. This study will help to better understand the process and mechanism of the preventive effect of vitamin C, a common vitamin, on radiation-induced lung injury.

italic>Tussilago farfara L. is a perennial herb of Tussilago genus in the Compositae family. Its dried buds and leaves have good biological activities and have a long history of medicinal use in China and Europe. In this paper, we investigated the whole chloroplast genome characteristics, sequence duplication, structural variation and phylogeny of the Tussilago farfara L. After sequencing the Tussilago farfara L. chloroplast genome using Illumination technology, the complete Tussilago farfara L. chloroplast genome was further obtained by assembly and annotation, followed by a series of inverted repeat-large single copy/small single copy region contraction and expansion analysis, genome sequence variation, etc. The sequences of 13 homologous plants downloaded from NCBI were used to construct a neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree. The results showed that the total GC content of the chloroplast genome was 37.4% and the length was 150 300 bp; 125 genes were annotated, including 82 protein-coding genes, 35 tRNAs and 8 rRNAs; 148 (simple sequence repeats, SSR) loci were detected, and the relative synonymous codon usage showed that 31 codons out of 64 codons had a usage of >1. In the phylogenetic analysis, the chloroplast genomes of the seven species of Asteraceae, including the Yulin Tussilago farfara L., were highly conserved, and the sequence variation of the (large single-copy, LSC) and (small single-copy, SSC) regions was higher than that of the (inverted repeat, IR) region. This is in general agreement with the reported phylogeny of Yulin Tussilago farfara L. In this study, we obtained a high quality chloroplast genome and analyzed its genome characteristics, codon preference, SSR characteristics, SC/IR boundary, sequence variation and phylogeny, which can provide a basis for species identification, genetic diversity analysis and resource development of this medicinal plant.

Blood stasis syndrome is one of the core clinical syndrome of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but the biological connotation of this syndrome is not clear, and there is a lack of disease improved animal models that match the characteristics of this disease and syndrome. The aim of this study was to screen the candidate biomarker gene set of blood stasis syndrome of RA, reveal the biological connotation of this syndrome, and explore and evaluate the preparation method of the improved animal model based on the characteristics of "disease-syndrome-symptom". The study was approved by the ethics committee of Guang'anmen Hospital, Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No. 2019-073-KY-01) and the First Affiliated Hospital of Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No. TYLL2021[K]018), and the study subjects gave their informed consent. Animal welfare and experimental procedures followed the regulations of the Experimental Animal Ethics Committee of the Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No. IBTCMCACMS21-2207-01). The whole blood samples were collected clinically from RA patients with blood stasis syndrome (3 cases) or other syndromes (7 types, 3 cases/type), and healthy volunteers (4 cases), and then transcriptome sequencing, KEGG, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA) analysis were performed. 126 pivotal genes were screened, and their functional annotation results were significantly enriched in "immune-inflammation" related pathways and lipid metabolism regulation (sphingolipids, ether lipid metabolism and steroid biosynthesis). Syndrome-symptom mapping of hub gene set to the TCM primary and secondary symptoms, Western phenotypic symptoms and pathological links showed that joint tingling, abnormal joint morphology, petechiae and abnormal blood circulation are representative of blood stasis syndrome of RA. The results of the improved animal model showed that the rats in the collagen-induced arthritis + adrenaline hydrochloride (CIA+Adr) 3 model group had increased blood rheology, coagulation, platelet function and endothelial function abnormalities compared with the CIA-alone model group, suggesting that the rats with blood stasis syndrome of RA may be in a state of "blood stasis". The results of the study can help to advance the objective study of the evidence of blood stasis syndrome in RA, and provide new ideas for the establishment of an animal model that reflects the clinical characteristics of the disease and syndrome.

Gouty arthritis is a type of metabolic rheumatic disease caused by autoimmune abnormalities. Currently, the use of Western medicine in the clinical treatment of gouty arthritis has been associated with a high risk of adverse reactions. Therefore, there is a growing interest in exploring therapeutic drugs from traditional Chinese medicine as a potential alternative. According to the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, gouty arthritis has been classified as damp-heat arthralgia syndrome. Shirebi granules has been found to have good clinical efficacy in treating gouty arthritis. However, its underlying pharmacological mechanisms remain unclear. To address this problem, the study first established the interaction network of candidate targets for Shirebi granules, which is used to treat damp-heat syndrome of gouty arthritis. Then, the key candidate targets of Shirebi granules for treating gouty arthritis with damp-heat syndrome were screened by calculating the topological features of the network nodes. Then, the functional mining of the key candidate targets revealed that the candidate targets of Shirebi granules may intervene in the biological process of inflammatory response and lipid metabolism through the crosstalk of Wnt/β-catenin signaling. To verify the effectiveness of Shirebi granules in treating gouty arthritis with damp-heat syndrome, a rat model was established. The results demonstrated that the granules significantly improved the severity of arthritis in rats with this condition, reduced joint inflammation, gait score, swelling index, increased mechanical pain threshold (P < 0.05), and reduced the content of serum inflammatory factors IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α in gouty arthritis rats with damp-heat syndrome (P < 0.01) gouty. It was also found that Shirebi granules effectively alleviated the symptoms of dampness heat syndrome such as local joint fever and dry mouth by reducing the temperature of the joints in acute gouty arthritis with damp-heat syndrome (AD) rats, increasing the threshold of heat pain, increasing water intake (P < 0.01), and inhibiting abnormal changes in the content of fatty acid oxidation related enzymes (P < 0.01). Western blot analysis showed that Shirebi granules increased the protein expression levels of Wnt and β-catenin (P < 0.01) while decreasing the protein expression of p65, p-p65 and PPARγ (P < 0.01) in rats with gouty arthritis and damp-heat syndrome. The results showed that Shirebi granules may reverse the "inflammation-immune" imbalance and lipid metabolism disorder by regulating the crosstalk of Wnt/β-catenin signaling, and play a role in alleviating the severity of the disease. This study provides a methodological reference for elucidating the pharmacological mechanisms of traditional Chinese medicine formulas. It also presents research ideas for the appropriate clinical use of Chinese patent medicines and the development of new clinical drugs for gouty arthritis therapy. The animal welfare and experiment procedures of this study were performed in accordance with the regulations of the Experimental Animal Ethics Committee of Experimental Research Center, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (grant No. ERCCACMS11-2302-08).

Objective To explore the effect and safety of target controlled infusion mode based on precision anesthesia concept in cardiac surgery anesthesia.Methods A total of 100 patients underwent cardiac surgery in our hospital were selected as the research subjects,and they were randomly divided into the control group and the observation group,with 50 cases in each group.The surgical types,surgical related indicators,dosage of anesthetic drugs,and complications of the two groups were compared.Results There was no statistically significant difference in the proportions of patients who underwent coronary artery bypass surgery,valve surgery,macrovascular surgery,artial septal defect repair surgery,or other types of surgery between the two groups(P>0.05).There were statistically significant differences in the surgical time,bleeding volume,infusion volume,proportion of cardiopulmonary bypass,times of postoperative analgesic drug use and mechanical ventilation duration between the two groups(P<0.05).The usage of various anesthetic drugs in the observation group was lower than that in the control group,with statistically significant difference(P<0.05).The incidence of complication in the observation group was lower than that in the control group,and the difference was statistically significant(P<0.05).Conclusion The target controlled infusion mode based on precision anesthesia concept can be used for cardiac surgery anesthesia to reduce the dosage of anesthetic drugs and postoperative complications,and improve the anesthesia effect and surgical safety.

COVID-19 has been prevalent for three years. The virulence of SARS-CoV-2 is weaken as it mutates continuously. However, elderly patients, especially those with underlying diseases, are still at high risk of developing severe infections. With the continuous study of the molecular structure and pathogenic mechanism of SARS-CoV-2, antiviral drugs for COVID-19 have been successively marketed, and these anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs can effectively reduce the severe rate and mortality of elderly patients. This article reviews the mechanism, clinical medication regimens, drug interactions and adverse reactions of five small molecule antiviral drugs currently approved for marketing in China, so as to provide advice for the clinical rational use of anti-SARS-CoV-2 in the elderly.

Aim To investigate the effeot of Shenqi Fuzheng injection on the prevention of immune myocarditis induced by anti-PD-1 antibody by reducing the production of inflammatory factors and the expression of myocardial injury markers. Methods Thirty-two maie PD-1 humanized mice with C57BL/6 genetic background were randomly divided into control group, myocarditis model group, anti-PD-1 antibody group and Shenqi Fuzheng injection group (n = 8). Except the control group, mice in other groups were intraperitoneally injected with myocardial myosin heavy chain peptide (5 mg • kg