OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect and safety of Chinese medicine (CM) Fuzheng Huazhuo Decoction (FHD) in treating patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) who persistently tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). METHODS: This retrospective cohort study was conducted at Shanghai New International Expo Center shelter hospital in China between April 1 and May 30, 2022. Patients diagnosed as COVID-19 with persistently positive SARS-CoV-2 reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test results for ⩾8 days after diagnosis were enrolled. Patients in the control group received conventional Western medicine (WM) treatment, while those in the FHD group received conventional WM plus FHD for at least 3 days. The primary outcome was viral clearance time. Secondary outcomes included negative conversion rate within 14 days, length of hospital stay, cycle threshold (Ct) values of the open reading frame 1ab (ORF1ab) and nucleocapsid protein (N) genes, and incidence of new-onset symptoms during hospitalization. Adverse events (AEs) that occurred during the study period were recorded. RESULTS: A total of 1,765 eligible patients were enrolled in this study (546 in the FHD group and 1,219 in the control group). Compared with the control group, patients receiving FHD treatment showed shorter viral clearance time for nucleic acids [hazard ratio (HR): 1.500, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.353-1.664, P<0.001] and hospital stays (HR: 1.371, 95% CI: 1.238-1.519, P<0.001), and a higher negative conversion rate within 14 days (96.2% vs. 82.6%, P<0.001). The incidence of new-onset symptoms was 59.5% in the FHD group, similar to 57.8% in the control group (P>0.05). The Ct values of ORF1ab and N genes increased more rapidly over time in the FHD group than those in the control group post-randomization (ORF1ab gene: β =0.436±0.053, P<0.001; N gene: β =0.415 ±0.053, P<0.001). The incidence of AEs in the FHD group was lower than that in the control group (24.2% vs. 35.4%, P<0.001). No serious AEs were observed. CONCLUSION FHD was effective and safe for patients with persistently positive SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests. (Registration No. ChiCTR2200063956).
Humans ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/adverse effects* ; Retrospective Studies ; Male ; Female ; Middle Aged ; COVID-19 Drug Treatment ; SARS-CoV-2/drug effects* ; COVID-19/virology* ; Adult ; Aged ; Treatment Outcome

OBJECTIVE: Baicalein has been reported to have wide therapeutic effects that act through its anti-inflammatory activity. This study examines the effect and mechanism of baicalein on sepsis-induced cardiomyopathy (SIC). METHODS: A thorough screening of a small library of natural products, comprising 100 diverse compounds, was conducted to identify the most effective drug against lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-treated H9C2 cardiomyocytes. The core target proteins and their associated signaling pathways involved in baicalein's efficacy against LPS-induced myocardial injury were predicted by network pharmacology. RESULTS: Baicalein was identified as the most potent protective agent in LPS-exposed H9C2 cardiomyocytes. It exhibited a dose-dependent inhibitory effect on cell injury and inflammation. In the LPS-induced septic mouse model, baicalein demonstrated a significant capacity to mitigate LPS-triggered myocardial deficits, inflammatory responses, and ferroptosis. Network pharmacological analysis and experimental confirmation suggested that hypoxia-inducible factor 1 subunit α (HIF1-α) is likely to be the crucial factor in mediating the impact of baicalein against LPS-induced myocardial ferroptosis and injury. By combining microRNA (miRNA) screening in LPS-treated myocardium with miRNA prediction targeting HIF1-α, we found that miR-299b-5p may serve as a regulator of HIF1-α. The reduction in miR-299b-5p levels in LPS-treated myocardium, compared to the control group, was reversed by baicalein treatment. The reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction, Western blotting, and dual-luciferase reporter gene analyses together identified HIF1-α as the target of miR-299b-5p in cardiomyocytes. CONCLUSION Baicalein mitigates SIC at the miRNA level, suggesting the therapeutic potential of it in treating SIC through the regulation of miR-299b-5p/HIF1-α/ferroptosis pathway. Please cite this article as: Zhou WY, Du JK, Liu HH, Deng L, Ma K, Xiao J, Zhang S, Wang CN. Baicalein attenuates lipopolysaccharide-induced myocardial injury by inhibiting ferroptosis via miR-299b-5p/HIF1-α pathway. J Integr Med. 2025; 23(5):560-575.
Flavanones/pharmacology* ; Animals ; MicroRNAs/genetics* ; Lipopolysaccharides ; Hypoxia-Inducible Factor 1, alpha Subunit/genetics* ; Ferroptosis/drug effects* ; Mice ; Myocytes, Cardiac/metabolism* ; Signal Transduction/drug effects* ; Rats ; Male ; Mice, Inbred C57BL ; Cardiomyopathies/etiology* ; Cell Line ; Sepsis/complications*

OBJECTIVE: To investigate chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection's effect on gestational liver function, pregnancy and delivery complications, and neonatal development. METHODS: A total of 157 HCV antibody-positive (anti-HCV[+]) and HCV RNA(+) patients (Group C) and 121 anti-HCV(+) and HCV RNA(-) patients (Group B) were included as study participants, while 142 anti-HCV(-) and HCV RNA(-) patients (Group A) were the control group. Data on biochemical indices during pregnancy, pregnancy complications, delivery-related information, and neonatal complications were also collected. RESULTS: Elevated alanine aminotransferase (ALT) rates in Group C during early, middle, and late pregnancy were 59.87%, 43.95%, and 42.04%, respectively-significantly higher than Groups B (26.45%, 15.70%, 10.74%) and A (23.94%, 19.01%, 6.34%) ( P < 0.05). Median ALT levels in Group C were significantly higher than in Groups A and B at all pregnancy stages ( P < 0.05). No significant differences were found in neonatal malformation rates across groups ( P > 0.05). However, neonatal jaundice incidence was significantly greater in Group C (75.16%) compared to Groups A (42.25%) and B (57.02%) ( χ ² = 33.552, P < 0.001). HCV RNA positivity during pregnancy was an independent risk factor for neonatal jaundice ( OR = 2.111, 95% CI 1.242-3.588, P = 0.006). CONCLUSIONS Chronic HCV infection can affect the liver function of pregnant women, but does not increase the pregnancy or delivery complication risks. HCV RNA(+) is an independent risk factor for neonatal jaundice.
Humans ; Female ; Pregnancy ; Adult ; Pregnancy Complications, Infectious/epidemiology* ; Retrospective Studies ; Pregnancy Outcome ; Infant, Newborn ; Viremia/virology* ; Hepatitis C ; Hepacivirus/physiology* ; Hepatitis C, Chronic/virology* ; Young Adult ; Alanine Transaminase/blood*

Objective To investigate the clinical application value of colorectal double contrast-enhanced ultrasonography in diagnosing colorectal lesions and TN staging of colorectal cancer.Methods The clinical data of 479 patients with positive colorectal doulble contrast-enhanced ultrasonography results admitted to some hospital from November 2019 to December 2022 were selected retrospectively.The distributions of colorectal lesions and TN stages of colorectal cancer diagnosed by colorectal double contrast-enhanced ultrasonography were counted using the pathological results as the gold standard.The clinical diagnostic efficacy of colorectal double contrast-enhanced ultrasonography for TN staging of colorectal cancer was analyzed,and the ROC curves of the T and N staging models for diagnosing colorectal cancer were plotted by applying the 1VSRest strategy.SAS 9.4 statistical software was used to analyze the data.Results Among the 479 patients included,there were 462 cases in which the pathological diagnosis and ultrasound diagnosis were consistent with each other,with a compliance rate of 96.5％;there were 427 cases of colorectal cancer,accounting for 89.1％.Colorectal double contrast-enhanced ultrasonography had the accuracies being 96％,82％,63％,79％and 97％respectively for T1,T2,T3,T4a and T4b stages of colorectal cancer,with the micro-mean value of the accuracy being 83％.The accuracies were 62％,68％and 80％for NO,N1 and N2 stages of colorectal cancer,with the micro-mean value of the accuracy being 70％.The micro-mean value for T staing model to diagnose colorectal cancer was 0.92,and the macro-mean value was 0.84;the micro-mean value for N staing model to diagnose colorectal cancer was 0.88,and the macro-mean value was 0.85.Conclusion Colorectal doube contrast-enhanced ultrasonography is effective for diagnosing colorectal lesions,and provides references for TN staging of colorectal cancer.[Chinese Medical Equipment Journal,2024,45(7):62-66]

Objective To investigate the clinical characteristics and prognosis of pneumococcal meningitis(PM),and drug sensitivity of Streptococcus pneumoniae(SP)isolates in Chinese children.Methods A retrospective analysis was conducted on clinical information,laboratory data,and microbiological data of 160 hospitalized children under 15 years old with PM from January 2019 to December 2020 in 33 tertiary hospitals across the country.Results Among the 160 children with PM,there were 103 males and 57 females.The age ranged from 15 days to 15 years,with 109 cases(68.1% )aged 3 months to under 3 years.SP strains were isolated from 95 cases(59.4% )in cerebrospinal fluid cultures and from 57 cases(35.6% )in blood cultures.The positive rates of SP detection by cerebrospinal fluid metagenomic next-generation sequencing and cerebrospinal fluid SP antigen testing were 40% (35/87)and 27% (21/78),respectively.Fifty-five cases(34.4% )had one or more risk factors for purulent meningitis,113 cases(70.6% )had one or more extra-cranial infectious foci,and 18 cases(11.3% )had underlying diseases.The most common clinical symptoms were fever(147 cases,91.9% ),followed by lethargy(98 cases,61.3% )and vomiting(61 cases,38.1% ).Sixty-nine cases(43.1% )experienced intracranial complications during hospitalization,with subdural effusion and/or empyema being the most common complication[43 cases(26.9% )],followed by hydrocephalus in 24 cases(15.0% ),brain abscess in 23 cases(14.4% ),and cerebral hemorrhage in 8 cases(5.0% ).Subdural effusion and/or empyema and hydrocephalus mainly occurred in children under 1 year old,with rates of 91% (39/43)and 83% (20/24),respectively.SP strains exhibited complete sensitivity to vancomycin(100% ,75/75),linezolid(100% ,56/56),and meropenem(100% ,6/6).High sensitivity rates were also observed for levofloxacin(81% ,22/27),moxifloxacin(82% ,14/17),rifampicin(96% ,25/26),and chloramphenicol(91% ,21/23).However,low sensitivity rates were found for penicillin(16% ,11/68)and clindamycin(6% ,1/17),and SP strains were completely resistant to erythromycin(100% ,31/31).The rates of discharge with cure and improvement were 22.5% (36/160)and 66.2% (106/160),respectively,while 18 cases(11.3% )had adverse outcomes.Conclusions Pediatric PM is more common in children aged 3 months to under 3 years.Intracranial complications are more frequently observed in children under 1 year old.Fever is the most common clinical manifestation of PM,and subdural effusion/emphysema and hydrocephalus are the most frequent complications.Non-culture detection methods for cerebrospinal fluid can improve pathogen detection rates.Adverse outcomes can be noted in more than 10% of PM cases.SP strains are high sensitivity to vancomycin,linezolid,meropenem,levofloxacin,moxifloxacin,rifampicin,and chloramphenicol.[Chinese Journal of Contemporary Pediatrics,2024,26(2):131-138]

Objective:To assess the efficacy of different fusion strategies involving the convolutional block attention module (CBAM) and Unet for automatic pancreas segmentation in enhanced CT images of patients with acute pancreatitis.Methods:A retrospective analysis was conducted on 1 158 patients with acute pancreatitis admitted to the Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College between January 1st, 2016 and July 30th, 2021. Among them, 141 patients with first-episode acute pancreatitis were randomly categorized into mild, moderate, and severe cases. The test set comprised 5 mild and 15 severe cases, while the remaining 126 cases were used for training. Within the training set, 20% of the data was randomly allocated as the validation set. Different fusion paths of the CBAM and Unet networks were trained, utilizing the Dice similarity coefficient, Hausdorff distance (HD), and pixel accuracy (PA) as evaluation metrics. The model demonstrating the best performance on the validation set was selected and evaluated on the test set. Additionally, the Unet model was combined with the attention gate attention mechanism (AttentionUnet) in the skip connection, and the ResBlock replaced the original convolution module (ResUnet) in the Unet network. Moreover, the skip connection branch module of feature extraction was integrated with CBAM (ResUnet_CBAM) for comparison.Results:Unet_CBAM achieved better results on the test set with a Dice value of 80.06%, a HD value of 3.765 9 and a PA value of 0.992 3, all surpassing other fusion strategies. The segmentation accuracy of the pancreatic region in CT images of acute pancreatitis patients was notably enhanced compared to Unet and its related variant networks.Conclusions:The Unet network integrated into CBAM after skip connection can better perform pancreatic segmentation on enhanced CT images of patients with acute pancreatitis and can effectively improve the efficiency of relevant personnel in pancreatic segmentation on enhanced CT images of patients with acute pancreatitis.

Objective To explore characteristics of clinical parameters and cytokines in patients with drug-induced liver injury(DILI)caused by different drugs and their correlation with clinical indicators. Method The study was conducted on patients who were up to Review of Uncertainties in Confidence Assessment for Medical Tests(RUCAM)scoring criteria and clinically diagnosed with DILI.Based on Chinese herbal medicine,cardiovascular drugs,non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs(NSAIDs),anti-infective drugs,and other drugs,patients were divided into five groups.Cytokines were measured by Luminex technology.Baseline characteristics of clinical biochemical indicators and cytokines in DILI patients and their correlation were analyzed. Results 73 patients were enrolled.Age among five groups was statistically different(P=0.032).Alanine aminotransferase(ALT)(P=0.033)and aspartate aminotransferase(AST)(P=0.007)in NSAIDs group were higher than those in chinese herbal medicine group.Interleukin-6(IL-6)and tumor necrosis factor alpha(TNF-α)in patients with Chinese herbal medicine(IL-6:P<0.001;TNF-α:P<0.001)and cardiovascular medicine(IL-6:P=0.020;TNF-α:P=0.001)were lower than those in NSAIDs group.There was a positive correlation between ALT(r=0.697,P=0.025),AST(r=0.721,P=0.019),and IL-6 in NSAIDs group. Conclusion Older age may be more prone to DILI.Patients with NSAIDs have more severe liver damage in early stages of DILI,TNF-α and IL-6 may partake the inflammatory process of DILI.

Objective To describe the distribution characteristics of knee and ankle joint range of motion and muscle atrophy related indexes in patients with Kashin-Beck disease(KBD)in Shaanxi Province so as to explore the correlation of knee and ankle joint range of motion(ROM)with muscle atrophy indexes and provide reference for clinical characteristics analysis of KBD patients.Methods To investigate the registered KBD patients from KBD areas in Shaanxi Province,we measured the general demographic data of the patients were collected and the ROM of the knee joint(flexion and extension),the ankle joint(dorsiflexion and plantar flexion),and the muscle atrophy related indexes such as the upper arm circumference,thigh circumference,calf circumference and grip strength.According to the population characteristics,i.e.,gender,age,body mass index(BMI)and KBD grade,the median and quartile of joint ROM and muscle atrophy of KBD patients were reported,and then the differences in each index among different groups were analyzed.Partial correlation analysis was used to explore the correlation between indicators after controlling for variables such as gender,age and BMI.Results A total of 480 patients with KBD were investigated in this study,who consisted of 249(51.9％)males and 231(48.1％)females,with an average age of(63.10±7.32)years and an average BMI of(23.49±8.90)kg/m2.The knee flexion ROM,knee extension ROM,ankle dorsiflexion ROM and ankle plantar flexion ROM were[105.0(95.0,120.0)]°,[0.0(-15.0,0.0)]°,[5.0(0.0,15.0)]° and[20.0(15.0,30.0)]°,respectively,in KBD patients in Shaanxi Province.The left thigh circumference,right thigh circumference,left calf circumference,right calf circumference,and upper arm circumference were[43.0(40.0,47.0)]cm,[43.0(39.0,47.0)]cm,[29.0(27.0,32.0)]cm,[29.5(27.0,32.0)]cm,[27.0(25.0,30.0)]cm,respectively.The left hand grip strength and right hand grip strength were[13.4(9.5,18.4)]kg and[13.9(9.8,18.2)]kg,respectively.With the increase of age,the extension range of the left and right knee joints of KBD patients showed a decreasing trend(H=31.499,31.847;all P＜0.001).The range of motion of bilateral knee flexion was higher in the normal BMI group than in the overweight or obese group,with statistically significant differences(H=7.753,12.333;P=0.021,0.002).The knee flexion,thigh circumference,and calf circumference of the left and right sides showed a decreasing trend under different KBD grades(H=14.345,17.256,8.000,8.462,8.558,9.633;all P＜0.05).Correlation analysis showed that knee flexion ROM was positively correlated with thigh circumference,calf circumference,and grip strength in patients with KBD(all P＜0.05).There was a positive correlation between knee extension ROM and thigh circumference in patients with KBD(P＜0.01).Conclusion The impaired joint ROM and muscle atrophy are serious in KBD patients in Shaanxi Province,and there is a correlation between joint motion and muscle atrophy.

Objective:To explore the differential impact of the alignment between service capability and job satisfaction on job performance among primary general practitioner,and to provide a reference for enhancing their job performance.Methods:A survey was conducted with 620 primary general practitioner using questionnaires.The relationships among service capability,job satisfaction,and job performance were analyzed using polynomial regression and response surface analysis methods.Results:Under the condition of"service capability—job satisfaction alignment,"compared to the scenario of"low service capability—low job satisfaction,"primary general practitioner with"high service capability—high job satisfaction"demonstrated significantly higher job performance(a1=0.875,P＜0.001;a2=-0.068,P＞0.05).In the misalignment condition,compared to"low service capability—high job satisfaction,"those with"high service capability—low job satisfaction"also showed higher job performance(a3=0.265,P＜0.001;a4=-0.064,P＞0.05).Conclusion:Both service capability and job satisfaction significantly influence job performance among primary general practitioner,with service capability being a key factor for achieving high work performance.It is essential to enhance the service capability of primary general practitioner and adopt multiple strategies to improve job satisfaction,thereby effectively boosting work performance.

Patients with severe trauma require an extremely timely treatment and transfusion plays an irreplaceable role in the emergency treatment of such patients. An increasing number of evidence-based medicinal evidences and clinical practices suggest that patients with severe traumatic bleeding benefit from early transfusion of low-titer group O whole blood or hemostatic resuscitation with red blood cells, plasma and platelet of a balanced ratio. However, the current domestic mode of blood supply cannot fully meet the requirements of timely and effective blood transfusion for emergency treatment of patients with severe trauma in clinical practice. In order to solve the key problems in blood supply and blood transfusion strategies for emergency treatment of severe trauma, Branch of Clinical Transfusion Medicine of Chinese Medical Association, Group for Trauma Emergency Care and Multiple Injuries of Trauma Branch of Chinese Medical Association, Young Scholar Group of Disaster Medicine Branch of Chinese Medical Association organized domestic experts of blood transfusion medicine and trauma treatment to jointly formulate Chinese expert consensus on blood support mode and blood transfusion strategies for emergency treatment of severe trauma patients ( version 2024). Based on the evidence-based medical evidence and Delphi method of expert consultation and voting, 10 recommendations were put forward from two aspects of blood support mode and transfusion strategies, aiming to provide a reference for transfusion resuscitation in the emergency treatment of severe trauma and further improve the success rate of treatment of patients with severe trauma.