1.Construction and Evaluation of Mouse Model of Qi Deficiency and Phlegm Dampness Syndrome
Qichun ZHOU ; Gangxing ZHU ; Yongchun ZOU ; Baoyi LAN ; Zhanyu CUI ; Xi WANG ; Mengfei XU ; Qing TANG ; Sumei WANG
Chinese Journal of Experimental Traditional Medical Formulae 2026;32(4):138-146
ObjectiveQi deficiency and phlegm dampness syndrome is a common type of clinical traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) syndrome. However, there is no standard, scientific, and accurate report on the construction of animal models of Qi deficiency and phlegm dampness syndrome. This study aims to construct a mouse model of Qi deficiency and phlegm dampness syndrome by using a multi-factor composite modeling method and to evaluate the model. MethodsTwenty-one C57BL/6 mice were randomly divided into three groups with seven mice in each group, which were the normal group, model group, and Shenling Baizhusan (SLBZ) group. The control group was fed with ordinary diet and kept in a normal environment. The model group and SLBZ group were fed with a high-fat diet in a high-humidity environment. Swimming with heavy weights until exhaustion and gavage with cold water or lard were used to establish the mouse model of Qi deficiency and phlegm dampness syndrome. In order to test the syndrome by prescription, mice in the SLBZ group were treated with SLBZ for 14 days after model construction. The exhaustive swimming time, body weight, serum lipid levels, tongue changes, "Qi deficiency and phlegm dampness" assessment scale score, and cecal index of mice in each group were measured. The feces of each group of mice were sent for metagenomics and metabolome sequencing, and the changes in intestinal flora and metabolites were analyzed. ResultsAfter the modeling of Qi deficiency and phlegm dampness syndrome, the exhaustive swimming time of mice was obviously shortened (P<0.01). The serum total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein cholesterol, and non-high density lipoprotein cholesterol of mice were significantly increased (all P<0.01). The tongue of mice was significantly different from that of the normal group, and the score of the assessment scale was significantly higher than that of the control group (P<0.01). Cecal index decreased significantly (P<0.01). The serum lipid level, tongue image, assessment scale score, and cecal index were reversed in the SLBZ group. Metagenomic and metabolome sequencing results showed that intestinal flora and fecal metabolites were significantly changed in mice with Qi deficiency and phlegm dampness syndrome. Akkermansia_muciniphila, Faecalibaculum_rodentium, Eubacterium_plexicaudatum, Eubacterium sp 14_2, Candida glabrata, Romboutsia_ilealis, Turicibacter sp TS3, and other bacteria had significant changes, and the expressions of intestinal metabolites such as chenodeoxycholic acid, choline, L-phenylalanine betaine, and 2-phenylbutyric acid were significantly changed. Related metabolic pathways such as linoleic acid metabolism, primary bile acid biosynthesis, lysine degradation, arginine biosynthesis, and alpha-linolenic acid metabolism were affected. ConclusionThe Qi deficiency and phlegm dampness model of mice can be constructed by the multi-factor composite modeling method of high-fat diet feeding, high-humidity environment feeding, exhaustive swimming with heavy weight, and intragastric administration with cold water or lard. The blood lipid level, tongue change, score of "Qi deficiency and phlegm dampness assessment scale", cecal index, and changes in related intestinal flora and metabolites of mice can be used as key indicators for model evaluation.
2.Salidroside exerts cytoprotective effects on bone endothelial progenitor cells via the AMPK pathway in atherosclerotic mouse model
Fang JIA ; Mengfei WANG ; Sifan FEI ; Jiayi XU ; Tianhong YU ; Lin ZHU ; Min ZHOU
Acta Universitatis Medicinalis Anhui 2026;61(4):653-661
ObjectiveTo investigate the effects of salidroside (SAL) on the impaired bioactivity of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) in atherosclerotic (As) mice and the potential mechanisms regarding AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). MethodsAtherosclerosis was induced in 8-week-old male ApoE-/- mice with high-fat diet. Intragastric administration of SAL was given to one mice group to investigate the effects of SAL on aortic plaque burden, plasma NO level, the migration and angiogenic capabilities of bone marrow-derived EPCs (BM-EPCs). The proliferation, migration and vasculogenic properties of EPCs isolated from As mice were investigated in vitro. AMPK-sh-RNA or the AMPK inhibitor Compound C was used to investigate the role of AMPK/Akt/eNOS pathway in the regulatory effects of SAL. ResultsCompared with As group, NO level was significantly elevated in SAL group. The sizes of atherosclerotic plaques at the aortic root were reduced with smaller lipid cores in SAL group compared with As group. Moreover, the migration and angiogenesis capacity of EPCs markedly decreased in As mice, while SAL treatment reversed these impairments. Incubation with SAL at concentrations of 20, 40, and 80 μmol/L for 48 hours significantly promoted the proliferation, migration, and angiogenesis of EPCs. AMPK-sh-RNA transfection abrogated the 20 μmol/L SAL improvement in EPC biological activities. Western blot analysis further demonstrated that treatment with Compound C blocked the activation of AMPK/Akt/eNOS signaling pathway induced by SAL. ConclusionSAL upregulates the biological functions of EPCs through activating the AMPK/Akt/eNOS signaling pathway, thereby ameliorating EPC dysfunction during the pathological progression of atherosclerosis.
3.Advances in immunotherapy for locally advanced cervical cancer
Practical Oncology Journal 2025;39(2):157-161
Early cervical cancer can be cured through surgery,but about half of patients are already locally advanced at the time of initial diagnosis.Cisplatin-based concurrent chemoradiotherapy is the standard treatment for locally advanced cervical cancer.However,the prognosis of these patients remains poor after completing simultaneous radiotherapy and chemotherapy.The emergence of immunotherapy has dramatically improved the prognosis of patients with advanced and recurrent cervical cancer,and is gradually being combined with conventional treatments such as chemotherapy,radiotherapy and targeted therapy.Recent studies have shown that the combination of pembrolizumab and concurrent radiotherapy significantly improves the progression-free survival rate of patients with lo-cally advanced cervical cancer,without significantly increasing the incidence of toxic side effects;The combination of neoadjuvant chemotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors and surgery is expected to become a new treatment option for locally advanced cervi-cal cancer;The use of nabumolizumab immunomaintenance therapy after synchronous radiotherapy and chemotherapy may improve the survival rate and treatment efficacy of patients with locally advanced cervical cancer.This article provides a review of the progress in immunotherapy for locally advanced cervical cancer.
4.Causal relationship between periodontal disease and prostate cancer:A two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization analysis in two races
Xiaoxu JIN ; Jing LIU ; Xiaodong ZHAO ; Wenyi HUANG ; Ning DONG ; Shihao WANG ; Mengfei MA ; Yulin ZHOU ; Yuhao CHEN ; Jinlu SUN ; Jie DONG ; Jun HU ; Song XU
National Journal of Andrology 2025;31(10):885-890
Objective The aim of this study is to discuss the causal relationship between periodontal disease(PD)and prostate cancer(PCa).Methods A two-sample bidirectional Mendelian randomization(MR)analysis based on publicly statistical data from genome-wide association studies(GWAS)was conducted.MR Egger,weighted medium,simple mode and weighted mode were supplemented,while inverse variance weighted analysis(IVW)was the main method of analysis.Heterogeneity testing,pleiotropy testing and leave-one-out testing were used to assess the sensitivity and stabili-ty.Results The results of MR analysis showed that PD had no significant impact on the occurrence of PCa:East Asian(IVW,PD:OR=1.07,P=0.48);European(IVW,PD:OR=1.00,P=0.37,periodontitis:OR=1.03,P=0.14,chronic gingivitis:OR=0.99,P=0.37,chronic periodontitis:OR=1.03,P=0.22).The reverse MR analysis also did not show a causal relationship between PCa and PD:East Asian(IVW,PD:OR=0.97,P=0.22);European(IVW,PD:OR=0.84,P=0.44,periodontitis:OR=1.01,P=0.75,chronic gingivitis:OR=0.93,P=0.23,chronic periodontitis:OR=0.99,P=0.80).The results of other analysis were consistent with those of IVW analysis.Conclusions The results of our two-sample bidirectional MR analysis do not support a causal relationship between PD and PCa.
5.Myocardial infarction induced by penpulimab and anlotinib:a case report
Chunhui WANG ; Mengfei JIANG ; Wei WU ; Yuhong ZHOU
Chinese Journal of Pharmacoepidemiology 2025;34(2):231-235
A 71-year-old man with undifferentiated sarcoma was treated with palliative first-line regimen(epirubicin,anlotinib and penpulimab)for 6 cycles and maintained with anlotinib and penpulimab for 30 cycles.He was admitted to the hospital due to chest pain 25 months after the first treatment.The laboratory examination showed cardiac troponin T 1.26 ng·mL-1,N terminal pro B type natriuretic peptide 8,545 pg·mL-1,coronary computed tomography angiography(CTA)showed non-calcified plaque in the left proximal anterior descending branch,severe lumen stenosis,nearly complete occlusion.Emergency CTA was performed on the same day,showing 50%stenosis of the distal left main coronary artery(LMCA);95%stenosis of the left anterior descending(LAD)branch ostium,the LAD branch was medium-sized and showed no stenosis;50%stenosis of the left circumflex branch(LCx),and a cardiac stent was implanted into the LAD branch.The patient has recovered after coronary artery stent implantation.Naranjo's Assessment Scale was used to evaluate the association of suspected drugs,the acute myocardial infarction of this patient was likely associated with the combination of penpulimab and anlotinib.Myocardial infarction is a rare but severe adverse drug reaction of anti-tumor treatment.This article summarizes the related risks and treatment measures to provide a reference for clinical medication safety.
6.Medical image segmentation based on multi-scale convolution and parallel reverse attention
Mengfei CHEN ; Raofen WANG ; Hailing WANG ; Peng LI ; Xiaomei GONG
Chinese Journal of Medical Physics 2025;42(1):27-36
A medical image segmentation network (RPR-MLP) based on multi-scale convolution and parallel reverse attention is presented. In the encoder,Res2net modules and tokenized multi-layer perceptron modules are used as the backbone structure to extract multi-scale information and enhance the diversity of semantic features. Meanwhile,the accuracy of semantic information extraction in the decoder is improved through parallel partial decoder. Additionally,reverse attention module re-emphasizes the focus on important regions for further improving the accuracy of segmentation results. The proposed method achieves Dice scores of 0.8967 and 0.8762 on the Kvasir and ISIC 2018 public datasets,respectively,demonstrating its effectiveness and generalization ability in medical image segmentation. Furthermore,when applied to the lung tumor CT image dataset (LungCancer dataset) collected in the study,the proposed network has Dice score,IoU and F1 score of 0.7278,58.83%and 67.85%,respectively,outperforming baseline network (UNeXt) and common CNN (U-Net,AttU-Net,U-Net++and PraNet) by 0.0301-0.0578、3.16%-4.70%,and 6.72%-18.53%,respectively. The study confirms the effectiveness and generalization ability of RPR-MLP network on different datasets,providing important technical support for lung tumor image segmentation.
7.Research progress on baicalin-mediated antioxidant stress regulation of dopaminergic neurons in related neurological diseases
Xueying DING ; Rongyi ZHOU ; Bingxiang MA ; Yongting ZHANG ; Xinyue XIE ; Chenlei WU ; Mengfei WANG ; Yuyan ZHANG
Chinese Journal of Comparative Medicine 2025;35(6):139-150
Oxidative stress(OS)and dopaminergic neuron(DN)dysfunction are implicated in the pathogenesis and progression of various neurological disorders.As the primary active component of the traditional Chinese herb Scutellaria baicalensis,baicalin has garnered significant attention due to its potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.Baicalin exhibits a particular affinity for the dopamine(DA)system,maintaining cerebral DA levels by regulating oxidative stress(OS)-related pathways,suggesting that the DA system serves as the"intracerebral target system"through which it exerts its neuroprotective effects.Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2(Nrf2),a central transcription factor regulating redox homeostasis,plays a pivotal role in the anti-OS process mediated by baicalin.This systematic review covers the pharmacological effects of baicalin,providing an in-depth mechanistic analysis of the interaction between OS and DN,with a focus on the latest research progress in baicalin-mediated treatment of OS through the Nrf2 signaling pathway in neurological diseases to provide theoretical references for the pharmacological and molecular mechanisms of baicalin's anti-OS modulation of the DA system for the treatment of neurological diseases.
8.Myocardial infarction induced by penpulimab and anlotinib:a case report
Chunhui WANG ; Mengfei JIANG ; Wei WU ; Yuhong ZHOU
Chinese Journal of Pharmacoepidemiology 2025;34(2):231-235
A 71-year-old man with undifferentiated sarcoma was treated with palliative first-line regimen(epirubicin,anlotinib and penpulimab)for 6 cycles and maintained with anlotinib and penpulimab for 30 cycles.He was admitted to the hospital due to chest pain 25 months after the first treatment.The laboratory examination showed cardiac troponin T 1.26 ng·mL-1,N terminal pro B type natriuretic peptide 8,545 pg·mL-1,coronary computed tomography angiography(CTA)showed non-calcified plaque in the left proximal anterior descending branch,severe lumen stenosis,nearly complete occlusion.Emergency CTA was performed on the same day,showing 50%stenosis of the distal left main coronary artery(LMCA);95%stenosis of the left anterior descending(LAD)branch ostium,the LAD branch was medium-sized and showed no stenosis;50%stenosis of the left circumflex branch(LCx),and a cardiac stent was implanted into the LAD branch.The patient has recovered after coronary artery stent implantation.Naranjo's Assessment Scale was used to evaluate the association of suspected drugs,the acute myocardial infarction of this patient was likely associated with the combination of penpulimab and anlotinib.Myocardial infarction is a rare but severe adverse drug reaction of anti-tumor treatment.This article summarizes the related risks and treatment measures to provide a reference for clinical medication safety.
9.Analysis of Clinical Consistency of Animal Models of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Based on Characteristics of Clinical Diseases and Syndromes in Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine
Xinyue XIE ; Xiaomian LIU ; Ming LI ; Mengfei WANG ; Rongyi ZHOU
Chinese Journal of Experimental Traditional Medical Formulae 2025;31(13):270-278
ObjectiveBased on a new method for animal model evaluation, this study aims to analyze the characteristics of diseases and syndromes of existing animal models of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from both traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and western medical perspectives and propose suggestions for improvement. MethodsA systematic search of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and PubMed was conducted for literature on ADHD animal models. According to TCM and western medical diagnostic criteria, core and accompanying symptoms of the models were assigned with scores to comprehensively evaluate the clinical consistency. ResultsThe selection of experimental animals for ADHD models primarily involved rodents, with modeling methods including genetic, chemical induction, and environmental induction. The average consistency of clinical diseases and syndromes with TCM and western medicine was 45.19% and 49.42%, respectively. The spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) rats and nicotine/smoking models had the highest consistency with TCM, while the social isolation models had the highest consistency with western medicine. Most models were guided by western medicine theories, which can meet the surface validity and structural validity requirements of western medicine but lacked precise differentiation of TCM syndromes. ConclusionExisting ADHD animal models primarily focus on a single genotype or environmental factor, lacking comprehensive consideration of multigenic interactions and environmental factors. Moreover, the selection of model evaluation indicators is relatively singular, primarily focusing on "disease" indicators, while TCM "syndrome" indicators have not been fully considered. It is recommended to introduce a "formula-to-syndrome" approach in the preparation of TCM models for ADHD and establish and improve an evaluation system of animal models combining diseases and syndromes, so as to provide a solid foundation for future experimental research.
10.Analysis of Clinical Consistency of Animal Models of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Based on Characteristics of Clinical Diseases and Syndromes in Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine
Xinyue XIE ; Xiaomian LIU ; Ming LI ; Mengfei WANG ; Rongyi ZHOU
Chinese Journal of Experimental Traditional Medical Formulae 2025;31(13):270-278
ObjectiveBased on a new method for animal model evaluation, this study aims to analyze the characteristics of diseases and syndromes of existing animal models of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from both traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and western medical perspectives and propose suggestions for improvement. MethodsA systematic search of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and PubMed was conducted for literature on ADHD animal models. According to TCM and western medical diagnostic criteria, core and accompanying symptoms of the models were assigned with scores to comprehensively evaluate the clinical consistency. ResultsThe selection of experimental animals for ADHD models primarily involved rodents, with modeling methods including genetic, chemical induction, and environmental induction. The average consistency of clinical diseases and syndromes with TCM and western medicine was 45.19% and 49.42%, respectively. The spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) rats and nicotine/smoking models had the highest consistency with TCM, while the social isolation models had the highest consistency with western medicine. Most models were guided by western medicine theories, which can meet the surface validity and structural validity requirements of western medicine but lacked precise differentiation of TCM syndromes. ConclusionExisting ADHD animal models primarily focus on a single genotype or environmental factor, lacking comprehensive consideration of multigenic interactions and environmental factors. Moreover, the selection of model evaluation indicators is relatively singular, primarily focusing on "disease" indicators, while TCM "syndrome" indicators have not been fully considered. It is recommended to introduce a "formula-to-syndrome" approach in the preparation of TCM models for ADHD and establish and improve an evaluation system of animal models combining diseases and syndromes, so as to provide a solid foundation for future experimental research.

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