OBJECTIVE To investigate the neuroprotective effects of Ditan Decoction(DTD)on ischemic stroke.METHODS A mouse middle cerebral artery occlusion(MCAO)model was used to induce cerebral ischemia and assess the role of DTD in post-stroke NVU injury.DTD was gavaged once a day for 3 days after MCAO.Transwell neutrophil chemotaxis assay was used to explore the role of DTD in the neutrophil chemotaxis.RESULTS In the MCAO model,DTD treatment significantly reduced infarct volume(P<0.01)and attenuated blood-brain barrier disruption,as evidenced by decreased IgG leakage and preserved laminin expression(P<0.05).Furthermore,DTD suppressed neutrophil infiltration into ischemic brain tissue,as demonstrated by reduced neutrophil elastase(P<0.01)and myeloperoxidase(P<0.05)levels.Mechanistically,DTD inhibited neutrophil chemotaxis in a dose-dependent manner and downregulated phosphodiesterase 4B(PDE4B),a key regulator of neutrophil migration(P<0.05).Molecular docking analysis i-dentified four active DTD components-apigenin,vitexin,chlorogenic acid,and orientin-with strong binding affinities to PDE4B(bind-ing energies<-5 kcal·mol-1),suggesting their potential role in mediating DTD's therapeutic effects.CONCLUSION These find-ings highlight DTD as a promising intervention for ischemic stroke,targeting NVU preservation and PDE4B-dependent neutrophil mod-ulation.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the neuroprotective effects of Ditan Decoction(DTD)on ischemic stroke.METHODS A mouse middle cerebral artery occlusion(MCAO)model was used to induce cerebral ischemia and assess the role of DTD in post-stroke NVU injury.DTD was gavaged once a day for 3 days after MCAO.Transwell neutrophil chemotaxis assay was used to explore the role of DTD in the neutrophil chemotaxis.RESULTS In the MCAO model,DTD treatment significantly reduced infarct volume(P<0.01)and attenuated blood-brain barrier disruption,as evidenced by decreased IgG leakage and preserved laminin expression(P<0.05).Furthermore,DTD suppressed neutrophil infiltration into ischemic brain tissue,as demonstrated by reduced neutrophil elastase(P<0.01)and myeloperoxidase(P<0.05)levels.Mechanistically,DTD inhibited neutrophil chemotaxis in a dose-dependent manner and downregulated phosphodiesterase 4B(PDE4B),a key regulator of neutrophil migration(P<0.05).Molecular docking analysis i-dentified four active DTD components-apigenin,vitexin,chlorogenic acid,and orientin-with strong binding affinities to PDE4B(bind-ing energies<-5 kcal·mol-1),suggesting their potential role in mediating DTD's therapeutic effects.CONCLUSION These find-ings highlight DTD as a promising intervention for ischemic stroke,targeting NVU preservation and PDE4B-dependent neutrophil mod-ulation.

Leptomeningeal metastasis(LM)is a serious late complication in patients with solid tumors,which is common in patients with lung cancer,breast cancer and melanoma.In recent years,due to the progress of diagnosis,the diagnosis rate of LM has gradually increased.The main goal of the therapy is to maintain neurological function,improve the quality of life and the overall survival rate,and prolong the progression-free survival time of patients.Intrathecal therapy is one of the main treatments for LM,which can deliver drugs directly to the subarachnoid space.The traditional intrathecal drugs are methotrexate,cytarabine and thiotepa.With the development of new research,a variety of chemotherapeutic drugs,targeted drugs and immune checkpoint inhibitors have also been used in intrathecal therapy.In addition,different ways of intrathecal administration also bring new hope to patients.This article reviewed the clinical research progress of intrathecal therapy in the treatment of LM.

Objective The evaluation of lymph node properties before lung cancer surgery has a great impact with the choice of surgical methods.Although there are various examination methods,many methods have invasive or accuracy problems.In order to improve the accuracy of diagnosis,we mainly discuss the value of wide-body spectral CT in the differential diagnosis of mediastinal metastatic lymph nodes,non-metastatic lymph nodes in lung cancer patients and reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes.Methods The clinical and imaging data of 64 patients with lung cancer and 28 patients with pulmonary inflammatory lesions were retrospectively analyzed.All patients underwent plain scan and enhanced dual-phase spectral CT scan.The size,density,three-phase IC,NIC,and λHU of lymph nodes in metastatic,non-metastatic and inflammatory reactive hyperplasia groups were measured on 70 keV single-energy images and iodine-based images,respectively.The single-factor variance and Kruskal-Wallis H rank sum test were used to analyze and compare the differences.Results The short diameter of metastatic lymph nodes was larger than that of non-metastatic lymph nodes and reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes(P<0.001).The plain scan density of reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes was higher than that of metastatic lymph nodes(P<0.001),but there was no significant difference between non-metastatic lymph nodes(P=0.325).The CT values of reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes in arterial phase and venous phase were higher than those of metastatic and non-metastatic lymph nodes(P<0.05).Except for NIC in arterial phase,IC,NIC and λHU in plain scan,IC and λHU in arterial phase,IC,NIC and λHU in venous phase of reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes and metastatic lymph nodes were statistically significant(all P<0.05).There was no significant difference in IC,NIC and λHU between reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes and non-metastatic lymph nodes in plain scan,arterial phase and venous phase(all P>0.05).Conclusion The quantitative and spectral curve slope of iodine in mediastinal metastatic lymph nodes of lung cancer were basically lower than those in reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes.The quantitative parameters of spectral CT had certain diagnostic efficacy in differentiating metastatic lymph nodes and reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes,while the spectral parameters of non-metastatic lymph nodes and reactive hyperplastic lymph nodes were not statistically significant.

Objective To develop deep learning-based auxiliary diagnostic models for diverse pulmonary diffuse cystic diseases,and subsequently evaluate their classification performance to identify the optimal model for clinical diagnosis.Methods A total of 288 patients diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis(IPF),pulmonary lymphangioleiomyomatosis(PLAM),and pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis(PLCH)were prospectively enrolled from the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University between January 2010 and October 2022,comprising 76 cases of IPF,179 cases of PLAM,and 33 cases of PLCH.A total of 877 CT cases were collected,comprising 232 cases of IPF,557 cases of PLAM,and 88 cases of pulmonary PLCH.Based on the cutoff date of December 31,2019,the CT scans were divided into two datasets:dataset A consisted of 500 CT scans including 185 IPF cases,265 PLAM cases,and 50 PLCH cases;while dataset B comprised 377 CT scans with a distribution of 47 IPFcases,292 PLAMcases,and 38 PLCH cases.The Dataset A was randomly partitioned into training set,validation set,and test set in a ratio of 7∶1∶2.Subsequently,six distinct deep learning neural networks were employed for training after preprocessing and data augmentation.Receiver operating characteristic curves were generated to assess the model performance using metrics such as area under the curve(AUC),accuracy,sensitivity,specificity,and F1 score in order to identify the optimal model.Furthermore,a test set B comprising 30 randomly selected cases from dataset B for each disease type was utilized to evaluate the trained optimal model by employing the same aforementioned metrics.Results In test A,six well-established diagnostic models demonstrated superior classification performance for IPF and LAM,with an AUC greater than 0.9.For LCH,EfficientNet exhibited low classification efficiency with an AUC between 0.6 and 0.7,while Vgg11 showed an AUC between 0.8 and 0.9;the other four models displayed excellent classification efficiency with an AUC greater than 0.9.Except for Inception V3,the remaining five diagnostic models performed poorly in identifying and classifying LCH lesions.Considering multiple indicators,the InceptionV3 model showcased optimal comprehensive performance among the six models,achieving high evaluation parameters such as overall accuracy(94.90%),precision(93.49%),recall(90.84%),and specificity(96.91%).TestB was conducted using the trained InceptionV3 model resulting in an accuracy of 81%,precision of 82%,recall of 81%,and specificity of 90%.Conclusions Six recognition and classification models,developed using deep learning technology in conjunction with pulmonary CT images,demonstrate effective discrimination between LAM,LCH,and IPF.Notably,the model constructed utilizing the InceptionV3 neural network exhibits superior efficiency in accurately recognizing and classifying IPF and LAM.

OBJECTIVES: The excretion of urinary vitamin D-binding protein (uVDBP) is related to the occurrence and development of early-stage renal damage in patients with Type 2 diabetes (T2DM). This study aims to explore the significance of detecting uVDBP in T2DM patients and its relationship with renal tubules, and to provide a new direction for the early diagnosis of T2DM renal damage. METHODS: A total of 105 patients with T2DM, who met the inclusion criteria, were included as a patient group, and recruited 30 individuals as a normal control group. The general information and blood and urine biochemical indicators of all subjects were collected; the levels of uVDBP, and a marker of tubular injury [urine kidney injury molecule 1 (uKIM-1), urine neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (uNGAL) and urine retinol-binding protein (uRBP)] were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The results were corrected by urinary creatinine (Cr) to uVDBP/Cr, uKIM-1/Cr, uNGAL/Cr and uRBP/Cr. The Pearson's and Spearman's correlation tests were used to analyze the correlation between uVDBP/Cr and urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR), estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and markers of tubular injury, and multivariate linear regression and receiver operating characteristic curve were used to analyze the correlation between uVDBP/Cr and UACR or eGFR. RESULTS: Compared with the normal control group, the uVDBP/Cr level in the patient group was increased (P<0.05), and which was positively correlated with UACR (r=0.774, P<0.01), and negatively correlated with eGFR (r=-0.397, P<0.01). There were differences in the levels of uKIM-1/Cr, uNGAL/Cr, and uRBP/Cr between the 2 groups (all P<0.01). The uVDBP/Cr was positively correlated with uKIM-1/Cr (r=0.752, P<0.01), uNGAL/Cr (r=0.644, P<0.01) and uRBP/Cr (r=0.812, P<0.01). The sensitivity was 90.0% and the specificity was 82.9% (UACR>30 mg/g) for evaluation of uVDBP/Cr on T2DM patients with early-stage renal damage, while the sensitivity was 75.0% and the specificity was 72.6% for evaluation of eGFR on T2DM patients with early-stage renal damage. CONCLUSIONS The uVDBP/Cr can be used as a biomarker in early-stage renal damage in T2DM patients.
Humans ; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2/complications* ; Creatinine ; Vitamin D-Binding Protein/urine* ; Lipocalin-2/urine* ; Kidney/metabolism* ; Glomerular Filtration Rate ; Biomarkers

Objective To analyze the influence of different health-related indicators on the prognosis of elderly patients with diabetes mellitus complicated with coronary heart disease, and to provide theoretical basis for the diagnosis and treatment of diabetes mellitus complicated with coronary heart disease. Methods Among of 456 elderly patients with diabetes mellitus complicated with coronary heart disease admitted to our hospital from December 2018 to December 2020 were selected. According to the occurrence of Major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) within 1 year after discharge, patients were divided into the control group (no MACE) and the observation group (MACE). The Clinical data of patients including age, gender, BMI, smoking, alcohol consumption, diabetes course, degree of coronary artery stenosis and number of lesions, were collected from the medical record system. Univariate analysis and logistic regression were used to analyze the influence of health indicators such as systolic blood pressure, LEVF, HbA1c, LDL-C, LDH and ALP on the occurrence of MACE in patients with diabetes and coronary heart disease. Spearman correlation analysis was used to analyze the correlation between different health-related indicators and the occurrence of MACE in elderly patients with diabetes mellitus and coronary heart disease. Results A total of 456 elderly patients with diabetes mellitus and coronary heart disease, 122 cases (26.75%) developed MACE. There were no differences in age, male proportion, BMI, smoking and drinking of diabetes course between the two groups (P>0.05). The degree and number of coronary artery stenosis in the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group (P<0.05). There were significant differences in HbA1c, LEVF, LDL-C, TC, TG and BUA between the two groups (P<0.05). HbA1c>7.0% (OR=2.617), LDL-C>2.6 mmol/L (OR=2.976) and BUA >420μmol/L (OR=2.341) were independent risk factors for MACE in elderly patients with diabetes mellitus and coronary heart disease (P<0.05). Spearman correlation analysis showed that HbA1c, LDL-C, BUA were positively correlated with MACE in elderly patients with diabetes mellitus and coronary heart disease (r=0.401,0.427,0.372, P<0.05). Conclusion Elderly patients with diabetes mellitus complicated with coronary heart disease have a higher risk of MACE, which is closely related to health-related indicators. For patients with HbA1c >7.0%, LDL-C >2.6 mmol/L and BUA >420 μmol/L, active treatment should be conducted to improve the prognosis of patients.

Objective:To investigate the intention of medical students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and to analyze the influencing factors.Methods:A self-filled electronic questionnaire survey was conducted among medical students from a medical school in Shanghai randomly selected from June 21 to 29, 2021. The questionnaire contained items of basic information, intention for COVID-19 vaccination, awareness of COVID-19 prevention measures and awareness of COVID-19 vaccine. Logistic regression was used to analyze the influencing factors.Results:The average age of the 966 respondents was (20.4±2.9) years, and 63.6% (614/966) of them were female;23.7% (229/966) of them had family members or relatives who had participated in anti-pandemic work or volunteer service;90.6% (875/966) of the respondents expressed they were very willing or willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The majority of the respondents thought that “COVID-19 infection is very serious” (94.3%, 911/966), “good protection can effectively prevent COVID-19 infection” (92.4%, 893/966), and “they can fully implement all kinds of protection measures” (73.5%, 710/966). About half of the respondents (51.8%, 501/966) knew about the adverse reactions and contraindications of COVID-19 vaccine. The low protected capability (47.4%, 458/966), short duration of protection (50.6%, 489/966), and many side effects (48.7%, 470/966) were the major concerns about COVID-19 vaccine. Logistic regression analysis showed that people thought that “COVID-19 infection is very serious” ( OR=5.30, 95 %CI:2.60-10.81, P<0.001), thought that “good protection can effectively prevent COVID-19 infection” ( OR=2.46, 95 %CI:1.26-4.81, P=0.009), thought that “they can fully implement all kinds of protection measures” ( OR=2.55, 95 %CI:1.53-4.25, P<0.001) were more willing to receive COVID-19 vaccination. While those concerned about vaccine quality did the opposite ( OR=0.29, 95 %CI:0.13-0.65, P=0.003). Conclusions:Medical students have a high intention of vaccination against COVID-19. The vaccine-related knowledge quality should be emphasized in future publicity to further enhance the intention of COVID-19 vaccination.

Objective:To observe the effects of interleukin-17A (IL-17A) and interferon-γ (IFN-γ) on CD34 - orbital fibroblasts (OFs) in patients with Graves ophthalmopathy (GO), and to explore the pathogenesis of GO. Methods:Orbital adipose connective tissue and lacrimal gland tissue of 5 patients with GO were collected during orbital decompression surgery.These tissue was cultured by tissue explant culture method.CD34 - OFs were enriched by immunomagnetic beads after passage and expansion.The cultured cells were divided into transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) group, TGF-β+ 10 ng/ml IL-17A group, TGF-β+ 100 ng/ml IL-17A group, TGF-β+ 1 ng/ml IFN-γ group and TGF-β+ 5 ng/ml IFN-γ group.The fibrosis of the cells was induced with 5 ng/ml TGF-β and then was treated with different concentrations of IL-17A or IFN-γ according to grouping.The expression of fibronectin, collagen type Ⅰ, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and tissue metalloproteinase inhibitor-1 (TIMP-1) in CD34 - OFs derived from both orbital adipose connective tissue and lacrimal gland tissue were detected by Western blot.This study protocol was approved by an Ethic Committee of Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital (SH9H-2020-TK195-1) and written informed consent was obtained from each patient. Results:For CD34 - OFs derived from orbital adipose connective tissue, the relative expressions of fibronectin, type Ⅰ collagen, α-SMA and TIMP-1 protein were significantly higher in the TGF-β+ 100 ng/ml IL-17A group than those in the TGF-β group and TGF-β+ 10 ng/ml IL-17A group (all at P<0.05); the relative expressions of fibronectin, type Ⅰ collagen and α-SMA in the cells in the TGF-β+ 5 ng/ml IFN-γ group were significantly lower than those in the TGF-β group and the TGF-β+ 1 ng/ml IFN-γ group (all at P<0.05). For CD34 - OFs derived from lacrimal gland, the relative expressions of fibronectin, type Ⅰ collagen, α-SMA and TIMP-1 protein in the TGF-β+ 100 ng/ml IL-17A group were significantly higher than those in the TGF-β group and the TGF-β+ 10 ng/ml IL-17A group (all at P<0.05); the relative expressions of fibronectin, type Ⅰ collagen and TIMP-1 protein in the TGF-β+ 1 ng/ml IFN-γ group were significantly higher than those in the TGF-β group and TGF-β+ 5 ng/ml IFN-γ group, and the relative expression of α-SMA protein was significantly higher than that in the TGF-β+ 5 ng/ml IFN-γ group (all at P<0.05). Conclusions:High level of IL-17A can promote the fibrosis of TGF-β-induced CD34 - OFs, and high level of IFN-γ inhibits the fibrosis of TGF-β-induced CD34 - OFs.

Objective: To analyze the correlation between circumcision and incidence and clearance of male genital HPV infection. Methods: From May to July 2014, 18-55 year old men who had sexual behavior history were recruited from the general population in Liuzhou, Guangxi to set up a cohort. Totally, 113 circumcised and 560 uncircumcised men were enrolled and interviewed using a questionnaire (including information on demographic characteristics and sexual behaviors), then they were followed-up with 6-month interval for 2 times. On each visit, specimens of male external genitalia were collected and genotyped for HPV DNA. The differences of incidence and clearance of genital HPV infections between circumcised and uncircumcised men were analyzed by Log-rank test. Cox regression was used to analyze the relationship between circumcision and incidence and clearance of HPV infection. Results: The median age (P₂₅, P₇₅) of circumcised and uncircumcised men were 28 (24, 35) and 32 (24, 31), respectively. The incidences of any HPV infections were 9.1 (95%CI: 2.4-15.7) and 8.4 (95% CI: 5.6-11.2) per 1 000 person-months (χ²=0.10, P=0.758), respectively. The clearance of circumcised men [136.3 (95%CI: 70.0-202.7) per 1 000 person-months] was higher than that in uncircumcised men [89.6 (95%CI: 65.9-113.3) per 1 000 person-months] (χ²=8.19, P=0.004). In multivariate COX regression analysis, compared with uncircumcised men, circumcised men had higher possibility to clear any HPV infections (HR: 2.41, 95%CI: 1.30-4.46). Compared with men having one sexual partner, people having more than 4 sexual partners had lower possibility to clear any HPV infections (HR: 0.49, 95%CI: 0.25-0.96). Compared with 18-25 years old men, men aged 26-35 years old had higher possibility to clear high-risk HPV infections (HR: 2.14, 95%CI: 1.08-4.23). Conclusion Circumcised and uncircumcised men had similar incidence of genital HPV infection, whereas, men conducted circumcision and having fewer sexual partners could increase the clearance of genital HPV infections.