Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease involving multiple inflammatory cells and cytokines. Its pathogenesis is complex, involving various cells and cytokines. Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) theory suggests that the pathogenesis of asthma is closely related to the dysfunction of internal organs such as the lungs, spleen, and kidneys. In contrast, modern immunological studies have revealed the central role of T helper 1(Th1)/T helper 2(Th2) and T helper 17(Th17)/regulatory T(Treg) cellular immune imbalance in the pathogenesis of asthma. Th1/Th2 imbalance is manifested as hyperfunction of Th2 cells, which promotes the synthesis of immunoglobulin E(IgE) and the activation of eosinophil granulocytes, leading to airway hyperresponsiveness and inflammation.Meanwhile, Th17/Treg imbalance exacerbates the inflammatory response in the airways, further contributing to asthma pathology.Currently, therapeutic strategies for asthma are actively exploring potential targets for regulating the balance of Th1/Th2 and Th17/Treg immune responses. These targets include cytokines, transcription factors, key proteins, and non-coding RNAs. Precisely regulating the expression and function of these targets can effectively modulate the activation and differentiation of immune cells. In recent years,traditional Chinese medicine active ingredients have shown unique potential and prospects in the field of asthma treatment. Based on this, the present study systematically summarizes the efficacy and specific mechanisms of TCM active ingredients in treating asthma by regulating Th1/Th2 and Th17/Treg immune balance through literature review and analysis. These active ingredients, including flavonoids, terpenoids, polysaccharides, alkaloids, and phenolic acids, exert their effects through various mechanisms, such as inhibiting the activation of inflammatory cells, reducing the release of cytokines, and promoting the normal differentiation of immune cells. This study aims to provide a solid foundation for the widespread application and in-depth development of TCM in asthma treatment and to offer new ideas for clinical research and drug development of asthma.
Asthma/genetics* ; Humans ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/chemistry* ; Th2 Cells/drug effects* ; Th17 Cells/drug effects* ; T-Lymphocytes, Regulatory/drug effects* ; Th1 Cells/drug effects* ; Animals ; Cytokines/immunology* ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional

OBJECTIVES: To explore potential keywords, research clusters, collaborative pattern, and research trends in the field of medical technology management (MTM) through bibliometric analysis, providing insights for researchers, policy makers, and hospital administrators. METHODS: A retrieval formula was applied to the title, abstract, and keywords in the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection, along with system-recommended terms, to identify articles on MTM. A total of 181 articles published between 1974 and 2022 were retained for quantitative analysis. The global trend of research output; total citations, average citations, and H-index; and bibliographic coupling, co-authorship, and keyword co-occurrence were analyzed using VOSviewer. RESULTS: The number of articles on MTM has been steadily increasing year by year. The focus of research has shifted from addressing basic medical needs to prioritizing emergency response and medical information security. The United States, Italy, and the United Kingdom emerged as the main contributors, with the United States leading in both volume of publications (60 articles) and academic impact (H-index = 21). Authors from the United Kingdom and the United States led the way in cross-border cooperation. The top five institutions, ranked by total link strength among cross-institutional authors, were primarily located in Canada and Spain. CONCLUSIONS The field of MTM has experienced stable growth over the past three decades (1993-2022). The shift of research focus has prompted a heightened emphasis on protecting patient privacy and ensuring the security of medical data. Future research should emphasize interdisciplinary and professional collaboration, as well as international cooperation and open sharing of knowledge.
Bibliometrics ; Humans ; Biomedical Technology

Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH) is an acquired clonal hematopoietic stem cell disease caused by abnormal expression of glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) on the cell membrane due to mutations in the phosphatidylinositol glycan class A(PIGA) gene. It is commonly characterized by intravascular hemolysis, repeated thrombosis, and bone marrow failure, as well as multiple systemic involvement symptoms such as renal dysfunction, pulmonary hypertension, swallowing difficulties, chest pain, abdominal pain, and erectile dysfunction. Due to the rarity of PNH and its strong heterogeneity in clinical manifestations, multidisciplinary collaboration is often required for diagnosis and treatment. Peking Union Medical College Hospital, relying on the rare disease diagnosis and treatment platform, has invited multidisciplinary clinical experts to form a unified opinion on the diagnosis and treatment of PNH, and formulated the Expert Consensus of Multidisciplinary Diagnosis and Treatment for Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria (2024), with the hope of promoting the standardization of PNH diagnosis and treatment.

Objective:To investigate the correlation between impulse oscillometry system examination indicators and conventional pulmonary ventilation function.Methods:The pulmonary ventilation function data of 10 883 patients from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2022 at Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology were included. The one-second rate [ratio of forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV 1) to forced vital capacity (FVC)] measured as a percentage of the predicted value was ≥92% for the control group ( n=3 478) and <92% for the pulmonary obstruction group ( n=7 405). The obstruction group was subdivided into five groups according to the degree of pulmonary dysfunction: mild group ( n=3 938),moderate group ( n=1 142),oderate-severe group ( n=917),severe group ( n=737),and extremely severe group ( n=671). Conventional pulmonary ventilatory function FVC, FEV 1, one-second rate, and forced expired flow at 50% of FVC (MEF50%), forced expired flow at 75% FVC (MEF25%), maximal mid-expiratory flow (MMEF), peak expiratory flow (PEF), and pulsed oscillation pulmonary function test were detected in both groups of patients. Impedance at 5 Hz (Z5) means total respiratory resistance, resistance at 5 Hz (R5) means total airway resistance, reactance at 5 Hz (X5) indicates the elastic recoil of the peripheral airways, and resistance at 20 Hz (R20) represents resistance of the central airways. R5-R20 reflects resistance in the small airways. Additionally, peripheral resistance (Rp), respiratory resonance frequency (Frex), and area under the reactance curve (Ax) were also measured. Correlation between the indicators of the two groups and the sensitivity and specificity of the impulse oscillometry system parameters for the diagnosis of obstructive pulmonary ventilation dysfunction were analyzed. Results:Pulmonary function force expiratory volume in the first second as a percentage of predicted value (FEV 1%Pre) [80.10 (54.95,97.10)%],one-second rate [62.43(48.67, 67.02)%],MEF50% [1.33 (0.62,1.97)L/s],MEF25% [0.28 (0.17,0.41)L/s], MMEF [0.85 (0.43,1.29)L/s],and PEF [5.64 (3.73,7.50)]L/s in the obstruction group were significantly lower than those in the control group ( P<0.05). The differences within the subgroups of the obstruction group were also significant ( P<0.05). Pulsed oscillation Z5 [0.42 (0.33,0.55)kPa·L -1·s -1],Rp [0.25 (0.20,0.45)kPa·L -1·s -1], R5 [0.39 (0.31,0.49)kPa·L -1·s -1], R20 [0.28 (0.24,0.34)kPa·L -1·s -1], R5-R20 [0.09 (0.05,0.17)kPa·L -1·s -1],Frex [16.32 (13.07,20.84)Hz], and Ax [0.67 (0.28,1.64)] indices in the obstruction group were significantly higher than those in the control group. X5 [-0.14 (-0.23, -0.10)kPa·L -1·s -1] was significantly lower than that in the control group ( P<0.05). Z5, Rp, X5, R5, R5-R20, Frex, and Ax were statistically significant between different degrees of obstruction in the obstruction group ( P<0.05). The impulse oscillometry system parameters Z5, Rp, R5, R20, R5-20, Frex, and Ax were negatively correlated with the indices of conventional pulmonary ventilation ( r=-0.21-0.68, P<0.05), and the parameter X5 was positively correlated with the indices of conventional pulmonary ventilation ( r=0.41-0.68, P<0.05). The pulsed oscillation pulmonary function test parameters X5 (58.60%-95.68%) and Ax (57.08%-98.06%) presented the best sensitivity; X5 (86.29%-98.82%), Frex (86.69%-94.71%), and Ax (88.10%-98.53%) displayed the best specificity; and R20 presented the worst sensitivity and specificity. The sensitivity and specificity were slightly better in female patients than in male patients. Conclusion:The technical parameters of the impulse oscillometry system showed significant correlation with relevant indices of conventional pulmonary ventilation function detection. These well reflect the changes of different degrees of pulmonary ventilation function and have greater significance for reference in evaluating the degree of pulmonary function impairment.

Objective:This study aims to explore the influence of vowels and sound intensity on formant, so as to provide reference for the selection of sound samples and vocal methods in acoustic detection. Methods:Thirty-eight healthy subjects, 19 male and 19 female, aged 19-24 years old were recruited. The formants of different vowels（/a/, //, /i/ and /u/） and different sound intensities（lowest sound, comfort sound, highest true sound and highest falsetto sound） were analyzed, and pairings were compared between groups with significant differences. Results:①The vowels /a/ and // in the first formant were larger than /i/ and /u/, and /i/ was the largest in the second formant. The minimum value of the first formant is the lowest sound of /i/ and the maximum is the highest sound of /a/. ②In the first formant, the chest sound area increases with the increase of sound intensity, while the second formant enters the highest falsetto and decreases significantly. Conclusion:Different vowels and sound intensity have different distribution of formant, that is, vowel and sound intensity have different degree of influence on formant. According to the extreme value of the first formant, the maximum normal range is determined initially, which is helpful to improve the acoustic detection.
Humans ; Male ; Female ; Young Adult ; Speech Acoustics ; Voice Quality ; Phonetics ; Voice/physiology* ; Adult

We aimed to study radiomics approach based on biparametric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for determining significant residual cancer after androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). Ninety-two post-ADT prostate cancer patients underwent MRI before prostatectomy (62 with significant residual disease and 30 with complete response or minimum residual disease [CR/MRD]). Totally, 100 significant residual, 52 CR/MRD lesions, and 70 benign tissues were selected according to pathology. First, 381 radiomics features were extracted from T2-weighted imaging, diffusion-weighted imaging, and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps. Optimal features were selected using a support vector machine with a recursive feature elimination algorithm (SVM-RFE). Then, ADC values of significant residual, CR/MRD lesions, and benign tissues were compared by one-way analysis of variance. Logistic regression was used to construct models with SVM features to differentiate between each pair of tissues. Third, the efficiencies of ADC value and radiomics models for differentiating the three tissues were assessed by area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). The ADC value (mean ± standard deviation [s.d.]) of significant residual lesions ([1.10 ± 0.02] × 10^-3 mm² s^-1) was significantly lower than that of CR/MRD ([1.17 ± 0.02] × 10^-3 mm² s^-1), which was significantly lower than that of benign tissues ([1.30 ± 0.02] × 10^-3 mm² s^-1; both P < 0.05). The SVM feature models were comparable to ADC value in distinguishing CR/MRD from benign tissue (AUC: 0.766 vs 0.792) and distinguishing residual from benign tissue (AUC: 0.825 vs 0.835) (both P > 0.05), but superior to ADC value in differentiating significant residual from CR/MRD (AUC: 0.748 vs 0.558; P = 0.041). Radiomics approach with biparametric MRI could promote the detection of significant residual prostate cancer after ADT.
Male ; Humans ; Prostatic Neoplasms/drug therapy* ; Androgen Antagonists/therapeutic use* ; Androgens ; Neoplasm, Residual ; Retrospective Studies ; Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods* ; Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods*

Cerebrovascular diseases have the characteristics of high morbidity, high disability, high mortality and high recurrence rate, which seriously harm human health and increase the national health economic burden. 3-n-Butylphthalide (NBP) is a new drug commonly used in clinical treatment of cerebrovascular diseases, and it is also one of the main active components in traditional Chinese medicine such as Angelica sinensis and Chuanxiong. In this review, the pharmacological effects of NBP were systematically summarized. Studies have shown that NBP has pharmacological effects such as antiplatelet aggregation, anti-thrombosis, inhibiting neuronal apoptosis, anti-oxidation, anti-cerebral ischemia, anti-brain injury, and anti-vascular dementia. In clinical practice, it is often combined with edaravone, alteplase, fasudil, Xingnaojing injection, and compound Danshen injection to treat cerebral vascular diseases such as stroke, vascular dementia, and cerebral vasospasm, and plays a good synergistic effect. This summary could provide support for the rational clinical application of NBP, and also provide basis for the in-depth study of the interaction of its drug combination.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the clinical treatment outcomes and the changes of the outcomes over time in extremely preterm twins in Guangdong Province, China. METHODS: A retrospective analysis was performed for 269 pairs of extremely preterm twins with a gestational age of <28 weeks who were admitted to the department of neonatology in 26 grade A tertiary hospitals in Guangdong Province from January 2008 to December 2017. According to the admission time, they were divided into two groups: 2008-2012 and 2013-2017. Besides, each pair of twins was divided into the heavier infant and the lighter infant subgroups according to birth weight. The perinatal data of mothers and hospitalization data of neonates were collected. The survival rate of twins and the incidence rate of complications were compared between the 2008-2012 and 2013-2017 groups. RESULTS: Compared with the 2008-2012 group, the 2013-2017 group (both the heavier infant and lighter infant subgroups) had lower incidence rates of severe asphyxia and smaller head circumference at birth (P<0.05). The mortality rates of both of the twins, the heavier infant of the twins, and the lighter infant of the twins were lower in the 2013-2017 group compared with the 2008-2012 group (P<0.05). Compared with the 2008-2012 group, the 2013-2017 group (both the heavier infant and lighter infant subgroups) had lower incidence rates of pulmonary hemorrhage, patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), periventricular-intraventricular hemorrhage (P-IVH), and neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (NRDS) and a higher incidence rate of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS There is a significant increase in the survival rate over time in extremely preterm twins with a gestational age of <28 weeks in the 26 grade A tertiary hospitals in Guangdong Province. The incidences of severe asphyxia, pulmonary hemorrhage, PDA, P-IVH, and NRDS decrease in both the heavier and lighter infants of the twins, but the incidence of bronchopulmonary dysplasia increases. With the improvement of diagnosis and treatment, the multidisciplinary collaboration between different fields of fetal medicine including prenatal diagnosis, obstetrics, and neonatology is needed in the future to jointly develop management strategies for twin pregnancy.
Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia/epidemiology* ; Female ; Gestational Age ; Humans ; Infant ; Infant, Extremely Premature ; Infant, Newborn ; Pregnancy ; Respiratory Distress Syndrome, Newborn/epidemiology* ; Retrospective Studies ; Treatment Outcome

Flexible variable stiffness actuator is divided into four categories including elastic element, pneumatic element, electric-magnetic element and intelligent material. It is gradually applied in rehabilitation robot. It could adapt the change of patient's impedance in the upper and lower limb rehabilitation robots, ensure the safety of the wearer in the exoskeleton, and improve the biomimetics in the prosthesis. Variable stiffness driving mechanism for rehabilitation robot still has some disadvantages. It is proposed to have compact structure, low power consumption, good stiffness characteristics, high response rate and progressive output torque curve, etc.

Purpose: Systemic inflammatory response is a critical factor that promotes the initiation and metastasis of malignancies including pancreatic cancer (PC). This study was designed to determine and compare the prognostic value of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (MLR), and fibrinogen-to-albumin ratio (FAR) in resectable PC and locally advanced or metastatic PC. Materials and Methods: Three hundred fifty-three patients with resectable PC and 807 patients with locally advan-ced or metastatic PC were recruited in this study. These patients were classified into a training set (n=758) and a validation set (n=402). Kaplan-Meier survival plots and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to analyze prognosis. Results: Overall survival (OS) was significantly better for patients with resectable PC with low preoperative PLR (p=0.048) and MLR (p=0.027). Low FAR, MLR, NLR (p < 0.001), and PLR (p=0.003) were significantly associated with decreased risk of death for locally advanced or metastatic PC patients. FAR (hazard ratio [HR], 1.522; 95% confidential interval [CI], 1.261 to 1.837; p < 0.001) and MLR (HR, 1.248; 95% CI, 1.017 to 1.532; p=0.034) were independent prognostic factors for locally advanced or metastatic PC. Conclusion The prognostic roles of FAR, MLR, NLR, and PLR in resectable PC and locally advanced or metastatic PC were different. FAR showed the most prognostic power in locally advanced or metastatic PC. Low FAR was positively correlated with OS in locally advanced or metastatic PC, which could be used to predict the prognosis.