Acute lung injury(ALI) is a critical clinical condition primarily characterized by refractory hypoxemia and infiltration of inflammatory cells in lung tissue, which can progress into a more severe form known as acute respiratory distress syndrome(ARDS). Immune cells and inflammatory cytokines play important roles in the progression of the disease. Due to its unclear pathogenesis and the lack of effective clinical treatments, ALI is associated with a high mortality rate and severely affects patients' quality of life, making the search for effective therapeutic agents particularly urgent. Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma, the dried root of the perennial herb Panax ginseng from the Araliaceae family, contains active ingredients such as saponins and polysaccharides, which possess various pharmacological effects including anti-tumor activity, immune regulation, and metabolic modulation. In recent years, studies have shown that ginsenosides exhibit notable effects in reducing inflammation, ameliorating epithelial and endothelial cell injury, and providing anticoagulant action, indicating their comprehensive role in alleviating lung injury. This review summarizes the pathogenesis of ALI and the molecular mechanisms through which ginsenosides act at different stages of ALI development. The aim is to provide a scientific reference for the development of ginsenoside-based drugs targeting ALI, as well as a theoretical basis for the clinical application of Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma in the treatment of ALI.
Ginsenosides/pharmacology* ; Humans ; Acute Lung Injury/immunology* ; Animals ; Panax/chemistry* ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal

Various techniques have been described for reconstructing the skin of the penile shaft; however, no universally accepted standard exists for correcting buried penis in adults. We aimed to describe a new technique for correcting an adult-acquired buried penis through a diamond-shaped incision at the penopubic junction. We retrospectively analyzed data from patients treated with our technique between March 2019 and June 2023 in the Department of Andrology, Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital (Nanjing, China). Forty-two adult males with buried penises, with a mean (±standard deviation [s.d.]) age of 26.6 (±6.6) years, underwent surgery. All patients were obese, with an average (±s.d.) body mass index of 35.56 (±3.23) kg m -2 . In addition to phalloplasty, 32 patients concurrently underwent circumcision, and 28 underwent suprapubic liposuction. The mean (±s.d.) duration of the operation was 98.02 (±13.28) min. The mean (±s.d.) duration of follow-up was 6.71 (±3.43) months. The length in the flaccid unstretched state postoperatively was significantly greater than that preoperatively (mean ± s.d: 5.55±1.19 cm vs 1.94±0.59 cm, P < 0.01). Only minor complications, such as wound disruption (7.1%) and infection (4.8%), were observed. The mean (±s.d.) score of patient satisfaction was 4.02 (±0.84) on a scale of 5. This technique provides excellent cosmetic and functional outcomes with a minimal risk of complications. However, additional clinical studies are needed to evaluate the long-term effects of this procedure.
Humans ; Male ; Patient Satisfaction ; Adult ; Lipectomy/methods* ; Penis/surgery* ; Retrospective Studies ; Treatment Outcome ; Plastic Surgery Procedures/methods* ; Young Adult ; Penile Diseases/surgery* ; Urologic Surgical Procedures, Male/methods*

OBJECTIVE: To screen anti-tumor drugs that improve antigen processing and presentation in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells. METHODS: A TCR-like or TCR mimic antibody that can specifically recognize HLA-A*0201:WT1_126-134 ( RMFPNAPYL) complex (hereafter referred to as HLA-A2:WT1) was synthesized to evaluate the function of antigen processing and presentation machinery (APM) in AML cells. AML cell line THP1 was incubated with increasing concentrations of IFN-γ, hypomethylating agents (HMA), immunomodulatory drugs (IMiD), proteasome inhibitors (PI) and γ-secretase inhibitors (GSI), followed by measuring of HLA-ABC, HLA-A2 and HLA-A2:WT1 levels by flow cytometry at consecutive time points. RESULTS: The TCR-like antibody we generated only binds to HLA-A*0201⁺WT1⁺ cells, indicating the specificity of the antibody. HLA-A2:WT1 level of THP-1 cells detected with the TCR-like antibody was increased significantly after co-incubation with IFN-γ, showing that the HLA-A2:WT1 TCR like antibody could evaluate the function of APM. Among the anti-tumor agents screened in this study, GSI (LY-411575) and HMA (decitabine and azacitidine) could significantly increase the HLA-A2:WT1 level. The IMiD lenalidomide and pomalidomide could aslo upregulate the expression of HLA-A2:WT1 complex under certain concentrations of the drugs and incubation time. As proteasome inhibitors, carfilzomib could significantly decreased the expression of HLA-A2:WT1, while bortezomib had no significant effect on HLA-A2:WT1 expression. CONCLUSION HLA-A2:WT1 TCR-like antibody can effectively reflect the APM function. Some of the anti-tumor drugs can affect the APM function and immunogenicity of tumor cells.
Humans ; Leukemia, Myeloid, Acute/immunology* ; Antineoplastic Agents/pharmacology* ; Antigen Presentation/drug effects* ; HLA-A2 Antigen/immunology* ; Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell/immunology* ; Cell Line, Tumor ; Interferon-gamma

OBJECTIVE: Varied acupoint selections represent a potential cause of the uncertainty surrounding the efficacy of acupuncture for knee osteoarthritis (OA). Skin temperature, a guiding factor for acupoint selection, may help to address this issue. This study explored thermal sensitization of acupoints used for the treatment of knee OA. METHODS: This cross-sectional case-control study enrolled cases aged 45-75 years with symptomatic knee OA and age- and gender-matched non-knee OA controls in a 1:1 ratio. All participants underwent infrared thermographic imaging. The primary outcome was the relative skin temperature of acupoint (STA), and the secondary outcome was the absolute STA of 11 acupoints. The Z test was used to compare the relative and absolute STAs between the groups. Principal component analysis was used to extract the common factors (CFs, acupoint cluster) in the STAs. A general linear model was used to identify factors affecting the STA in the knee OA cases. For the group comparisons of relative STA, P < 0.0045 (adjusted for 11 acupoints through Bonferroni correction) was considered to indicate statistical significance. For other analyses, P < 0.05 was used as the threshold for statistical significance. RESULTS: The analysis included 308 participants, consisting of 151 cases (mean age: [64.58 ± 6.67] years; male: 25.83%; mean body mass index: [25.70 ± 3.16] kg/m²) and 157 controls (mean age: [63.37 ± 5.96] years; male: 26.11%; mean body mass index: [24.47 ± 2.84] kg/m²). The relative STAs of ST34 (P = 0.0001), EX-LE2 (P < 0.0001), EX-LE5 (P = 0.0006), SP10 (P < 0.0001), BL40 (P = 0.0012) and GB39 (P = 0.0037) were higher in the knee OA group. No difference was found in the STAs of ST35, ST36, SP9, GB33 and GB34. Four CFs were identified for relative STA in both groups. The acupoints within each CF were consistent between the groups. The mean values of the relative STAs across each CF were higher in the knee OA group. In the knee OA cases, no factors were observed to affect the relative STA, while age and gender were found to affect the absolute STA. CONCLUSION Among patients with knee OA, thermal sensitization occurs in the acupoints of the lower extremity, exhibiting localized and regional thermal consistencies. The thermally sensitized acupoints that we identified in this study, ST34, SP10, EX-LE2, EX-LE5, GB39 and BL40, may be good choices for the acupuncture treatment of knee OA. Please cite this article as: Tu JF, Wang XZ, Yan SY, Wang YR, Yang JW, Shi GX, Zhang WZ, Jing LN, Yang LS, Liu DH, Wang LQ, Mi BH. Thermal sensitization of acupoints in patients with knee osteoarthritis: A cross-sectional case-control study. J Integr Med. 2025; 23(3): 289-296.
Humans ; Osteoarthritis, Knee/physiopathology* ; Male ; Cross-Sectional Studies ; Middle Aged ; Female ; Acupuncture Points ; Case-Control Studies ; Aged ; Skin Temperature ; Acupuncture Therapy

The UV cross-linking immunoprecipitation (CLIP) technique was first established in 2003. Sequences of target RNAs and binding sites of specific RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) were identified within the entire transcriptome by UV cross-linking, immunoprecipitation, reverse transcription, and subsequent high-throughput sequencing. Over the last 20 years, CLIP has been continuously modified and improved. Advanced operability and accuracy have extended its application category. Currently, the widely used CLIP technologies include high-throughput sequencing with crosslinking-immunoprecipitation (HITS-CLIP), photoactivatable-ribonucleoside-enhanced CLIP (PAR-CLIP), individual nucleotide resolution CLIP (iCLIP), enhanced CLIP (eCLIP), infrared-CLIP (irCLIP), etc. HITS-CLIP combines high-throughput sequencing with UV cross-linking immunoprecipitation. The 254 nm UV cross-linking and RNAase digestion steps allow the technology to capture transient intracellular RBP-RNA interactions. However, there are limitations in the efficiency of UV cross-linking, with low resolution and high intrinsic background noise. For PAR-CLIP, photoactivatable ribonucleoside was incorporated into RNA molecules, and RBP cross-linked with RNA by 365 nm UV light to improve cross-linking efficiency and resolution. Cross-linking mediated single-base mutations provide more accurate binding site information and reduce interference from background sequences. Long-term alternative nucleotide incorporation, on the other hand, can be cytotoxic and may skew experimental results. iCLIP can identify RBP-RNA cross-linking sites at the single nucleotide level through cDNA circularization and subsequent re-linearization steps, but it has more experimental procedures, and partial cDNAs lost in the circularization step are inevitable. eCLIP discards the radioisotope labeling procedure and reduces RNA loss by ligating adaptors in two separate steps, greatly improving the library-building efficiency, and reducing bias associated with PCR amplification; however, the efficiency of immunoprecipitation cannot be visually assessed at the early stage of the experiment. The irCLIP technique replaces radioisotopes with infrared dyes and greatly reduces the initial number of cells required for the experiment; however, an infrared imaging scanner is essential for the irCLIP application. To address more particular scientific issues, derivative CLIP-related techniques such as PAPERCLIP, cTag-PAPERCLIP, hiCLIP, and tiCLIP have also been developed in recent years. In practice, the aforementioned CLIP approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. When deciding on a technical strategy, we should take into account our experimental objectives and conditions, such as whether we need to precisely define the RNA site for binding to RBP; whether we have the necessary experimental conditions for working with radioisotopes or performing infrared imaging; the amount of initial sample size, and so on. In addition, the CLIP technique has a relatively large number of procedures and can be divided into several successive experimental modules. We can try to combine modules from different mainstream CLIP technologies to meet our experimental requirements, which also gives us more opportunities to improve and refine them and to build more targeted derivative CLIP technologies according to our research objectives.

Objective To investigate the risk factors of microcirculation obstruction(MVO)after reperfusion in patients with acute myocardial infarction(AMI).Methods Forty-one patients with AMI who received treatment with myocardial reperfusion were retrospectively selected.Cardiac magnetic resonance(CMR)was used to determine whether the patients had MVO.The patients were divided into MVO and non-MVO groups.The basic data,laboratory examination and CMR parameters of patients were collected and compared between the groups,and the risk factors related to MVO were screened out by logistic regression analysis.Results Delayed myocardial enhancement was observed in all 41 patients,among which 11 cases(26.8%)were with MVO.A total of 206 delayed myocardial enhancement segments were observed,of which 77 segments combined with MVO and 129 segments without MVO.AMI patients with MVO had a higher rate of transmural myocardial infarction,greater infarct volume,left ventricular myocardial mass(LVMM)and edema degree,as well as lower ejection fraction of left and right ventricles(P<0.05).Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that infarct volume[odds ratio(OR)=1.116,95%confidence interval(CI)1.017-1.224,P=0.020]was an independent risk factor for MVO after AMI reperfusion.Conclusion Infarct volume is an independent risk factor for MVO after AMI reperfusion,and MVO is associated with left and right ventricular function impairment.

Objective:To evaluate the diagnostic performance of radiomics model based on contrast-enhanced ultrasound(CEUS) in predicting pathological complete response(pCR) after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy(nCRT) in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer(LARC).Methods:One hundred and six patients with LARC who underwent total mesorectal excision after nCRT between April 2018 and April 2023 in the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University were retrospectively included, the patients were randomly divided into a training set of 63(14 pCR patients) and a validation set of 43(12 pCR patients) in a 6∶4 ratios. Radiomics features were extracted from the tumors′ region of interest of CEUS images based on PyRadiomics. Intra-class correlation coefficient(ICC), Mann-Whitney U test, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator(LASSO) algorithms were used to reduce features dimension. Finally, 7 radiomics features relevanted to pCR were selected to construct an ultrasomics model using elastic network regression, based on the R language. A combined model was constructed by jointing clinical feature. The performance of the models was assessed with the area under the ROC curve(AUC). Results:The AUC of the ultrasomics model and the combined model was 0.695(95% CI=0.532-0.859) and 0.726(95% CI=0.584-0.868) respectively in the training set. The AUC of the ultrasomics model and the combined model was 0.763(95% CI=0.625-0.902) and 0.790(95% CI=0.653-0.928) respectively in the validation set. Both univariate and multivariate Logistic regression analyses showed that CA199( P<0.05) and ultrasomics score( P<0.001) could be an independent predictor of pCR after nCRT in patients with LARC. Conclusions:The CEUS-based radiomics scores has certain predictive value for whether LARC patients achieve pCR after nCRT, and may provide a non-invasive imaging biomarker for predicting LARC patients achieve pCR after nCRT.

Objective:To explore the prevalence and independent associated factors of vascular calcification (VC) in non-dialysis chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients of stage 3-5.Methods:It was a single-center cross-sectional observational study. Non-dialysis stage 3-5 CKD patients ≥18 years old who were admitted to the Department of Nephrology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University from May 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022 with VC evaluation were enrolled. The patients' general information, laboratory examination and imaging data were collected. Coronary artery calcification (CAC), thoracic aorta calcification (TAC), abdominal aorta calcification (AAC), carotid artery calcification and aortic valve calcification (AVC) were evaluated by cardiac-gated electron-beam CT (EBCT) scans, lateral lumbar x-ray, cervical macrovascular ultrasound and echocardiography, respectively. The differences in clinical data and the prevalence of VC at different sites of patients with different CKD stages were compared, and the prevalence of VC at different sites of patients in different age groups [youth group (18-44 years old), middle-aged group (45-64 years old) and elderly group (≥65 years old)] and patients with or without diabetes were compared. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to analyse the independent associated factors of VC for different areas.Results:A total of 206 patients aged (51±14) years were included, including 129 (62.6%) males. There were 44 patients with CKD stage 3 (21.4%), 51 patients with CKD stage 4 (24.8%), and 111 patients with CKD stage 5 (53.9%). CKD was caused by chronic glomerulonephritis [104 cases (50.5%)], diabetic kidney damage [35 cases (17.0%)], hypertensive kidney damage [29 cases (14.1%)] and others [38 cases (18.4%)]. Among 206 patients, 131 (63.6%) exhibited cardiovascular calcification, and the prevalence of CAC, TAC, AAC, carotid artery calcification, and AVC was 37.9%, 43.7%, 37.9%, 35.9% and 9.7%, respectively. The overall prevalence of VC in young, middle-aged and elderly patients was 24.6%, 73.6% and 97.4%, respectively. With the increase of age, the prevalence of VC in each site gradually increased, and the increasing trend was statistically significant (all P<0.001). The overall prevalence of VC in CKD patients with diabetes was 92.5% (62/67), and the prevalence of VC at each site in the patients with diabetes was significantly higher than that in the patients without diabetes (all P<0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that age (every 10 years increase, OR=2.51, 95% CI 1.77-3.56, P<0.001), hypertension ( OR=5.88, 95% CI 1.57-22.10, P=0.009), and diabetes ( OR=4.66, 95% CI 2.10-10.35, P<0.001) were independently correlated with CAC; Age (every 10 years increase, OR=6.43, 95% CI 3.64-11.36, P<0.001) and hypertension ( OR=6.09, 95% CI 1.33-27.84, P=0.020) were independently correlated with TAC; Female ( OR=0.23, 95% CI 0.07-0.72, P=0.011), age (every 10 years increase, OR=3.90, 95% CI 2.42-6.29, P<0.001), diabetes ( OR=5.37, 95% CI 2.19-13.19, P<0.001) and serum magnesium ( OR=0.01,95% CI 0-0.35, P=0.014) were independently correlated with AAC. Moreover, age and diabetes were independently correlated with carotid artery calcification, AVC and overall VC Conclusions:The prevalence of VC in non-dialysis CKD patients of stage 3-5 is 63.59%, of which CAC reaches 37.9%, TAC is the most common one (43.7%), while AVC is the least one (9.7%). Age and diabetes are the independent associated factors for VC of all sites except TAC, while hypertension is an independent associated factor for both CAC and TAC.

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is considered to be a manifestation of metabolic syndrome and has become one of the chronic diseases that endanger health around the world. There is still a lack of effective therapeutic drugs in clinical practice. Farnesoid X receptor (FXR) has been a popular target for NAFLD research in recent years. Fexaramine (Fex) is a potent and selective agonist of FXR, and its mechanism of action to improve NAFLD is unclear. Therefore, in this study, a mouse model of NAFLD was constructed using a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet and treated with Fex orally for 6 weeks. We evaluated the ameliorative effect of Fex on disorders of glucolipid metabolism in NAFLD mice, and preliminarily explored its potential mechanism of action. The animal experiments were approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (approval number: PZSHUTCM210913011). In this study, it was found that 100 mg·kg^-1 Fex significantly inhibited body weight gain, alleviated insulin resistance, improved liver injury and lipid accumulation in NAFLD mice. The effect of Fex on the expression of hepatic intestinal FXR and its target genes in NAFLD mice was further examined. Analysis of serum and hepatic bile acid profiles and expression related to hepatic lipid metabolism. It was found that Fex could stimulate intestinal FXR, promote fibroblast growth factor 15 (FGF15) secretion, inhibit the expression of cytochrome P450 family 7 subfamily A member 1 (CYP7A1), the rate-limiting enzyme of bile acid synthesis in liver, regulate bile acid synthesis by negative feedback, and improve the disorder of bile acid metabolism. At the same time, Fex reduces liver lipid synthesis and absorption, increases fatty acid oxidation, thus improving liver lipid metabolism. This study shows that Fex can improve NAFLD by activating intestinal FXR-FGF15 signal pathway and regulating liver lipid metabolism.