Chinese medicine prescriptions are a type of medical documents written by doctors after they understand the patients' conditions for syndrome differentiation. Chinese medicine prescriptions are also the basis for pharmacy personnel to dispense medicines and guide patients to use drugs. It has the legal, technical and economic significances. Chinese medicine prescriptions contain such information of names, quantity and usage. Whether the names of drugs in Chinese medicine prescriptions are standardized or not is directly related to the safety and efficacy of the drugs. At present, nonstandard clinical prescriptions are frequently seen. With "Chinese medicine prescription", "names of drug in Chinese medicine prescription" and "standards of Chinese medicine prescription" as key words, the author searched CNKI, Wanfang and other databases, and consulted nearly 100 literatures, so as to summarize current names of drugs in traditional Chinese medicine prescription, analyze the reasons, and give suggestions, in the expectation of standardizing the names of drugs used in traditional Chinese medicine prescriptions.

Along with the increase of clinical application, the safety of traditional Chinese medicine gained more and more attentions. In particular, the safety evaluation of Chinese medical injections has become a mandatory task should be completed by pharmaceutical companies under the supervision of China Food and Drug Administration(CFDA). Due to the weak foundation of previous studies, the safety issues of Chinese medical injections have not been fully understood, and lack of scientific and rational risk management programs. Clinical safety centralized monitoring(CSCM) is an important method for post-market safety evaluation of Chinese medicine. Due to the lack of appropriate norms and procedures, the quality of similar research is uneven, and the results vary. Combined with practical experience with experts' suggestions, we developed this expert consensus on the design and implementation of CSCM from three stages (design, implementation and report) with 20 technical points, which will provide technical support for future CSCM studies.

BACKGROUNDIntermittent hypoxia (IH) is a key element of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that can lead to disorders in the liver. In this study, IH was established in a rat model to examine its effects on the expression of hepatic cytochrome P450 (CYP) and CYP regulators, including nuclear receptors.

METHODSHematoxylin and eosin staining was conducted to analyze the general pathology of the liver of rats exposed to IH. The messenger RNA (mRNA) expression levels of inflammatory cytokines, CYPs, nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB), and nuclear factors in the liver were measured by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction.

RESULTSWe found inflammatory infiltrates in the liver of rats exposed to IH. The mRNA expression level of interleukin-1beta was increased in the liver of the IH-exposed rats (0.005 ± 0.001 vs. 0.038 ± 0.008, P = 0.042), whereas the mRNA expression level of Cyp1a2 was downregulated (0.022 ± 0.002 vs. 0.0050 ± 0.0002, P = 0.029). The hepatic level of transcription factor NF-κB was also reduced in the IH group relative to that in the control group, but the difference was not statistically significant and was parallel to the expression of the pregnane X receptor and constitutive androstane receptor. However, the decreased expression of the glucocorticoid receptor upon IH treatment was statistically significant (0.056 ± 0.012 vs. 0.032 ± 0.005, P = 0.035).

CONCLUSIONSThese results indicate a decrease in expression of hepatic CYPs and their regulator GR in rats exposed to IH. Therefore, this should be noted for patients on medication, especially those on drugs metabolized via the hepatic system, and close attention should be paid to the liver function of patients with OSA-associated IH.

OBJECTIVETo explore the effect of MicroRNA-146b-5p (miR-146b-5p) on the mouse bone essence derived MSC adipogenic differentiation.

METHODSMSC were isolated from bone essence of C57BL/6 mice. The expression level of miR-146b-5p in the process of adipogenic differentiation of MSC was detected by q-PCR; the role of miR-146b-5p mimics or inhibitors in the process of mouse bone essence derived MSC adipogenic differentiation was analyzed through oil red staining the expression of C/EBPα and PPARγ after cultured for 14 days was detected by q-PCR; the protein level of PPARγ after miR-146b-5p transfection was detected by Western blot.

RESULTSThe MSC were successfully isolated from bone essence of mice, the q-PCR results showed an increasing expression level of miR-146-5p in the process of MSC adipogenic differentiation. Compared with the control group, MSC transfected with miR-146b-5p mimic could up-regulate the expression of miR-146b-5p (P<0.001), while miR-146b-5p inhibitor transfection could down-regulate the endogenous miR-146b-5p expression (P<0.01). After culture for 14 d, the result of Oil red staining showed that the miR-146b-5p inhibitor could inhibit adipogenic differentiation, while the miR-146b-5p mimic could promote the adipogenic differentiation of MSC. After induction for 14 d, compared with control, the PPARγ and C/EBPα in mimic group were higher expressed PPARγ and C/EBPα (P<0.01). Compared with induced group, the PPAPγ and C/EBPα were lower expressed in inhibitor group (P<0.05). The results of Western blot showed that the expression level of PPARγ was high in minic group, and it was low in inhibitor group.

CONCLUSIONmiR-146b-5p is up-regulated in the process of MSC adipogenic differentiation, and it promotes the adipogenesis of MSC originated from mouse bone essence.

The endophytic fungi from root, main stem, branch and leaf of Scrophularia ningpoensis were isolated and identified from Wulong and Chongqing, and the population diversity analysis and phylogenetic analysis were followed. The result indicated that, as to population diversity index, S. ningpoensis from Wulong： leaf>main stem=branch>root, branch from Chongqing>branch from Wulong. Fifty-eight endophytic fungi were obtained, most of which were the pathogens of the plant. Colletotrichum was the prevailing genus, of which C. gloeosporioides and C. boninense were the prevailing strains. Leaf and seedlings might be the main path of infection. Endophytic fungi and pathogen might convert to each other, influenced by such factors as environment, genotype et al.

Plants from the genus Pyrola are widely distributed in North Temperate zone. The quinones, phenol glycosides, terpenoids, flavonoids and volatile oil compounds have been identified from these plants. The in vivo and in vitro studies have shown that the genus Pyrola plants exhibit a wide range of pharmacological properties, including antioxidant, antitumor, antibacterial, anti-ischemia and anti-inflammatory activities. Based on analysis of the literature of the genus Pyrola plant, this review summarized the research on chemical constituents, pharmacology and quality control in recent years which can provide evidences for further investigation on the genus Pyrola plants.

To investigate the effect of piperine on the disorder of glucose metabolism in the cell model with insulin resistance (IR) and explore the molecules mechanism on intervening the upstream target of AMPK signaling pathway. The insulin resistance models in HepG2 cells were established by fat emulsion stimulation. Then glucose consumption in culture supernatant was detected by GOD-POD method. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA) was used to measure the levels of leptin(LEP) and adiponectin(APN) in culture supernatant; Real-time quantitative PCR was used to assess the mRNA expression of APN and LEP; and the protein expression levels of LepR, AdipoR1, AdipoR2 and the activation of AMPK signaling pathway were detected by Western blot analysis. The results showed that piperine, rosiglitazone and AMPK agonist AICAR could significantly elevate the glucose consumption in insulin resistance cell models, enhance the level of APN, promote APN mRNA transcripts and increase the protein expression of Adipo receptor. Meanwhile,AMPKα mRNA and р-AMPKα protein expressions were also increased in piperine treated cells, but both LEP mRNA expression and LepR protein expressions were decreased in piperine treated group. The results indicated that piperine could significantly ameliorate the glucose metabolism disorder in insulin resistance cell models through regulating upstream molecules (APN and LEP) of AMPK signaling pathway, and thus activate the AMPK signaling pathway.

Current evaluation method for astringency is mainly focused on human sensory evaluation. However, it is subjective, vague, and short of assessment indicators for objective quantification. In this paper, the quantification method for astringent intensity of traditional Chinese medicine was established based on the animal preference index and electronic tongue in vitro and in vivo. Firstly, the standard substance of astringency, tannic acid, was used for the methodology optimization and validation of two-bottle preference test. It was determined that the standard experimental animals were female rats of 140-180 g. The functional relationship between concentration of tannic acid and preference index was obtained Y= ln(1.682 6－0.441 66X), r=0.997 3. Then the typical astringent Chinese herbs Chebulae Fructus, Ardisiae Japonicae Herba, Canarii Fructus, Catechu, and Arecae Pericarpium were evaluated by the optimized method. Their corresponding concentration of tannic acid was converted by the concentration-preference index relationship through preference index. Their astringency was equivalent to 0.56, 0.29, 0.24, 0.34, 0.25 g•L⁻¹ tannic acid. Finally, the results were verified by electronic tongue. The correction analysis between Euclidean distance in PCA and preference index and concentration of tannic acid converted by samples showed a high correlation through pearson correlation analysis. The above results indicated that the method was objective, true and reliable. The method provided a reliable tool for the quantification of astringency and evaluation of taste masking effect for Chinese medicines, and also offered a new idea and model for the quantification of taste in the pharmaceutical and food fields.

Internal transcript spacer 2 (ITS2) is one of the broadly used standard core barcodes and also the only nuclear barcode in identification of Chinese traditional medicine. Although the DNA barcode method based on ITS2 is popular and has been used in Chinese Pharmacopoeia, its low discriminatory efficiency is still a problem to its extensive application. Therefore, further study is still necessary to explore its phylogenetic information for medicinal plants identification. In cells, ITS2 activity is based on its secondary structure. The secondary structures are particularly useful in phylogenetic analysis because they include information not found in the primary sequence. In this study ITS2 secondary structure of 40 samples from 26 species were predicted and used to explore their utility in addressing the identification problems of Chinese traditional medicine in Solanum. The secondary structures were predicted and aligned, and their consensus models were generated using the three different software of LocARNA, MASTR and PicXAA-R. RNAstat software was used to transform the secondary structures into 28 symbol code data for maximum parsimony (MP) analysis. The results showed that the phylogenetic information increased 88.57% after ITS2 secondary structure information has been added, and then the support values above 50%, 75% and 90% in the tree increased 19.05%, 66.67% and 66.67%, respectively, indicating that the identification of Solanum medical plants has been well resolved. Thus, our analysis suggests that ITS2 secondary structure information should be incorporated into the current DNA barcoding analysis as a beneficial supplement of phylogenetic information.