OBJECTIVES: To explore the mechanism by which Tougu Xiaotong Capsule (TXC) promotes chondrogenic differentiation and cartilage repair in mice with osteoarthritis (OA). METHODS: Fifty 8-week-old male C57BL mice were randomly divided into normal control group, cartilage damage (induced by subchondral ring-shaped drilling) model group and TXC treatment groups at low, moderate and high doses (184, 368 and 736 mg/kg, respectively). Saline (in normal control and model groups) and TXC were administered after modeling by daily gavage for 6 consecutive weeks. The changes of cartilage damage in the mice were assessed by measuring thermal withdrawal latency (TWL) and mechanical withdrawal threshold (MWT) and using micro-CT, modified safranine O and fast green staining, HE staining, and qPCR. Primary cultures of mouse synovial mesenchymal stem cells (SMSCs) with lentivirus vector transfection for interfering CXCL12, TXC treatment, or both for 24 h were examined for chondrogenic differentiation using immunofluorescence staining, scratch assay, immunocytochemistry, and Western blotting. RESULTS: In mouse models with cartilage damage, TXC treatment at the moderate dose significantly alleviated joint pain, promoted cartilage repair, and upregulated the mRNA expression levels of CXCL12, GDF5, collagen II, aggrecan, Comp and Sox9 in the cartilage tissue. In primary mouse SMSCs, CXCL12 knockdown resulted in significant reduction of GDF5 protein expression, migration ability and Sox9 protein expression, and these changes were obviously reversed by TXC treatment. CONCLUSIONS TXC promotes chondrogenic differentiation of mouse SMSCs to promote repair of cartilage damage in mice by activating the CXCL12/GDF5 pathway.
Animals ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/therapeutic use* ; Osteoarthritis/metabolism* ; Male ; Growth Differentiation Factor 5/metabolism* ; Mice, Inbred C57BL ; Mice ; Chemokine CXCL12/metabolism* ; Signal Transduction/drug effects* ; Cell Differentiation/drug effects* ; Cartilage, Articular/drug effects* ; Mesenchymal Stem Cells/cytology*

Objective To investigate the relationship between the risk perception and nursing working environment with the mental resilience in the emergency department nurses.Methods The convenience sam-pling method was adopted.A total of 577 emergency department nurses in 45 hospitals of Guangdong Province from October to November 2023 were selected as the respondents.The CD-RISC scale,nursing staff risk per-ception questionnaire and nursing work environment scale were used to conduct the survey.The multiple line-ar regression was adopted to analyze the influencing factors of mental resilience in the emergency department nurses.The Pearson correlation was adopted to analyze the correlation between the risk perception and nursing working environment with the mental resilience.Results The gender,age,specialist nurse or not,post,hospi-tal type and hospital level had the effect on the mental resilience in the emergency department nurses (P<0.05).The scores of mental resilience scale in 577 nurses were (86.07±15.95) points and the scoring rate was 68.86％;the scores of nursing staff risk perception questionnaire were (79.38±16.32) points and the scoring rate was 56.70％;the scores of the nursing work environment scale were (93.51±13.25) points and the scoring rate was 75.41％.The multiple linear regression analysis showed that the post was the influencing factor of mental resilience in the emergency department nurses.The results of Pearson correlation analysis showed that the nursing work environment was positively correlated with the mental resilience (r=0.476),and negatively correlated with the risk perception (r=-0.252).Conclusion The hospital nursing managers should pay attention to the influencing factors of mental resilience in the emergency department nurses and fo-cus on three major types of risks affecting physical function,time and occupational exposure of the emergency department nurses to improve the working environment of emergency nursing.

Recent innovations in nanomaterials inspire abundant novel tumor-targeting CRISPR-based gene therapies. However, the therapeutic efficiency of traditional targeted nanotherapeutic strategies is limited by that the biomarkers vary in a spatiotemporal-dependent manner with tumor progression. Here, we propose a self-amplifying logic-gated gene editing strategy for gene/H₂O₂-mediated/starvation multimodal cancer therapy. In this approach, a hypoxia-degradable covalent-organic framework (COF) is synthesized to coat a-ZIF-8 in which glucose oxidase (GOx) and CRISPR system are packaged. To intensify intracellular redox dyshomeostasis, DNAzymes which can cleave catalase mRNA are loaded as well. When the nanosystem gets into the tumor, the weakly acidic and hypoxic microenvironment degrades the ZIF-8@COF to activate GOx, which amplifies intracellular H⁺ and hypoxia, accelerating the nanocarrier degradation to guarantee available CRISPR plasmid and GOx release in target cells. These tandem reactions deplete glucose and oxygen, leading to logic-gated-triggered gene editing as well as synergistic gene/H₂O₂-mediated/starvation therapy. Overall, this approach highlights the biocomputing-based CRISPR delivery and underscores the great potential of precise cancer therapy.

Objective To investigate the effect of esketamine on perioperative pain and depression in patients with thoracoscopic pulmonary nodule resection. Methods A total of 120 patients with selective thoracoscopic pulmonary nodule resection were randomly divided into low-dose esketamine group (group L), high-dose esketamine group (group H) and saline control group (group C), with 40 cases in each group. Before skin incisionafter anesthetic induction, 0.25 mg/kgesketamine, 0.50 mg/kg esketamine and the equivalent amount of saline were separately administered for patients in the three groups. Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score for pain and the Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) score were compared among the three groups at the time points of one day before surgery (T₀), one day after surgery (T₁), three days after surgery (T₂), and the day of discharge (T₃), and postoperative analgesia within 24 h and perioperative adverse reactions were also recorded. Results The VAS scores for rest and coughing at T₁ were significantly lower in group L and group H than group C (P < 0.05); compared with group C, the total press number of analgesic pump with in 24 h and effective press number were significantly decreased in group L and group H, and the dosage of sufentanil was also significantly decreased(P < 0.05). There were no significant differences in depression scores at different time points among the three groups (P>0.05). There were no significant differences in the incidence rates of nausea, vomiting, dizziness, hallucinations, and nightmares among the three groups (P>0.05). Conclusion Esketamine can effectively alleviate pain on the first day after operation and reduce the dosage of opioid analgesics without increasing the incidence of adverse reactions in patients with thoracoscopic pulmonary nodule resection; compared with 0.25 mg/kg esketamine, 0.50 mg/kg esketamine doesn't demonstrate better postoperative analgesia or improvement in perioperative depression.

Alzheimer''s disease (AD) has brought to us huge medical and economic burdens, and so discovery of its therapeutic drugs is of great significance.In this paper, we utilized knowledge graph embedding (KGE) models to explore drug repurposing for AD on the publicly available drug repurposing knowledge graph (DRKG).Specifically, we applied four KGE models, namely TransE, DistMult, ComplEx, and RotatE, to learn the embedding vectors of entities and relations on DRKG.By using three classical knowledge graph evaluation metrics, we then evaluated and compared the performance of these models as well as the quality of the learned embedded vectors.Based on our results, we selected the RotatE model for link prediction and identified 16 drugs that might be repurposed for the treatment of AD.Previous studies have confirmed the potential therapeutic effects of 12 drugs against AD, i.e., glutathione, haloperidol, capsaicin, quercetin, estradiol, glucose, disulfire, adenosine, paroxetine, paclitaxel, glybride and amitriptyline.Our study demonstrates that drug repurposing based on KGE may provide new ideas and methods for AD drug discovery.Moreover, the RotatE model effectively integrates multi-source information of DRKG, enabling promising AD drug repurposing.The source code of this paper is available at https://github.com/LuYF-Lemon-love/AD-KGE.

Objective:To investigate the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) clearance condition and its predictive factors after treatment with nucleos(t)ide analogues to pegylated interferon-α add-on therapy in patients with chronic hepatitis B.Methods:Patients with chronic hepatitis B who visited the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University from 2018~2019 were prospectively enrolled. HBsAg≤ 1500 IU/mL, hepatitis B e antigen-negative, HBV DNA undetectable, received antiviral treatment with nucleos(t)ide analogues for at least one year, and pegylated interferon-α add-on therapy for 48 weeks were included. The primary endpoint of study was to determine the proportion of HBsAg clearance at 72 weeks. Concurrently, the predictive factors for HBsAg clearance were analyzed. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using a t-test or non-parametric test and a Fisher's exact test.Results:A total of 38 cases were included in this study, of which 13 cases obtained HBsAg clearance at 48 weeks of therapy and another six cases obtained HBsAg clearance throughout the extended treatment period of 72 weeks, accounting for 50.00% of all enrolled patients. There was a significant difference in HBsAg dynamics between the HBsAg clearance group and the non-clearance group (P < 0.05). Univariate logistic regression analysis showed that patients' age, baseline, 12-and 24-week HBsAg levels, and early HBsAg reduction were predictive factors for HBsAg clearance at 72 weeks of treatment. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that age (OR = 1.311; P = 0.016; 95% confidence interval: 1.051~1.635) and HBsAg levels at 24 weeks of treatment (OR = 4.481; P = 0.004; 95% confidence interval: 1.634~12.290) were independent predictors for HBsAg clearance.Conclusion:Hepatitis B e antigen-negative, nucleos(t)ide analogue treated, HBsAg ≤ 1500 IU/mL, and HBV DNA undetectable, peg-IFNα add-on treatment for 48 weeks could promote HBsAg clearance in patients with chronic hepatitis B. Six of the sixteen cases (37.50%) who did not obtain HBsAg clearance at week 48 did so with the course of therapy extended to week 72. Hence, the optimal individualized treatment strategy should be customized according to the predictors rather than the fixed 48-week course. Age (≤ 38), baseline HBsAg level (≤2.86 log 10IU/ml), HBsAg level at 24 weeks (≤ 0.92 log 10IU/ml), and 12-week HBsAg decrease from baseline (≥ 0.67 log 10IU/ml) indicate that patients are highly likely to obtain HBsAg clearance at the 72 weeks of combination therapy, in which the combined indicator based on HBsAg level ≤0.92 log 10IU/ml at 24 weeks will identify 85.0% to 100.0% of patients with HBsAg clearance.

Heme/metabolism* ; Cryoelectron Microscopy ; Membrane Transport Proteins ; Escherichia coli Proteins/metabolism*

Developing new therapeutic agents for cancer immunotherapy is highly demanding due to the low response ratio of PD-1/PD-L1 blockade in cancer patients. Here, we discovered that the novel immune checkpoint VISTA is highly expressed on a variety of tumor-infiltrating immune cells, especially myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) and CD8⁺ T cells. Then, peptide C1 with binding affinity to VISTA was developed by phage displayed bio-panning technique, and its mutant peptide VS3 was obtained by molecular docking based mutation. Peptide VS3 could bind VISTA with high affinity and block its interaction with ligand PSGL-1 under acidic condition, and elicit anti-tumor activity in vivo. The peptide DVS3-Pal was further designed by d-amino acid substitution and fatty acid modification, which exhibited strong proteolytic stability and significant anti-tumor activity through enhancing CD8⁺ T cell function and decreasing MDSCs infiltration. This is the first study to develop peptides to block VISTA/PSGL-1 interaction, which could act as promising candidates for cancer immunotherapy.

【Objective】 To conduct a case-control study on precocious puberty as an example to introduce the establishment and design of the electronic Data capture and management platform using Research Electronic data Capture (REDCap) system and support the development of clinical research. 【Methods】 Based on the clinical REDCap system, the case-control research project of precocious puberty was created, the case report forms were designed, the user rights were set, and the data quality control rules were formulated. 【Results】 We established the electronic data capture and management platform for our research, which had 15 case report forms, to collect the data of the participants, including sociodemographic information, time for rest and activities, diet, exposure to environmental internal-secretion interfering-substances, physical examination and biochemical indicators. We conducted project management by setting up features such as user permissions and workgroups, and added data quality verification rules to control data quality. The data could be exported in various file formats for analysis and sharing. 【Conclusion】 The application of REDCap to establish the data capture and management platform of precocious puberty case-control study has promoted the efficient implementation of clinical research, which can be further popularized and applied to clinical researches in other fields.

Objective: To explore the effects and mechanisms of interfering with transient receptor potential melastatin subfamily member 7(TRPM7) on biological behaviors(proliferation, apoptosis, invasion) of laryngeal carcinoma cells. Methods: Human laryngeal carcinoma cells TU212 were culturedin vitro. TRPM7-shRNA plasmid vectors(TRPM7-shRNA1 group, TRPM7-shRNA2 group, TRPM7-shRNA3 group) and negative control shRNA-NC(shRNA-NC group) were constructed. TU212 cells were transfected by liposome transfection method. The cells transfected with empty vector were enrolled as Control group. The level of lactic dehydrogenase(LDH) in TU212 supernatant was detected by ELISA. The level of malondialdehyde(MDA) and activity of superoxide dismutase(SOD) in supernatant were detected by colorimetry. The effects of knocking-down TRPM7 on proliferation and invasion of TU212 cells were detected by CCK-8, clone formation assay and Transwell assay. The expressions of invasion and apoptosis-related proteins were detected by Western blot. Results: After transfection, expression levels of TRPM7 mRNA and protein were down-regulated in TRPM7-shRNA1 group, TRPM7-shRNA2 group and TRPM7-shRNA3 group compared with Control group(P<0.05), and the decrease was the most significant in TRPM7-shRNA1 group(P<0.05). In functional experiments, SOD level in TRPM7-shRNA1 group decreased compared with Control group(P<0.05), while MDA and LDH levels increased(P<0.05). The cells proliferation rate and clone formation rate were decreased(P<0.05), the number of invasion cells was reduced(P<0.05), the expressions of N-cadherin and Vimentin proteins were down-regulated(P<0.05), mitochondrial membrane potentials were reduced(P<0.05), Bax/Bcl-2 and cleaved caspase-3/caspase-3 increased(P<0.05). Conclusion Knocking-down TRPM7 can increase oxidative stress level in laryngeal carcinoma cells TU212, inhibit their proliferation and invasion, and induce their apoptosis by mitochondrial pathways.