Objective:To investigate the effects of Apelin-13 regulatory peptide on neuronal cell pyroptosis in mice modeled with cerebral ischemia-reperfusion(I/R).Methods:We prepared a mouse cerebral I/R model using middle cerebral artery embolization and Reperfusion(MCAO/R).The HT22 cell injury model was prepared by the oxygen glu-cose deprivation/reoxygenation(OGD/R),and Apelin-13 treatment was also given.Neurological function was assessed by neurological deficit score;hematoxylin-eosin(HE)staining and Nissl staining were used to observe the morphologic changes of the infarcted area of the mice;and 2,3,5triphenyltetrazolium chloride(TTC)staining was used to observe the volume of cerebral infarcts;The expression of NOD-like receptor thermoprotein structural domain-related protein 3(NLRP3),gasdermin D(GSDMD),caspase-1,apoptosis-associated speck-like protein(ASC),interleukin 1β(IL-1β),and interleukin 18(IL-18)in brain tissues from infarcted areas or HT22 cells was detected by Western Blot,and IL-1β and IL-18 were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)in serum of mice and culture supema-tants;The cell viability and cell damage of HT22 were detected by CCK-8 kit and lactate dehydrogenase(LDH)assay kit,respectively;caspase-1 activity was measured by caspase-1 activity kit in HT22 cells;and the expression of caspase-1 and GSDMD was observed by immunofluorescence staining in HT22 cells.Results:Apelin-13 significantly improved neurological function and cerebral infarct volume in I/R mice,and attenuated pathological damage in the in-farcted area.It also reduced the serum levels of IL-1β and IL-18.In addition,Apelin-13 reduced the expression of mol-ecules such as NLRP3,GSDMD,caspase-1,IL-1β,and IL-18 in the cerebral infarct area of mice.In vitro experiments showed that Apelin-13 significantly increased the viability of OGD/R-treated HT22 cells,decreased caspase-1 activity,and reduced the LDH content,as well as decreased the expression of molecules such as NLRP3,GSDMD,caspase-1,IL-1β,IL-18,and so on,in OGD/R-treated HT22 cells.Conclusion:Apelin-13 inhibits pyroptosis through the NL-RP3/caspase-1/GSDMD pathway in cerebral ischemia/reperfusion mice and thus exerts neuroprotective effects.

Human brain banks use a standardized protocol to collect,process and store post-mortem human brains and related tissues,along with relevant clinical information,and to provide the tissue samples and data as a resource to foster neuroscience research according to a standardized operating protocols(SOP).Human brain bank serves as the foundation for neuroscience research and the diagnosis of neurological disorders,highlighting the crucial rule of ensuring the consistency of standardized quality for brain tissue samples.The first version of SOP in 2017 was published by the China Human Brain Bank Consortium.As members increases from different regions in China,a revised SOP was drafted by experts from the China Human Brain Bank Consortium to meet the growing demands for neuroscience research.The revised SOP places a strong emphasis on ethical standards,incorporates neuropathological evaluation of brain regions,and provides clarity on spinal cord sampling and pathological assessment.Notable enhancements in this updated version of the SOP include reinforced ethical guidelines,inclusion of matching controls in recruitment,and expansion of brain regions to be sampled for neuropathological evaluation.

Objective To monitor the susceptibility of clinical isolates to antimicrobial agents in tertiary hospitals in major regions of China in 2022.Methods Clinical isolates from 58 hospitals in China were tested for antimicrobial susceptibility using a unified protocol based on disc diffusion method or automated testing systems.Results were interpreted using the 2022 Clinical &Laboratory Standards Institute(CLSI)breakpoints.Results A total of 318 013 clinical isolates were collected from January 1,2022 to December 31,2022,of which 29.5％were gram-positive and 70.5％were gram-negative.The prevalence of methicillin-resistant strains in Staphylococcus aureus,Staphylococcus epidermidis and other coagulase-negative Staphylococcus species(excluding Staphylococcus pseudintermedius and Staphylococcus schleiferi)was 28.3％,76.7％and 77.9％,respectively.Overall,94.0％of MRSA strains were susceptible to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and 90.8％of MRSE strains were susceptible to rifampicin.No vancomycin-resistant strains were found.Enterococcus faecalis showed significantly lower resistance rates to most antimicrobial agents tested than Enterococcus faecium.A few vancomycin-resistant strains were identified in both E.faecalis and E.faecium.The prevalence of penicillin-susceptible Streptococcus pneumoniae was 94.2％in the isolates from children and 95.7％in the isolates from adults.The resistance rate to carbapenems was lower than 13.1％in most Enterobacterales species except for Klebsiella,21.7％-23.1％of which were resistant to carbapenems.Most Enterobacterales isolates were highly susceptible to tigecycline,colistin and polymyxin B,with resistance rates ranging from 0.1％to 13.3％.The prevalence of meropenem-resistant strains decreased from 23.5％in 2019 to 18.0％in 2022 in Pseudomonas aeruginosa,and decreased from 79.0％in 2019 to 72.5％in 2022 in Acinetobacter baumannii.Conclusions The resistance of clinical isolates to the commonly used antimicrobial agents is still increasing in tertiary hospitals.However,the prevalence of important carbapenem-resistant organisms such as carbapenem-resistant K.pneumoniae,P.aeruginosa,and A.baumannii showed a downward trend in recent years.This finding suggests that the strategy of combining antimicrobial resistance surveillance with multidisciplinary concerted action works well in curbing the spread of resistant bacteria.

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) accounts for about half of the number of patients with heart failure. In addition to the typical features of heart failure such as myocardial stiffness and diastolic function impairment, the key characteristic of HFpEF is the normal left ventricular ejection fraction, which increases the difficulty of clinical diagnosis. QiShenYiQi Dripping Pills (QSYQ) is a standardized traditional Chinese medicine approved by the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), and many clinical studies have demonstrated the efficacy and safety of QSYQ in the treatment of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, but the role of QSYQ in HFpEF has not been clarified. In this paper, high fat diet (HFD) and drinking water containing N-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME, 0.5 g·L^-1, pH=7.4) were used in C57BL/6N male mice to construct the classical HFpEF model (the experiment was approved by the Animal Ethics Committee of Hefei University of Technology, the approval number is HFUT20220921002), and at the 8^th week, the mice were dosed with ① empagliflozin, ② low-dose QSYQ (LQ), ③ high-dose QSYQ (HQ), ④ empagliflozin plus low-dose QSYQ (ELQ) for 4 weeks, the body weight of the mice was recorded during the experiment, echocardiography, blood pressure and glucose tolerance were detected and the exercise capacity of mice was evaluated, and pathological and biochemical experiments were used to detect cardiac fibrosis, liver fibrosis and serum biochemical indexes in mice, RNAseq assay was performed with mice heart tissues. The results showed that QSYQ as well as QSYQ+empagliflozin could significantly reduce the body weight, improve diastolic function and hypertension, improve glucose tolerance and enhance exercise ability of HFpEF mice. At the biochemical and molecular levels, QSYQ and QSYQ+empagliflozin can reduce the cross-sectional area of cardiomyocytes and reduce cardiac collagen contents, thereby alleviating myocardial hypertrophy and fibrotic phenotypes, and improve metabolic disorders. The RNAseq results suggest that the function of QSYQ in improving HFpEF may be related to calsequestrin 1. In conclusion, this study shows that QSYQ and QSYQ+empagliflozin can significantly improve HFpEF-related cardiac dysfunction and metabolic disorders, which provides a theoretical basis for the clinical treatment of HFpEF.

Multiple organs are physiologically and pathologically interconnected during aging, and the brain plays a central role in this process. There is a direct two-way communication between the brain and the gut called “brain-gut interaction”, which is of great significance for the study of aging, and the molecular mechanism remains to be further studied. The aim of this study is to explore the mechanism of aging in the context of brain-gut interaction. The results of general physical signs of mice showed that the amount of exercise decreased, body weight and food intake decreased significantly in aged mice (P < 0. 001, P<0. 05). The thymus index of aged mice was significantly lower than that of normal mice (P< 0. 05), and the thymic pathological results showed that the thymic cortex of aging mice was thinner, the boundary between medulla and cortex was blurred, and the cells were loosely arranged. Metabolomics analysis revealed 317 differential metabolites in feces and 100 differential metabolites in hippocampus. The results of microbiome showed that Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes were the dominant phyla of gut microbiota. Bacteroidetes showed an upward trend and Firmicutes showed a downward trend after aging. KEGG pathway results showed that 26 metabolic pathways were related to the study of aging, among which galactose metabolism, ABC transporter and purine metabolism were of great significance for the brain-gut interaction. The results of Spearman correlation analysis of the three groups showed that the types of metabolites involved were mainly lipids and lipid-like molecules and organic acids and derivatives, and the gut microbiota involved were mainly Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes. In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that the synergistic changes between brain and gut in aging mice were related to the mechanism of aging, which provided new insights into the mechanism of aging process.

This study aims to identify the active components and the mechanism of Jingqi Yukui Capsules(JQYK) in the treatment of gastric ulcer based on network pharmacology, and verify some key targets and signaling pathways through animal experiment. To be specific, first, the active components and targets of JQYK were retrieved from a Bioinformatics Analysis Tool for Molecular Mechanism of Traditional Chinese Medicine(BATMAN-TCM) and Traditional Chinese Medicine Systems Pharmacology Database and Analysis Platform(TCMSP), and the targets of gastric ulcer from GeneCards and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man(OMIM) with the search term "gastric ulcer". The common targets of the two were the potential targets of the prescription for the treatment of the di-sease. Then, protein-protein interaction(PPI) network of key targets were constructed based on STRING and Cytoscape 3.7.2, followed by Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes(KEGG) pathway enrichment by matescape database and pathway visualization by Omicshare. For the animal experiment, the improved method of Okabe was used to induce gastric ulcer in rats, and the model rats were classified into the model group, JQYK high-dose(JQYK-H), medium-dose(JQYK-M), and low-dose(JQYK-L) groups, Anweiyang Capsules(WYA) group, and Rabeprazole Sodium Enteric Capsules(RBPZ) group. Normal rats were included in the blank group. Rats in the blank group and model group were given distilled water and those in the administration groups received corresponding drugs. Then gastric ulcer healing in rats was observed. The changes of the gastric histomorphology in rats were evaluated based on hematoxylin-eosin(HE) staining, and the content of inducible nitric oxide synthase(iNOS) in rat gastric tissue was detected with Coomassie brilliant blue method. The mRNA and protein levels of some proteins in rat gastric tissue were determined by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction(RT-qPCR) and Western blot(WB) to further validate some key targets and signaling pathways. A total of 206 active components and 535 targets of JQYK, 1 305 targets of gastric ulcer, and 166 common targets of the disease and the drug were yielded. According to PPI analysis and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis, multiple key targets, such as interleukin-6(IL-6), tumor necrosis factor(TNF), mitogen-activated protein kinase 1(MAPK1), MAPK3, and MAPK14, as well as nuclear factor kappa-B(NF-κB) signaling pathway, IL-17 signaling pathway, and leukocyte transendothelial migration in the top 20 key signaling pathways were closely related to inflammation. The key protein p38 MAPK and NF-κB signaling pathway were selected for further verification by animal experiment. The gastric ulcer in the JQYK-H group recovered nearly to the level in the blank group, with significant decrease in the content of iNOS in rat gastric tissue and significant reduction in the mRNA and phosphorylation levels of p38 MAPK and the mRNA and protein levels of NF-κB p65 in rat gastric tissue. The results indicated that JQYK can inhibit the phosphorylation of the key protein p38 MAPK and the expression of NF-κB p65 in the NF-κB signaling pathway, thereby exerting the anti-inflammatory effect and effectively improving the quality of gastric ulcer healing in rats. Thus, the animal experiment result verifies some predictions of network pharmacology.
Animal Experimentation ; Animals ; Capsules ; Gastric Mucosa/metabolism* ; Humans ; Network Pharmacology ; Rats ; Stomach Ulcer/genetics*

To systematically evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of Lianhua Qingwen in the treatment of adult pneumonia. The randomized controlled trial of Lianhua Qingwen combined with conventional Western medicine in the treatment of pneumonia were retrieved from PubMed, EMbase, Wanfang database, VIP database, and CNKI from the establishment of database to March 2020. Two researchers independently conducted literature screening and data extraction, and the third researcher was in charge of arbitration in case of any disagreement. Outcome indicators included total clinical effective rate, symptom improvement time, and incidence of adverse events. R 3.6.1 was used for Meta-analysis, and RevMan 5.3 was used for quality evaluation. Twenty-two studies were included, with a total of 2 007 patients, including 1 017 patients in the experimental group and 990 patients in the control group. The results showed that the total clinical effective rate of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group(RR=1.11, 95%CI[1.08, 1.15], P<0.001), and the antifebrile time(MD=-1.81, 95%CI[-2.42,-1.21], P<0.001), cough duration(MD=-2.32, 95%CI[-2.89,-1.76], P<0.001), rale duration(MD=-2.19, 95%CI[-2.74,-1.63], P<0.001), imaging recovery time(MD=-2.17, 95%CI[-2.76,-1.58], P<0.001) and post-treatment CRP(MD=-4.07, 95%CI[-6.39,-1.75], P<0.001] were all significantly lower than those of the control group. However, it did not proved that the experimental group was safer than the control group(RR=0.84, 95%CI[0.57, 1.24], P=0.382). The results confirmed that Lianhua Qingwen combined with conventional Western medicine in the treatment of pneumonia could improve the clinical treatment efficiency, shorten the time of fever, cough, rale disappearance and imaging recovery, improve CRP index and accelerate the recovery of pneumonia patients. However, the literatures included in this study had a low quality, and the conclusions still need to be further confirmed by more high-quality, multi-center, rigorously designed randomized controlled trial.
Adult ; Cough ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/adverse effects* ; Humans ; Pneumonia/drug therapy* ; Treatment Outcome

Objective:To investigate the effect of Huangqi Jianzhongtang on Janusprotein tyrosine kinase 2/signal transducers and transcriptional activator protein 3 (JAK2/STAT3) signal pathway in rats with spleen-stomach deficiency cold type gastric ulcer (GU). Method:A total of 60 SPF level Wistar rats were randomly divided into two groups: blank group and model group. Model rats were used to reconstruct the spleen-stomach deficiency cold type GU model by comprehensive modeling method. Model rats were divided into model group, Anweiyang group and high, medium and low-dose Huangqi Jianzhongtang groups according to the random number table, with 10 rats in each group. Rats in blank group and model group were given 10 mL·kg^-1·d^-1 distilled water, and 16, 8, 4 g·kg^-1·d^-1 Huangqi Jianzhongtang, respectively. Rats in the positive control group were given 0.14 g·kg^-1·d^-1 Anweiyang for 21 days. The gene expressions of JAK2 and STAT3 in the ulcer tissue were detected by Real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (Real-time PCR), the protein expressions and phosphorylation levels of JAK2 and STAT3 in the ulcer tissue were detected by Western blot, and the contents of interleukin-10（IL-10）and interleukin-17（IL-17）in the gastric tissue of each group were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Result:Compared with the blank group, the general survival condition of the model group was worse, the content of IL-10 in gastric homogenate was significantly reduced, while the content of IL-17 was significantly increased (P<0.05), the protein expressions of JAK2 and STAT3 in gastric tissue was not significantly increased, whereas the gene expressions and phosphorylation levels of JAK2 and STAT3 were significantly increased (P<0.05). Compared with the model group, the content of IL-10 increased, but the content of IL-17 decreased, the gene expressions of JAK2 and STAT3 and the level of protein phosphorylation decreased in the treatment group, especially in the high-dose Huangqi Jianzhongtang group, with statistically significant differences (P<0.05). Conclusion:Huangqi Jianzhongtang can improve the survival condition of rats with spleen stomach deficiency cold type gastric ulcer, and its mechanism may be related to the intervention of gastric mucosal immune barrier dysfunction mediated by JAK2/STAT3 pathway activation.