ObjectiveTo explore the effects of astragalin （AST） on autophagy and apoptosis of astrocytes in the L_4-5 dorsal horn of the spinal cord in mice with inflammatory pain induced by complete Freund's adjuvant （CFA）. MethodsTwenty-four male C57BL/6 mice， aged six months， were randomly assigned to four groups： control group， saline group， CFA model group， and CFA+AST group， six mice in each group. The inflammatory pain model was established by injection of 10 µL CFA into the right lateral malleolus fossa. The saline group were injected with an equal amount of normal saline at the same site. The inflammatory pain mice in CFA+AST group were further treated with AST （60 mg/kg） intraperitoneally once a day for 21 consecutive days. Multiplex immunofluorescence staining was used to detect the coexpression of autophagy-related factors including ATG 12 and Beclin-1， apoptosis-related factors including Cleaved-Caspase3 and Caspase9， and the astrocyte marker such as GFAP in the L_4-5 spinal dorsal horn of the mice in each group. Western blot was used to examine the protein expression levels of autophagy-related proteins（ATG12， Beclin-1） and apoptosis-related proteins（Caspase 3， Caspase 9） in the L_4-5 spinal dorsal horn of mice. ResultsImmunofluorescent staining showed that in the L_4-5 dorsal horn of the spinal cord， the fluorescence intensity of ATG12 （P<0.000 1） and Beclin-1 （P<0.000 1） was significantly increased， while that of Cleaved-Caspase 3 （P<0.001） and Caspase 9 （P<0.000 1） was decreased in the CFA+AST group when compared to the CFA model group. Furthermore， AST could inhibit the activation of astrocytes. Western blot further confirmed that AST significantly upregulated the expression of ATG12 （P<0.000 1） and Beclin-1 （P<0.000 1） in the L_4-5 spinal cord of CFA mice， and downregulated the expression of Caspase 3 （P<0.01） and Caspase 9 （P<0.001）. ConclusionsAST promotes autophagy of astrocytes and inhibits their apoptosis in the L_4-5 spinal dorsal horn of CFA mice.

Objective:To analyze the therapeutic effect and safety of simultaneous integrated boost intensity-modulated radiotherapy for lung cancer brain metastases.Methods:A total of 300 patients with lung cancer brain metastases admitted to the Department of Oncology, Qingdao Municipal Hospital from March 2021 to March 2023 were selected as the study objects. The patients were divided into control group ( n=150) and study group ( n=150) by random number table method. The control group received sequential three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy, while the study group received simultaneous integrated boost intensity-modulated radiotherapy. The short-term and medium-term efficacy, target dose, and adverse reactions were compared between the two groups. Results:The short-term and medium-term total effective rates of the study group were 73.33% (110/150) and 88.67% (133/150), respectively, which were higher than those of the control group [51.33% (77/150) and 71.33% (107/150) ] ( χ2=15.46, P<0.001; χ2=14.08, P<0.001). The D min in gross tumor planning target volume and whole brain clinical planning target volume of the study group were (23.78±1.11) and (58.46±0.55) Gy, respectively, which were higher than those in the control group [ (16.67±1.08) and (53.44±0.74) Gy], with statistically significant differences ( t=56.22, P<0.001; t=66.68, P<0.001). The D mean in gross tumor planning target volume and whole brain clinical planning target volume of the study group were (44.12±0.87) and (62.19±0.57) Gy, respectively, which were higher than those in the control group [ (37.55±0.89) and (57.78±0.82) Gy], with statistically significant differences ( t=64.65, P<0.001; t=54.08, P<0.001). The total incidence of adverse reactions was 30.67% (46/150) in the study group and 36.67% (55/150) in the control group, with no significantly significant difference ( χ2=1.20, P=0.271) . Conclusion:Compared with sequential three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy, simultaneous integrated boost intensity-modulated radiotherapy has better short-term and medium-term efficacy in patients with lung cancer brain metastases. Target dose can be increased without increasing adverse reactions.

Objective To explore the correlation between personality traits and non suicidal self injury behavior in adolescent depression patients,in order to enhance understanding of the psychological health risks of depression patients.Methods This study was conducted at the Wuhan Mental Health Center from September 2021 to September 2023.A total of 138 patients with first-onset moderate to severe adolescent depression were included.The patients were divided into a group without self injury suicidal behavior(n=25),a non suicidal self injury(NSSI)group(n=78),and an attempted suicide(SA)group(n=35).Collect general information and data on neurotic personality scores,negative life events,emotional states,and social psychological factors using the Hamilton Anxiety Scale(HAMA),Hamilton Depression Scale(HAMD-24),and other psychological assessment tools.Using statistical methods for correlation and regression analysis to study the relationship between personality traits and non suicidal self injury behavior.Results There were significant differences in personality traits such as internal and external tendencies,psychoticism,neuroticism,and concealment among the non self injurious suicide behavior group,non suicidal self injurious behavior group,and suicide behavior group.The scores of the non suicidal self injurious behavior group and suicide behavior group were generally higher than those of the non self injurious self injurious behavior group(P<0.05);There were significant differences in self injury behavior scores among these three groups,especially in the suicide behavior group,which had the highest score,but there was no significant difference in life event scores;There were significant differences in scores for anxiety,depression,childhood trauma,stressful life events,and self-esteem among the three groups.Among them,the suicide behavior group had the highest scores for anxiety,depression,childhood trauma,and stressful life events,but the lowest score for self-esteem(P<0.05);Internal and external tendencies,psychoticism,neuroticism,and concealment are significantly correlated with non suicidal self injury behavior,and multiple regression analysis results show that these factors,as well as anxiety,depression,childhood trauma,stressful life events,and self-esteem,are inde-pendent influencing factors of non suicidal self injury behavior.The best predictive threshold for internal and exter-nal tendencies is-10.5%.Conclusion This study reveals the correlation between personality traits and non sui-cidal self injury behavior in adolescent depression patients.Understanding these relationships in clinical practice and intervention strategies can help better identify high-risk groups and provide personalized mental health support.

Renal cell carcinoma is one of the significant diseases endangering human health. Recent findings have shown that the human microbiome plays an important role in the occurrence and development of renal cell carcinoma, influencing its regression and treatment outcome. At present, microecological research on renal cell carcinoma are still in their initial stages, and their regulatory roles and specific mechanisms still need to be further explored. This article reviews the relationship between the human microbiome and renal cell carcinoma occurrence and development, as well as its role in diagnosis and therapies.

Objective:To explore clinical value of nucleic acid detection for hepatitis B virus (HBV) screening in hospitalized patients.Methods:This cross-sectional study collected and analyzed plasma samples from patients admitted to 10 domestic medical institutions from July 2021 to December 2021. Serological immunoassay and nucleic acid screening were used to simultaneously detect hepatitis B markers such as hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), hepatitis B surface antibody (HBsAb), hepatitis B e Antigen (HBeAg), hepatitis B e antibody (HBeAb), hepatitis B core antibody (HBcAb),and HBV DNA. Statistical analysis was performed on the serology, nucleic acid test results and clinical information of the patients.Results:Of the 8 655 collected samples, HBsAg was positive in 216 (2.50%) samples,HBV DNA was positive in 238 (2.75%) samples ( P>0.05); 210 (2.43%) samples were positive for both HBsAg and HBV DNA, 28 (0.32%) were HBsAg negative and HBV DNA positive, 6 cases (0.07%) were HBsAg positive and HBV DNA negative. Conclusion:These results indicate that the HBV DNA testing is equally effective as hepatitis B virus serological detection for hepatitis B virus screening in hospitalized patients.

Objective:This multi-centre study was conducted to assess the efficacy of various preoperative/pre-transfusion screening methods for blood transmitted disease.Methods:From July 2021 to December 2021, plasma samples of patients admitted to 10 hospitals were collected for screening preoperative/pre-transfusion blood transmitted disease. Nucleic acid detection technology was used to detect hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA, hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)(1+2) RNA, and the results were compared with the immuno-serological methods. χ 2 test and Kappa test were used to analyze the efficacy of these two methods. Results:A total of 8 655 valid specimens were collected from 10 hospitals. There was a statistically significant difference in the positive detection rate of HCV between the two methods ( P<0.001). There was no significant difference in the positive detection rate of HBV and HIV assessed by the two methods ( P>0.05), but the number of positive cases detected by HBV DNA and HIV RNA (218 and 4 cases) was significantly higher than the corresponding serological results (216 and 2 cases). At the same time, there were HBV, HCV and HIV immuno-serological omissions by the immuno-serological methods, among which 28 cases were HBsAg negative and HBV DNA positive, 2 cases were HCV antibody negative and HCV RNA positive, and 2 cases were HIV antigen/antibody negative and HIV RNA positive. In addition, in the 66 samples with inconsistent results from the two detection methods, 83.3% (55/66), 68.2% (45/66), 63.6% (42/66) and 62.1% (41/66) of patients aged was>45 years, tumor, surgery and male, respectively. Conclusions:Compared with immuno-serological tests, nucleic acid tests have the advantage in terms of sensitivity on detecting HBV, HCV and HIV infection and could reduce missed detection. The risk of transmission can be reduced by adding HBV, HCV, and HIV nucleic acid tests to preoperative/pre-transfusion immuno-serological tests screening for patients over 45 years of age and tumor patients.

Objective:To compare the cost-effectiveness of hospitalized Chinese patients undergoing nucleic acid screening strategies for hepatitis B and hepatitis C, immunological screening strategy, and no screening strategy under different willingness to pay (WTP). The results might aid to decision-making for the optimal strategy.Methods:In this study, nucleic acid screening, immunological screening and no screening were used as screening strategies, and China′s GDP in 2021 (80 976 yuan) was used as the threshold of WTP to construct a Markov model. After introducing parameters related to the diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis B and C in inpatients, a cohort population of 100 000 inpatients was simulated by TreeAge Pro 2021 software, the total cost, total health effects, incremental cost-effectiveness ratio and average cost-effectiveness ratio of different screening strategies were calculated, and cost-effectiveness analysis was conducted. Univariate and probabilistic sensitivity analysis were used to assess the impact of parameter uncertainty on the final results.Results:Compared with the non-screening strategy, the incremental total cost of the hepatitis B immunological screening strategy for cohort patients was 11 049 536 yuan, and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was 24 762 yuan/quality-adjusted life years (QALY), while the total incremental cost of nucleic acid screening was 19 208 059 yuan, and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was 29 873 yuan/QALY; the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of nucleic acid screening and immunological screening was 45 834 yuan/QALY. Compared with the non-screening strategy, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of hepatitis C immunological screening strategy was 5 731 yuan/QALY, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of nucleic acid screening strategy was 8 722 yuan/QALY, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of nucleic acid screening and immunological screening was 45 591 yuan/QALY. The results of probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed that when the cost of nucleic acid testing exceeded 214.53 yuan, it was not cost-effective to perform hepatitis B nucleic acid screening under the WTP as 1 fold GDP. When the cost of nucleic acid testing exceeded 132.18 yuan, it was not cost-effective to conduct hepatitis C screening under the WTP as 1 fold GDP.Conclusions:Nucleic acid screening strategy can achieve more cost-effectiveness and is worthy of vigorous promotion. Compared with no screening, both the nucleic acid and immunological screening strategies are cost-effective, and hepatitis nucleic acid screening is the optimal strategy for hospitalized patients.

Dorsal root ganglia (DRG) is an essential part of the peripheral nervous system and the hub of the peripheral sensory afferent. The dynamic changes of neuronal cells and their gene expression during the development of dorsal root ganglion have been studied through single-cell RNAseq analysis, while the dynamic changes of non-neuronal cells have not been systematically studied. Using single cell RNA sequencing technology, we conducted a research on the non-neuronal cells in the dorsal root ganglia of rats at different developmental stage. In this study, primary cell suspension was obtained from using the dorsal root ganglions (DRGs, L4-L5) of ten 7-day-old rats and three 3-month-old rats. The 10×Genomics platform was used for single cell dissociation and RNA sequencing. Twenty cell subsets were acquired through cluster dimension reduction analysis, and the marker genes of different types of cells in DRG were identified according to previous researches about DRG single cell transcriptome sequencing. In order to find out the non-neuronal cell subsets with significant differences at different development stage, the cells were classified into different cell types according to markers collected from previous researches. We performed pseudotime analysis of 4 types Schwann cells. It was found that subtype Ⅱ Schwann cells emerged firstly, and then were subtype Ⅲ Schwann cells and subtype Ⅳ Schwann cells, while subtype Ⅰ Schwann cells existed during the whole development procedure. Pseudotime analysis indicated the essential genes influencing cell fate of different subtypes of Schwann cell in DRG, such as Ntrk2 and Pmp2, which affected cell fate of Schwann cells during the development period. GO analysis of differential expressed genes showed that the up-regulated genes, such as Cst3 and Spp1, were closely related to biological process of tissue homeostasis and multi-multicellular organism process. The down regulated key genes, such as Col3a1 and Col4a1, had close relationship with the progress of extracellular structure organization and negative regulation of cell adhesion. This suggested that the expression of genes enhancing cell homestasis increased, while the expression of related genes regulating ECM-receptor interaction pathway decreased during the development. The discovery provided valuable information and brand-new perspectives for the study on the physical and developmental mechanism of Schwann cell as well as the non-neuronal cell changes in DRG at different developmental stage. The differential gene expression results provided crucial references for the mechanism of somatosensory maturation during development.
Rats ; Animals ; Ganglia, Spinal/metabolism* ; Rats, Sprague-Dawley ; Transcriptome ; Neurons/metabolism* ; Schwann Cells/physiology*

It is an urgent demand worldwide to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus. The 3-chymotrypsin-like protease (3CL^pro) and papain-like protease (PL^pro) are key targets to discover SARS-CoV-2 inhibitors. After screening 12 Chinese herbal medicines and 125 compounds from licorice, we found that a popular natural product schaftoside inhibited 3CL^pro and PL^pro with IC₅₀ values of 1.73 ± 0.22 and 3.91 ± 0.19 μmol/L, respectively, and inhibited SARS-CoV-2 virus in Vero E6 cells with EC₅₀ of 11.83 ± 3.23 μmol/L. Hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry analysis, quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics calculations, together with site-directed mutagenesis indicated the antiviral activities of schaftoside were related with non-covalent interactions with H41, G143 and R188 of 3CL^pro, and K157, E167 and A246 of PL^pro. Moreover, proteomics analysis and cytokine assay revealed that schaftoside also regulated immune response and inflammation of the host cells. The anti-inflammatory activities of schaftoside were confirmed on lipopolysaccharide-induced acute lung injury mice. Schaftoside showed good safety and pharmacokinetic property, and could be a promising drug candidate for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.

COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread across the globe, posing an enormous threat to public health and safety. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), in combination with Western medicine (WM), has made important and lasting contributions in the battle against COVID-19. In this review, updated clinical effects and potential mechanisms of TCM, presented in newly recognized three distinct phases of the disease, are summarized and discussed. By integrating the available clinical and preclinical evidence, the efficacies and underlying mechanisms of TCM on COVID-19, including the highly recommended three Chinese patent medicines and three Chinese medicine formulas, are described in a panorama. We hope that this comprehensive review not only provides a reference for health care professionals and the public to recognize the significant contributions of TCM for COVID-19, but also serves as an evidence-based in-depth summary and analysis to facilitate understanding the true scientific value of TCM.