Urticaria is a common allergic skin disease.Professor FAN Rui-Qiang believes that the main pathogenesis of urticaria is due to endowment intolerance,and wind-pathogen is the main pathogenic factor.The patients of Lingnan area are prone to be attacked by dampness interweaved with heat.The common syndrome patterns of urticaria are wind-damp heat syndrome,spleen deficiency and dampness accumulation syndrome,and disharmony between nutritive qi and defensive qi syndrome.For the treatment of urticaria by stages,the differentiation of deficiency and excess is stressed.Acute urticaria usually manifests as excess syndrome,and chronic urticaria often manifests as deficiency syndrome or deficiency interweaved with excess syndrome.For the treatment of urticaria patients with excess syndrome,therapies of clearing heat and removing dampness,and dispelling wind and relieving itching are recommended,and the modified prescription of Soufeng Lishi Decoction is usually adopted.For the treatment of urticaria patients with deficiency interweaved with excess syndrome,simultaneous treatment of symptoms and root causes should be performed,therapies of invigorating spleen,resolving dampness and relieving itching are recommended,and the modified prescription of Duopi Decoction is adopted.For the treatment of urticaria patients with deficiency syndrome,therapies of regulating nutritive qi and defensive qi,and expelling wind to relieve itching are recommended,and the modified prescription of Yupingfeng Powder plus Guizhi Decoction is adopted.The high-frequency Chinese medicinals for the treatment of urticaria treated by Professor FAN Rui-Qiang are Saposhnikoviae Radix,Cynanchi Paniculati Radix et Rhizoma,Schizonepetae Spica,Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma,Albiziae Cortex,Artemisiae Scopariae Herba,Paeoniae Radix Alba,Forsythiae Fructus,Tribuli Fructus,Houttuyniae Herba,Rehmanniae Radix,Dictamni Cortex,Atractylodis Rhizoma,Poria,and Astragali Radix.Professor FAN Rui-Qiang's clinical medication is flexible,and aims to reduce recurrence and improve the quality of life of urticaria patients.

In August 2021, three students with diarrhea from the same school visited a local hospital in the S district of Beijing. An epidemic investigation showed that there were more students with diarrhea in the same school and they had one meal together. Campylobacter jejuni was isolated from both patients with diarrhea and asymptomatic food handlers; however, the latter also carried Campylobacter coli. Phylogenomic analysis showed that there was a campylobacteriosis outbreak among the students, and the asymptomatic food handler may have been the source of the infection. Routine inspection and surveillance for Campylobacter is needed for the food producing staff, particularly those cooking in the cafeteria in schools or other public food services.
Humans ; Campylobacter Infections/epidemiology* ; Gastroenteritis ; Diarrhea ; Campylobacter ; Disease Outbreaks

Objective: To assess the efficacy and safety of polymyxin B in neutropenic patients with hematologic disorders who had refractory gram-negative bacterial bloodstream infection. Methods: From August 2021 to July 2022, we retrospectively analyzed neutropenic patients with refractory gram-negative bacterial bloodstream infection who were treated with polymyxin B in the Department of Hematology of the First Affiliated Hospital of the Soochow University between August 2021 to July 2022. The cumulative response rate was then computed. Results: The study included 27 neutropenic patients with refractory gram-negative bacterial bloodstream infections. Polymyxin B therapy was effective in 22 of 27 patients. The median time between the onset of fever and the delivery of polymyxin B was 3 days [interquartile range (IQR) : 2-5]. The median duration of polymyxin B treatment was 7 days (IQR: 5-11). Polymyxin B therapy had a median antipyretic time of 37 h (IQR: 32-70). The incidence of acute renal dysfunction was 14.8% (four out of 27 cases), all classified as "injury" according to RIFLE criteria. The incidence of hyperpigmentation was 59.3%. Conclusion: Polymyxin B is a viable treatment option for granulocytopenia patients with refractory gram-negative bacterial bloodstream infections.
Humans ; Polymyxin B/adverse effects* ; Retrospective Studies ; Gram-Negative Bacterial Infections/complications* ; Fever/drug therapy* ; Sepsis/drug therapy* ; Anti-Bacterial Agents/therapeutic use* ; Bacteremia/complications*

Objective: To analyze the clinical epidemiological characteristics including composition of pathogens , clinical characteristics, and disease prognosis acute bacterial meningitis (ABM) in Chinese children. Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed on the clinical and laboratory data of 1 610 children <15 years of age with ABM in 33 tertiary hospitals in China from January 2019 to December 2020. Patients were divided into different groups according to age,<28 days group, 28 days to <3 months group, 3 months to <1 year group, 1-<5 years of age group, 5-<15 years of age group; etiology confirmed group and clinically diagnosed group according to etiology diagnosis. Non-numeric variables were analyzed with the Chi-square test or Fisher's exact test, while non-normal distrituction numeric variables were compared with nonparametric test. Results: Among 1 610 children with ABM, 955 were male and 650 were female (5 cases were not provided with gender information), and the age of onset was 1.5 (0.5, 5.5) months. There were 588 cases age from <28 days, 462 cases age from 28 days to <3 months, 302 cases age from 3 months to <1 year of age group, 156 cases in the 1-<5 years of age and 101 cases in the 5-<15 years of age. The detection rates were 38.8% (95/245) and 31.5% (70/222) of Escherichia coli and 27.8% (68/245) and 35.1% (78/222) of Streptococcus agalactiae in infants younger than 28 days of age and 28 days to 3 months of age; the detection rates of Streptococcus pneumonia, Escherichia coli, and Streptococcus agalactiae were 34.3% (61/178), 14.0% (25/178) and 13.5% (24/178) in the 3 months of age to <1 year of age group; the dominant pathogens were Streptococcus pneumoniae and the detection rate were 67.9% (74/109) and 44.4% (16/36) in the 1-<5 years of age and 5-<15 years of age . There were 9.7% (19/195) strains of Escherichia coli producing ultra-broad-spectrum β-lactamases. The positive rates of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) culture and blood culture were 32.2% (515/1 598) and 25.0% (400/1 598), while 38.2% (126/330)and 25.3% (21/83) in CSF metagenomics next generation sequencing and Streptococcus pneumoniae antigen detection. There were 4.3% (32/790) cases of which CSF white blood cell counts were normal in etiology confirmed group. Among 1 610 children with ABM, main intracranial imaging complications were subdural effusion and (or) empyema in 349 cases (21.7%), hydrocephalus in 233 cases (14.5%), brain abscess in 178 cases (11.1%), and other cerebrovascular diseases, including encephalomalacia, cerebral infarction, and encephalatrophy, in 174 cases (10.8%). Among the 166 cases (10.3%) with unfavorable outcome, 32 cases (2.0%) died among whom 24 cases died before 1 year of age, and 37 cases (2.3%) had recurrence among whom 25 cases had recurrence within 3 weeks. The incidences of subdural effusion and (or) empyema, brain abscess and ependymitis in the etiology confirmed group were significantly higher than those in the clinically diagnosed group (26.2% (207/790) vs. 17.3% (142/820), 13.0% (103/790) vs. 9.1% (75/820), 4.6% (36/790) vs. 2.7% (22/820), χ²=18.71, 6.20, 4.07, all P<0.05), but there was no significant difference in the unfavorable outcomes, mortility, and recurrence between these 2 groups (all P>0.05). Conclusions: The onset age of ABM in children is usually within 1 year of age, especially <3 months. The common pathogens in infants <3 months of age are Escherichia coli and Streptococcus agalactiae, and the dominant pathogen in infant ≥3 months is Streptococcus pneumoniae. Subdural effusion and (or) empyema and hydrocephalus are common complications. ABM should not be excluded even if CSF white blood cell counts is within normal range. Standardized bacteriological examination should be paid more attention to increase the pathogenic detection rate. Non-culture CSF detection methods may facilitate the pathogenic diagnosis.
Adolescent ; Brain Abscess ; Child ; Child, Preschool ; Escherichia coli ; Female ; Humans ; Hydrocephalus ; Infant ; Infant, Newborn ; Male ; Meningitis, Bacterial/epidemiology* ; Retrospective Studies ; Streptococcus agalactiae ; Streptococcus pneumoniae ; Subdural Effusion ; beta-Lactamases

Cancer is a complex disease associated with multiple gene mutations and malignant phenotypes, and multi-target drugs provide a promising therapy idea for the treatment of cancer. Natural products with abundant chemical structure types and rich pharmacological characteristics could be ideal sources for screening multi-target antineoplastic drugs. In this paper, 50 tumor-related targets were collected by searching the Therapeutic Target Database and Thomson Reuters Integrity database, and a multi-target anti-cancer prediction system based on mt-QSAR models was constructed by using naïve Bayesian and recursive partitioning algorithm for the first time. Through the multi-target anti-cancer prediction system, some dominant fragments that act on multiple tumor-related targets were analyzed, which could be helpful in designing multi-target anti-cancer drugs. Anti-cancer traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and its natural products were collected to form a TCM formula-based natural products library, and the potential targets of the natural products in the library were predicted by multi-target anti-cancer prediction system. As a result, alkaloids, flavonoids and terpenoids were predicted to act on multiple tumor-related targets. The predicted targets of some representative compounds were verified according to literature review and most of the selected natural compounds were found to exert certain anti-cancer activity in vitro biological experiments. In conclusion, the multi-target anti-cancer prediction system is very effective and reliable, and it could be further used for elucidating the functional mechanism of anti-cancer TCM formula and screening for multi-target anti-cancer drugs. The anti-cancer natural compounds found in this paper will lay important information for further study.
Antineoplastic Agents/pharmacology* ; Bayes Theorem ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal/chemistry* ; Humans ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Neoplasms/drug therapy*

Objective: To analyze the course of disease and epidemiological parameters of COVID-19 and provide evidence for making prevention and control strategies. Methods: To display the distribution of course of disease of the infectors who had close contacts with COVID-19 cases from January 1 to March 15, 2020 in Guangdong Provincial, the models of Lognormal, Weibull and gamma distribution were applied. A descriptive analysis was conducted on the basic characteristics and epidemiological parameters of course of disease. Results: In total, 515 of 11 580 close contacts were infected, with an attack rate about 4.4%, including 449 confirmed cases and 66 asymptomatic cases. Lognormal distribution was fitting best for latent period, incubation period, pre-symptomatic infection period of confirmed cases and infection period of asymptomatic cases; Gamma distribution was fitting best for infectious period and clinical symptom period of confirmed cases; Weibull distribution was fitting best for latent period of asymptomatic cases. The latent period, incubation period, pre-symptomatic infection period, infectious period and clinical symptoms period of confirmed cases were 4.50 (95%CI:3.86-5.13) days, 5.12 (95%CI:4.63-5.62) days, 0.87 (95%CI:0.67-1.07) days, 11.89 (95%CI:9.81-13.98) days and 22.00 (95%CI:21.24-22.77) days, respectively. The latent period and infectious period of asymptomatic cases were 8.88 (95%CI:6.89-10.86) days and 6.18 (95%CI:1.89-10.47) days, respectively. Conclusion: The estimated course of COVID-19 and related epidemiological parameters are similar to the existing data.
COVID-19 ; Cohort Studies ; Contact Tracing ; Humans ; Incidence ; Prospective Studies

Reduced levels of retinal dopamine, a key regulator of eye development, are associated with experimental myopia in various species, but are not seen in the myopic eyes of C57BL/6 mice, which are deficient in melatonin, a neurohormone having extensive interactions with dopamine. Here, we examined the relationship between form-deprivation myopia (FDM) and retinal dopamine levels in melatonin-proficient CBA/CaJ mice. We found that these mice exhibited a myopic refractive shift in form-deprived eyes, which was accompanied by altered retinal dopamine levels. When melatonin receptors were pharmacologically blocked, FDM could still be induced, but its magnitude was reduced, and retinal dopamine levels were no longer altered in FDM animals, indicating that melatonin-related changes in retinal dopamine levels contribute to FDM. Thus, FDM is mediated by both dopamine level-independent and melatonin-related dopamine level-dependent mechanisms in CBA/CaJ mice. The previously reported unaltered retinal dopamine levels in myopic C57BL/6 mice may be attributed to melatonin deficiency.
Animals ; Disease Models, Animal ; Dopamine ; Melatonin ; Mice ; Mice, Inbred C57BL ; Mice, Inbred CBA ; Myopia ; Retina ; Sensory Deprivation

Objective:To investigate a foodborne brucellosis outbreak in a county in Guangdong Province in 2015， which may provide suggestions for the prevention and control of similar incidents. Methods:Case search was carried out by visiting cases， accessing the hospital medical record system， and collecting the registration information of rural health stations， and the results were described and analyzed. Results:A total of 169 cases were found， with an attack rate of 2.0‰ （169/85 000）. The onset time of the cases was from January 19 to June 2， 2015， showing a continuous and homogenous outbreak pattern. The clinical manifestations of the cases were fever （72%）， fatigue （40%）， hyperhidrosis （26%）， testicular enlargement （5.3%）， headache （2.4%）， and hepatomegaly （1.2%）. In addition， 54 cases of latent infection were found. A total of 13 strains of brucella ovis type 3 were cultured from the patients’ serum samples. After all sheep in the farm were sampled， 16 samples of serum test tube agglutination test were positive， with a positive rate of 37% （16/44）； after analysis， drinking fresh goat milk was a risk factor for brucellosis （OR=36.25， 95%CI： 4.68-280.73）， and there was a dose-response relationship between infection and milk drinking （χ²=27.00， P<0.05）. Conclusion:The brucellosis outbreak was caused by patients who drank unboiled goat milk contaminated with Brucella ovine type 3. People are recommended to drink qualified and sterilized goat milk. Relevant government departments should strengthen the monitoring of goat selling and goat milk production.