Anti-tumor effect of matrine combined with cisplatin on rat models of cervical cancer

Objective:To observe the anti-tumor effect of matrine combined with cisplatin on U14 rat models of cervical cancer.Methods:A total of 80 female Kunming rats were used to establish U14 rat models of cervical cancer and then divided into groups Ⅰ,Ⅱ,Ⅲ and Ⅳ,with 20 rats in each.For Group Ⅰ,the control group,injection of normal saline was given around the tumors.For Group Ⅱ,injection of 2 mg/kg cisplatin was given around the tumors.For Group Ⅲ,injection of 75 mg/kg matrine was given around the tumors while the combined injection of matrine and cisplatin was given for Group Ⅳ with the same doses as Groups Ⅱand Ⅲ.The animals were sacrificed 10 d after the injection and tumors were taken out for the comparisons of tumor weights after injection and calculation of anti-tumor rates,while thymus and spleen were taken for thymus index and spleen index.Blood in eyeball was collected for determination of changes in serum creatinine and urea nitrogen levels.Sections of tumor issue were prepared and morphological changes in tumor tissue cells were observed by using immunohistochemistry technique.Results:After injection,the thymus index and spleen index in Groups Ⅲ and Ⅳ were significantly higher than those in Groups Ⅰ and Ⅱ(P<0.05)while the two indexes in Group Ⅱ were significantly lower than Group Ⅰ(P<0.05).The tumor weights in Groups Ⅱ and Ⅳ were significantly smaller than those in Groups Ⅰ and Ⅲ(P<0.05) with significantly higher anti-tumor rates than Groups Ⅰ and Ⅲ(P<0.05).The serum creatinine and urea nitrogen levels in Groups Ⅲ and Ⅳ were significantly lower than Group Ⅱ(P<0.05) and the two indicators in Group Ⅲ were significantly lower than those in Group Ⅳ(P<0.05).The observation under the histological microscope showed densely arranged tumor cells in Group Ⅰ,growing as a crumby structure and diffuse appearance,with hyperchromatic and large nuclei,and abundant cytoplasm.In the case of Group Ⅱ,it showed less tumor cells,with extensive degenerative necrosis,sparse arrangement and karyopyknosis as well as karyoclasis.For Group Ⅲ,necrosis of tumor cells in different sizes and heterogeneous color in nuclei were observed.For Group Ⅳ,the number of tumor cells was significantly smaller than Groups Ⅰ and Ⅲ and the tumor cells presented an appearance of crumby structure as cancer nests,with more proliferation of connective tissue.Conclusions:The treatment of matrine combined with cisplatin can significantly improve the anti-tumor effect on U14 rats with cervical cancer,which can be a new option for the treatment for cervical cancer.

Preventive and therapeutic effect of N-Acetyl-L-cysteine on infection-associated preterm labor in mice

Objective: To study the preventive and therapeutic effect of N-Acetyl-L-cysteine on infection-associated preterm labor in mice. Methods: A total of 66 C57BL/6 inbred strain pregnant mice were selected and randomly divided into groups A, B and C, with 22 cases in each group. Group A, B and C were regarded as model group, prevention group and treatment group, respectively. The model of infection-associated preterm labor was built by intraperitoneal injection of Escherichia coli. Ten mice of each group were taken and observed the preterm birth rates and live birth rates, respectively. Three mice of each group were killed at 3 h, 6 h, 12 h and 24 h after building the model. Their uterus tissues were collected and the expressions of the AP-1 and MCP-1 in those tissues were assayed with immunohistochemical method and the expressions of NF- kappa Bp65 and TNF- protein in the placenta tissues of those mice were also detected with immunohistochemical method. Results: The pretem: birth rates of mice in groups B and C were significantly lower than that in group A, while their live birth rates were distinctly higher than that in group A (P<0.05); the expressions of the AP-1 and MCP-1 in the uterus tissues and NF- kappa Bp65 and TNF- protein in the placenta tissues of mice in groups B and C were evidently lower than those in group A (P<0.05); the comparison of the expressions of the NF- kappa Bp65 and TNF- between group B and C showed no statistical differences (P>0.05). Conclusions: N-Acetyl-L-cysteine can lower the incidence rate of infection-associated preterm labor by prohibiting the activation of the protein AP-1/MCP-1 and decreasing the expression of NF- kappa Bp65 and TNF- in the pregnant tissues of premature mice to reduce the inflammatory reactions.

3D pulmonary vessel segmentation based on improved residual attention u-net

Automatic segmentation of pulmonary vessels is a fundamental and essential task for the diagnosis of various pulmonary vessels diseases.The accuracy of segmentation is suffering from the complex vascular structure.In this paper,an Improved Residual Attention U-Net(IRAU-Net)aiming to segment pulmonary vessel in 3D is proposed.To extract more vessel structure information,the Squeeze and Excitation(SE)block is embedded in the down sampling stage.And in the up sampling stage,the global attention module(GAM)is used to capture target features in both high and low levels.These two stages are connected by Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling(ASPP)which can sample in various receptive fields with a low computational cost.By the evaluation experiment,the better performance of IRAU-Net on the segmentation of terminal vessel is indicated.It is expected to provide robust support for clinical diagnosis and treatment.