Effect of Huangqin Qingre Chubi Capsule on Bone Metabolism and Serum TLR4NF-kB in Rats with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Objective:To elucidate the effects of Huangqin Qingre Chubi capsule(HQC)on bone metabolism and serum TLR4 and NF-kB in rats with rheumatoid arthritis(RA),and to provide experimental bases for the treatment of RA with HQC.Methods:A total of 40 SD rats were randomly divided into the normal group,model group,western medicine treatment group,and HQC group,with 10 rats in each group,and the RA model was induced by complete adjuvant in all groups except the normal group.After successful modeling,they were treated for 4 weeks to compare the degree of joint swelling;meanwhile,micro-CT was used to evaluate bone microstructural parameters,and changes in serum TLR4 and NF-kB expression levels were detected by ELISA.Results:There was no statistical significance in comparing the degree of joint swelling among the model group,western medicine treatment group and HQC group(P>0.05);Micro-CT results showed that bone microstructural parameters deteriorated in the osteoporosis model group compared with the normal group.Both western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine HQC could improve the bone microjunction of RA rats,and the HQC group was better than the western medicine treatment in improving the number of bone trabeculae(2.58±0.19)·mm^(-1);the serum results showed that RA was accompanied by the up-regulation of the expression of TLR4 and NF-kB.Both western drugs and HQC down-regulated the high expression of serum TLR4 and NF-kB in osteoporotic rats,and the down-regulation of serum TLR4(9.90±0.55)ng·ml^(-1)and NF-kB(350.29±3.14)ng·L^(-1)by HQC was more obvious.Conclusion:Chinese herbal medicine HQC can significantly improve the bone microstructure of RA rats,and its effect is better than that of western medicine in some aspects.The mechanism of action of HQC is related to the inhibition of the activation of the TLR4/NF-kB pathway,and this study provides an experimental basis for the further development and utilization of HQC.

Application of a Quality Assurance Solution Based on an Electronic Field Imaging Device in Linac

Objective To test a quality assurance(QA)DVS solution-DVS based on a linac electronic field imaging device(EPID)and evaluate its accuracy and ease of use.Methods All of the QA items that do not require the dedicated QA phantom in the DVS solution were tested.Test methods were chosen based on the test items:for the collimator rotation center,the coincidence of the radiation and mechanical,mechanical flatness/symmetry and MLC transmission were compared with the existing QA solution;for the leaf position accuracy and repeatability,the original preset beam fields and fields adjusted by 1 mm were compared.Results The collimator rotation center by the DVS solution is similar to the existing solution.For coincidence of radiation and mechanical,the DVS solution provides more data,including 3D distance.For the flatness/symmetry property,the DVS solution can display more graphics,but the overall data is less than the ion-chamber matrix solution.The DVS solution can directly obtain the MLC transmission value and quickly and intuitively measure the position accuracy of the MLC.However,the repeatability is slightly worse.Conclusion The DVS solution can improve the QA work efficiency and reduce workload,and there are more opportunities for improvement.

Study on Functional Connectivity Density in Patients with Frontal Lobe Tumor at Resting-State

At present, the neuropathological mechanisms and the plastic changes of brain cognitive function in patents with front lobe tumor remain unclear, most studies just focused on global measures of brain functional connectivity without considering the time correlation in the different regions of the brain. This study aims to investigate brain cognitive alterations and functional plasticity in patients with front lobe tumor at resting-state by conducting functional connectivity density(FCD) mapping and granger causality analysis(GCA). Firstly, FCD mapping was used to extract abnormal functional connectivity(FC) of patients with frontal lobe tumor, and analyzed altered brain FC in both short-and long-range FCD. Then, the voxel-wise GCA method was used to analyze the causal relationship between altered FC regions and other regions in order to detect the time correlation between regions of interest(ROI) and reveal the direction of information flow between brain ROIs. It was found that patients had increased short-range FCD in motor and space attention function areas, had increased short-and long-range FCDs both in Temporal and Insula, and the causal coefficients were changed obviously in Temporal and Frontal. The results show that there is a functional plasticity in space attention function areas. Temporal and Insula are affected by tumor in frontal lobe, and functional reorganization appears inside Temporal.

Enhanced External Counterpulsation Treatment Inhibitting Advanced Atherosclerotic Plaque Progression by Augmenting the Plaque Wall Stress： An in vivo FSI Study Based on Animal Experiment

Enhance external counterpulsation(EECP) procedure has exhibited itself to be an effective therapy for the management of ischemic cardiovascular diseases.However,considering that EECP significantly increases the acute diastolic pressure,whether it will intervene in the chronic progression of advanced plaque causing great concern in clinical application,but yet remains elusive presently.In the current paper,a fluid-structure interface(FSI) numerical model of artery with plaque component was developed based on in vivo hemodynamic measurement performed in a porcine model,to calculate the mechanical stresses of the plaque before and during EECP,and in turn to assess the potential effects of long-term EECP treatment on plaque progression.The results show that EECP augmented the wall shear stress(WSS) and plaque wall stress(PWS) over the cardiac cycles,as well as the spacial oscillatory of WSS(WSSG).During EECP treatment,the PWS level respectively raised 6.82% and 6.07% in two simulation cases.The current pilot study suggests that EECP treatment may play a positive effect on inhibiting the continued plaque progression by increasing the PWS level over the cardiac cycles.Meanwhile,the plaque morphology should be taken into consideration while making patient-specific plan for long-term EECP treatment in clinic.

CT Provides Inaccurate Counts of Concealed Packages in Body-packers

CT scanning does not generally provide accurate counts of concealed packages in body-packers.Abdominal CT has been shown to be accurate for determining the presence or absence of concealed drug packets,but its accuracy for counting the number of concealed drug packages in confirmed body-packers had not been determined.

Study on Segmented Correlation in EEG Based on Principal Component Analysis

In order to explore the correlation between the adjacent segments of a long term EEG, an improved principal component analysis(PCA) method based on mutual information algorithm is proposed. A one-dimension EEG time series is divided equally into many segments, so that each segment can be regarded as an independent variables and multi-segmented EEG can be expressed as a data matrix. Then, we substitute mutual information matrix for covariance matrix in PCA and conduct the relevance analysis of segmented EEG. The experimental results show that the contribution rate of first principal component(FPC) of segmented EEG is more larger than others, which can effectively reflect the difference of epileptic EEG and normal EEG with the change of segment number. In addition, the evolution of FPC conduce to identify the time-segment locations of abnormal dynamic processes of brain activities,these conclusions are helpful for the clinical analysis of EEG.

Biomechanopharmacology in Evaluation of Herbs of Activating Blood Circulation to Remove Blood Stasis

Herbs of activating blood circulation to remove blood stasis (ABCRBS) are a category of over 10% in the modern Chinese Pharmacopoeia. A new borderline discipline, biomechanopharmacology, is shaping by the efforts of applying biomechanics in pharmacological studies of ABCRBS herbs. Biomechanics is involved in modeling of blood stasis syndrome (BSS) with mechanical force induced injury and model evaluation by shear stress monitoring for blood coagulation. Investigations showed that tetramethylpyrazine (TMP) contained in Ligusticum chuanxiong Hort and diallyl trisulfide (DT) extracted from garlic demonstrated inhibiting characteristics on vWF mediated platelet activation and thrombus formation occurring under high shear rates. The effect of TMP on shear-induced platelet aggregation might be due to inhibition of calcium channel activity since it showed significant inhibition on intracellular level of calcium demonstrated by laser confocal microscope. The combined effects of TMP and shear stress on rat cerebral microvascular endothelial cell (rCMEC) were investigated by various doses of TMP incorporated with different levels of shear stress generated by a rotational cone-plate rheometer. The results indicated that apoptosis of rCMECs could be restrained by a combination of medial level of shear stress with a suitable dose of TMP. To study the influences of shear stress, pressure and TMP on angiogenesis of vascular endothelial cell, cultured rCMEC was pretreated in a flow chamber with independent adjustment for levels of shear stress and pressure, and then 3D cultured on Matrigel. The results indicate that combined effects of shear stress, pressure and TMP may influence angiogenesis significantly. We believe that research on interactions among blood shear stress, secretion of endothelial cell, and pharmacodynamics will be an interesting area of biomechanopharmacology. Herbs of ABCRBS and their extracts for protecting endothelial cells to maintain their normal functions are expected.

Novel Time-frequency Analysis and Representation of EEG

A novel method of EEG time-frequency analysis and representation based on a wavelet network is presented. The wavelet network model can represent the EEG data effectively. Based on the wavelet network model, a novel time-frequency energy distribution function is obtained, which has the same time-frequency resolution as Wigner-Ville distribution and is free of cross-term interference. There is a great potential for the use of the novel time-frequency representation of nonstationary biosignal based on a wavelet network in the field of the electrophysiological signal processing and time-frequency analysis.

Study on Mechanical and Biological Properties of Autopolymerizing Hydrogel for Denture Soft Lining Material

Objectives: To investigate the water sorption, solubility, bond strength and biocompatibility of a new kind of compound autopolymerizing hydrogel [polyhydroxyethyl methacrylate (PHEMA) and polybutyl methacrylate (PMBA)] designed for denture soft lining material. Methods: According to ISO standard, the water sorption, solubility, bond strength and a series of biological evaluation for this hydrygel were tested, and in bond strength, the plasticized acrylic and SDG-A silicone denture soft lining materials were used for comparative materials. Results: It showed that hydrogel had much higher bond strength with denture base acrylic resin (7.984 Mpa) when compared with plasticized acrylic and SDG-A silicone soft lining material. There was a good biocompatibility in all biological tests. No cytotoxic, allergic, acute systemic toxic, oral mucous membrane irritant, genotoxic and heamolysis activity was demonstrated. It also indicated the absorption and solubility in distilled water were higher than those in artificial saliva at the same stage (at 7 d and 28 d ). There was statistical significance between them (P<0.01). It had higher water sorption (24.96%) and lower solubility (0.51%) at 28 d. Further clinical study is needed to verify the dimensional stability. Significance: It is to develop a kind of denture soft lining material which presenting a good bond strength with base resin and keeping soft properties for a long time.

Design and application research of nucleotide sequence analysis system software

Using visual basic(VB)6.0 programming language, combined with modern molecular biological technique and computer digital image processing technique, We have developed the image processing system (DnaComputAnasis,DCA) which can scan, sequence ,analyze PAGE images in order to read, determine, save, edit and print gene sequence in a quick and accurate way. So it is easy to search and edit information. In sum, this system is most valuable in molecular biological research, genetic engineering research and clinical genetic diagnosis.

Study on relation between blood viscosity and blood resistivity under the condition of large samples

The relation between blood viscosity and blood resistivity under the condition of large clinic samples is studied in this paper. Through processing and calculating the data of blood viscosity and blood resistivity, a quantitative equation between blood viscosity and blood resistivity can be regressed. Then, on the basis of this relation, the non invasive measurement of blood viscosity can be achieved by the means of plethysmography.

BEHAVIORAL HEARING SCREENING OF INFANTS

It is estimated that most of the deaf children have some residual hearing. If these deaf children can be identified early, fit with hearing aids early,andtrained to speak early,they may be able to join the mainstream of hearing society.There are about 1. 16 million deaf children in China,and the number is increasingby 20 to 40 thousand each year. Some objective screening methods,such as auditorybrainstem response and otoacoustic emissions, can be more expensive than usingtrained people to perform behavioral screening. A portable “Behavioral infantScreening Audiometer”was designed by the authors. This audiometer can deliver different frequency and itensity sounds to the infants. The operator judges whether theinfant’s hearing is normal by his or her behavioral response,typically a head turn.Infants from three city communities in Beijing were screened in the communityclinics. The only criterion used for screening was that the inrants be between the ageof 26 and 36 weeks old. A total of 520 inrants were screened,and 43(8．3%) of themfailed. It took an average of 3 minutes to test an infant. Follow-up otoscope,auditory brainstem response audiometry and impedance audiometry in the First ClinicalCollege of Beijing Medical University on these 43 infants showed that 6 (1．15 % ) ofthem had a hearing loss and 37 of them had normal hearing. Follow-up on abovementioned tests were also performed on 50 infants from a control group that hadPassed the initial screening. None of them had hearing loss. The sensitivity of thisbehavioral screening was 100% and the speciticity of it was 92．8%. These resultssuggest that behavioral hearing screening is suitable for infants.

LIGHT SCATTERING PROPERTY OF HUMAN BLOOD AT THE WAVELENGTH OF 810NM

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Preparation of Curcumin Chitosan Nanoparticles and Its Effect on Free Radical Injury in Mice with Mycoplasma Pneumoniae Pneumonia

Objective:Curcumin(Cur)and Chitosan(CS)were utilized as primary components for the production of curcumin chitosan nanoparticles.The impact of these nanoparticles on oxidative stress in mycoplasma pneumoniae-infected mice was assessed.Methods:The drug loading and entrapment efficiency of Cur-CS nanoparticles were determined for various feeding ratios,and the release profiles of Cur-CS nanoparticles in different release media were investigated using the dynamic membrane dialysis method.The mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia(MPP)mouse model was created through the infection of mice with mycoplasma pneumoniae.The mice were then allocated randomly into five groups:a blank control group,an MPP model group,a low Cur-CS dose group,a middle Cur-CS dose group,and a high Cur-CS dose group,each consisting of 7 mice.The study compared the levels of antioxidant enzymes and phospholipid peroxide content in the lung tissue of mice across various experimental groups.Results:The findings indicated that the drug loading of nanoparticles escalated from 2.10%to 11.74%as the feed ratio of Cur to CS increased from 1∶20 to 1∶2.5.Concurrently,as drug loading increased,the entrapment efficiency of nanoparticles decreased from 85.33%to 58.92%.The cumulative release rate of Cur was 95.3%after 24 h,whereas the cumulative release rate of Cur-CS nanoparticles was only 94.3%after 48 h.Analysis of the lung tissue samples indicated that the levels of SOD[(76.17±9.36)U/ml,(86.23±10.09)U/ml,(98.06±11.12)U/ml]and GSH-Px[(19.75±2.22)U/ml,(23.92±2.53)U/ml,(27.23±2.67)U/ml]were significantly higher than those in the MPP model group(P<0.05).Conclusion:This suggests that curcumin chitosan nanoparticles may be suitable for antioxidant treatment of mycoplasma pneumoniae in mice,and can dose-dependently inhibit the release of oxygen free radicals in the lung tissue of MPP mice.This finding may offer a new avenue for the development of therapeutic drug carriers for MPP.

An EEG Acquisition System with Dynamic DC Suppression

A three op-amps instrumentation amplifier(I.A) is one of the most important segments in the electroencephalographic(EEG) acquisition system, which is used to suppress the interference of the common mode noise. However, electrode and op-amps offset voltages could saturate the I.A, so the ability of noise suppression for the I.A might be limited. To compensate for the electrode and op-amps offset voltages and improve the property of the I.A, the optical-isolated technology was used in the present study.This paper described the theory of DC suppression and employed the simulation software(i.e. Multisim10.0.) to demonstrate the constant<urrent source of the optical-isolated device comprised of general-purpose optocouplers.Using this technology we designed and tested an EEG acquisition system.During the test,a constant current was generated by the optocoupler(the MOTOROLA 4N35)when DC offset voltages from 0 to 15 mV were imposed on the input signal in the EEG acquisition system and the value of load resistance in the optical--isolated device was from 3 k to 15 kom.We also found that the IA with the gain of 857 could effectively reject a DC input rangeof±15mV.And An EEG signal is obtained by the EEG acquisition system,and a CMRR of 104.5 dB was achieved without trimmings.

Research Progress on the Application of Three-dimensional CT Imaging Technology in Oral and Maxillofacial Region and Radiation Protection

The anatomic relationship of oral and maxillofacial region is very com-plex,due to the large number of sinuses,cavities and spaces,and also closely related to the brain.The diagnosis of oral and maxillofacial lesions usually depends on the imaging examination.The conventional imaging methods are common CT and X-ray plain films.In recent years,with the rapid development of medical science and technology,more intuitive and vivid three-dimensional images have been applied in the diagnosis and treatment of oral and maxillofacial diseases.Therefore,CT three-dimensional imaging technology has been widely used in clinical practice.This paper reviews this topic.

Comparison of the Safety and Effectiveness of Lower Extremity Artery Bypass Grafting and Endovascular Angioplasty in the Treatment of Lower Extremity Arteriosclerosis Obliterans in the Elderly

Objective:To compare the safety and effectiveness of lower extremity artery bypass grafting and endovascular angioplasty in the treatment of lower extremity arteriosclerosis obliterans in the elderly.Methods:The data of 87 elderly patients with lower extremity arteriosclerosis obliterans treated in our hospital from August 2015 to August 2017 were analyzed retrospectively.According to the different treatment methods,they were divided into angioplasty group(n=45,intravascular angioplasty)and bypass grafting group(n=42,lower extremity artery bypass grafting).The success rate,hemodynamics of dorsalis pedis artery and nerve conduction of lower extremity were compared between the two groups Velocity,VAS score,late target vessel lumen loss(LLL),patency rate,restenosis rate,ankle brachial index(ABI)and clinical adverse events.Results:There was no significant difference between angioplasty group and bypass group(P>0.05).One month after operation,the hemodynamics of dorsalis pedis artery and nerve conduction velocity of lower limbs in the two groups were better than those before operation,the difference was statistically significant(P<0.05),but there was no significant difference between the two groups(P>0.05).The VAS score of the two groups was significantly lower than that of the preoperative group(P<0.05),but there was no significant difference between the two groups(P>0.05).The ABI of the two groups was significantly improved after operation,the difference was statistically significant(P<0.05),but there was no significant difference between the groups at each time point(P>0.05).There was no significant difference in LLL,patency rate and restenosis rate between the two groups(P>0.05).There was statistical difference in the incidence of complications between the two groups(P<0.05).During the follow-up period,no serious adverse events such as death or amputation occurred in both groups.Conclusion:Endovascular angioplasty and lower extremity artery bypass grafting have the same clinical effect in the treatment of elderly patients with lower extremity arteriosclerosis obliterans,which are safe and feasible.

Detection of Bacteria Based on Quantum Dots by Using a Laboratory-Made System

This study investigated a method that simultaneously detects three bacteria, Salmonella typhimurium, Escherichia coli, and Staphylococcus aureus via an approach that uses antibody-conjugated quantum dots(QDs) as fluorescence markers,by using a laboratory-made system. QDs with different emission wavelenghs were immobilized with antibody. Antibody conjugated QDs capture the bacteria selectively and specifically so that "sandwich" complex were formed. The suspension of the labeled bacteria was trickled onto a microporous membrane. A 450 nm semiconductor laser was used as a part of the laboratory-made system to excite the QDs. Three PMT detectors were utilized to detect the fluorescence intensity. This method, of which the detection procedures are completed within 1 h, can be applied to the cost-effective and rapid detecting of bacterial contamination.