Characterization of a novel tetravalent botulism antitoxin based on receptor-binding domain of BoNTs.

Botulinum neurotoxin (BoNTs; serotypes A, B, E, and F) cause botulism disease in humans, which could be effectively treated using antitoxins. Herein, we established a novel receptor-binding domain (RBD)-based antitoxin using recombinant C terminal heavy chain (Hc) domains of BoNTs as immunogens. Immunization of horses with these recombinant Hc domains allowed the purification and digestion of IgGs from hyper-immune sera to produce high-quality and high-efficiency monovalent botulism antitoxin F(ab')2 against each BoNT (M-BATs). However, these M-BATs could not bind or neutralize other serotypes of BoNTs, and that there were no cross-protective effects among these M-BATs. This suggested the need to prepare tetravalent antitoxins to neutralize the four BoNTs simultaneously. Thus, these M-BATs were formulated into a novel tetravalent botulism antitoxin (T-BAT), in which a 10-ml volume contained 10000 IU of BoNT/A and 5000 IU of BoNT/B, BoNT/E, and BoNT/F antitoxins. The novel antitoxin preparation could prevent and treat the four mixed botulinum neurotoxins simultaneously in vivo, representing strong efficacy in an animal poisoning model. Moreover, these antibodies in T-BAT could bind the RBD, whereas conventional antitoxins based on inactivated toxins mainly bind the light chain or heavy chain translocation domain (HN) and weakly bind the important RBD in current experimental conditions. The high levels of RBD-specific novel antitoxins can efficiently bind the RBD and neutralize natural or recombinant toxins containing this RBD. The findings of the present study experimentally support the use of RBD-specific antitoxins to treat BoNT serotype A, B, E, and F-mediated botulism. This study demonstrated the concept of developing potent novel multivalent antitoxins against all BoNTs or other toxins, using the RBD of these toxins as an alternative antigen to inactivated toxins. KEY POINTS: • Antitoxins based on the receptor-binding domains of botulinum neurotoxins were made. • Novel antitoxin binds RBD; traditional antitoxin mainly binds light chain or HN domain. • A tetravalent antitoxin could prevent and treat the four mixed neurotoxins in vivo.

Tetanus toxin and botulinum neurotoxin-derived fusion molecules are effective bivalent vaccines.

Tetanus toxin (TeNT) and botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) are neuroprotein toxins, with the latter being the most toxic known protein. They are structurally similar and contain three functional domains: an N-terminal catalytic domain (light chain), an internal heavy-chain translocation domain (HN domain), and a C-terminal heavy chain receptor binding domain (Hc domain or RBD). In this study, fusion functional domain molecules consisting of the TeNT RBD (THc) and the BoNT/A RBD (AHc) (i.e., THc-Linker-AHc and AHc-Linker-THc) were designed, prepared, and identified. The interaction of each Hc domain and the ganglioside receptor (GT1b) or the receptor synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2 (SV2) was explored in vitro. Their immune response characteristics and protective efficacy were investigated in animal models. The recombinant THc-linker-AHc and AHc-linker-THc proteins with the binding activity had the correct size and structure, thus representing novel subunit vaccines. THc-linker-AHc and AHc-linker-THc induced high levels of specific neutralizing antibodies, and showed strong immune protective efficacy against both toxins. The high antibody titers against the two novel fusion domain molecules and against individual THc and AHc suggested that the THc and AHc domains, as antigens in the fusion functional domain molecules, do not interact with each other and retain their full key epitopes responsible for inducing neutralizing antibodies. Thus, the recombinant THc-linker-AHc and AHc-linker-THc molecules are strong and effective bivalent biotoxin vaccines, protecting against two biotoxins simultaneously. Our experimental design will be valuable to develop recombinant double-RBD fusion molecules as potent bivalent subunit vaccines against bio-toxins. KEY POINTS: • Double-RBD fusion molecules from two toxins had the correct structure and activity. • THc-linker-AHc and AHc-linker-THc efficiently protected against both biotoxins. • Such bivalent biotoxin vaccines based on the RBD are a valuable experimental design.

Single-pixel neural network object classification of sub-Nyquist ghost imaging.

A single-pixel neural network object classification scenario in the sub-Nyquist ghost imaging system is proposed. Based on the neural network, objects are classified directly by bucket measurements without reconstructing images. Classification accuracy can still be maintained at 94.23% even with only 16 measurements (less than the Nyquist limit of 1.56%). A parallel computing scheme is applied in data processing to reduce the object acquisition time significantly. Random patterns are used as illumination patterns to illuminate objects. The proposed method performs much better than existing methods for both binary and grayscale images in the sub-Nyquist condition, which is also robust to environment noise turbulence. Benefiting from advantages of ghost imaging, it may find applications for target recognition in the fields of remote sensing, military defense, and so on.

Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel 3-benzylcoumarin-imidazolium salts.

A series of novel 3-benzylcoumarin-imidazolium salts were prepared and evaluated in vitro against a panel of human tumor cell lines. The results showed that the existence of 5,6-dimethyl-benzimidazole ring and substitution of the imidazolyl-3-position with a naphthylacyl group were vital for modulating cytotoxic activity. Notably, compound 38 was found to be the most potent derivative with IC50 values of 2.04-4.51 µM against five human tumor cell lines, while compound 34 were more selective to SW-480 cell lines with IC50 value 40.0-fold lower than DDP. Mechanism of action studies indicated that compound 38 can cause the G0/G1 phase cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in SMMC-7721 cell lines.

Synthesis and biological activity of new bisbenzofuran-imidazolium salts.

A series of novel bisbenzofuran-imidazolium salts were designed and prepared. The in vitro antitumor activity of these derivatives was evaluated against a panel of human tumor cell lines (A549, HL-60, MCF-7, SMMC-7721 and SW480). Results demonstrated that 2-methyl-benzimidazole ring and substitution of the imidazolyl-3-position with a 4-methoxyphenacyl or 2-naphthylacyl substituent were important for promoting cytotoxic activity. Notably, compound 23 was found to be the most potent compound with IC50 values of 0.64-1.47 µM against five human tumor cell lines, and exhibited higher selectivity to MCF-7 and SW-480 cell lines with IC50 values 15.3-fold and 9.1-fold lower than DDP.

Alleviation by abscisic acid of Al toxicity in rice bean is not associated with citrate efflux but depends on ABI5-mediated signal transduction pathways.

Under conditions of aluminum (Al) toxicity, which severely inhibits root growth in acidic soils, plants rapidly alter their gene expression to optimize physiological fitness for survival. Abscisic acid (ABA) has been suggested as a mediator between Al stress and gene expression, but the underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated ABA-mediated Al-stress responses, using integrated physiological and molecular biology approaches. We demonstrate that Al stress caused ABA accumulation in the root apex of rice bean (Vigna umbellata [Thunb.] Ohwi & Ohashi), which positively regulated Al tolerance. However, this was not associated with known Al-tolerance mechanisms. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that nearly one-third of the responsive genes were shared between the Al-stress and ABA treatments. We further identified a transcription factor, ABI5, as being positively involved in Al tolerance. Arabidopsis abi5 mutants displayed increased sensitivity to Al, which was not related to the regulation of AtALMT1 and AtMATE expression. Functional categorization of ABI5-mediated genes revealed the importance of cell wall modification and osmoregulation in Al tolerance, a finding supported by osmotic stress treatment on Al tolerance. Our results suggest that ABA signal transduction pathways provide an additional layer of regulatory control over Al tolerance in plants.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza A virus down-regulated several cellular MicroRNAs which target viral genome.

Higher and prolonged viral replication is critical for the increased pathogenesis of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) subtype of H5N1 influenza A virus (IAV) over the lowly pathogenic H1N1 IAV strain. Recent studies highlighted the considerable roles of cellular miRNAs in host defence against viral infection. In this report, using a 3'UTR reporter system, we identified several putative miRNA target sites buried in the H5N1 virus genome. We found two miRNAs, miR-584-5p and miR-1249, that matched with the PB2 binding sequence. Moreover, we showed that these miRNAs dramatically down-regulated PB2 expression, and inhibited replication of H5N1 and H1N1 IAVs in A549 cells. Intriguingly, these miRNAs expression was differently regulated in A549 cells infected with the H5N1 and H1N1 viruses. Furthermore, transfection of miR-1249 inhibitor enhanced the PB2 expression and promoted the replication of H5N1 and H1N1 IAVs. These results suggest that H5N1 virus may have evolved a mechanism to escape host-mediated inhibition of viral replication through down-regulation of cellular miRNAs, which target its viral genome.

[Advances on nanoparticles-tagged visual test strips for the rapid detection of pesticides].

The residue of the pesticides affects seriously the quality and safety of traditional Chinese medicine. Pesticide residue has caused ever-growing attention of people at home and abroad. Rapid detection techniques used for rapid screening of pesticide residues have expanded in a fast progress. As one of the fast development methods of rapid detection, visualization test strip based on nanoparticle has received much concern in recent years. This article focused on the classification of detection test strips and key factors on the fabrication of nanoparticle-based visualization test strips used in small molecule pesticides. Moreover, a wide application of nanoparticles-tagged test strips on pesticide residue was reviewed including single residue detection, multi residue detection, as well as quantitative analysis. Finally, the future application of visual test strip for detecting of pesticide residues in traditional Chinese medicine was forecasted, intending to provide the reference for rapid detection techniques on pesticide residues screening in herbal medicine industry.

[Research progresses and formulation development of natural anti-mildew agents based on Chinese herbal medicines].

Owing to the intrinsic factors and some extrinsic environmental conditions, many foods, agricultural products and Chinese materia medicas (CMMs), if not handled properly in the processes of growth, harvesting, processing and storage, can be easily contaminated by all kinds of molds to produce mycotoxins of serious toxicity, which will not only affect the quality, safety and effectiveness of CMMs, but also result in potential threatens to human and animal's health and life. Therefore, in recent decades, it has become the focus on how to prevent and control the foods, agricultural products and CMMs from being moldy and producing toxicity for scientific preservation. Many Chinese herbal medicines (CHMs) especially those with high content of volatile oils with strong antifungal activities have been applied for the scientific preservation of foods, agricultural products and CMMs. Based on these situations, natural anti-mildew agents have been further developed and made into some useful dosage forms, such as tablets, aerosol, liposomes and inclusion, which will not only greatly expand the application scope of CHMs to make the use of anti-mildew agents more convenient, but also achieve the sustained or controlled release of the antifungal effect for scientific preservation of foods, agricultural products and CMMs.

Simultaneous-Fault Diagnosis of Gearboxes Using Probabilistic Committee Machine.

This study combines signal de-noising, feature extraction, two pairwise-coupled relevance vector machines (PCRVMs) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) for parameter optimization to form an intelligent diagnostic framework for gearbox fault detection. Firstly, the noises of sensor signals are de-noised by using the wavelet threshold method to lower the noise level. Then, the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) and energy pattern calculation are applied to extract the fault features from de-noised signals. After that, an eleven-dimension vector, which consists of the energies of nine intrinsic mode functions (IMFs), maximum value of HHT marginal spectrum and its corresponding frequency component, is obtained to represent the features of each gearbox fault. The two PCRVMs serve as two different fault detection committee members, and they are trained by using vibration and sound signals, respectively. The individual diagnostic result from each committee member is then combined by applying a new probabilistic ensemble method, which can improve the overall diagnostic accuracy and increase the number of detectable faults as compared to individual classifiers acting alone. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is experimentally verified by using test cases. The experimental results show the proposed framework is superior to existing single classifiers in terms of diagnostic accuracies for both single- and simultaneous-faults in the gearbox.

[32 546 intensive hospital monitoring cases of Shuxuetong injection].

This study adopted multi-center and large sample design to understand the incidence, characteristics and other information about adverse reaction of Shuxuetong injection. In 54 medical institutions, use of Shuxuetong injection of entire treatment period was monitored, including patients' general information, diagnostic information, medication, adverse reaction/event information, etc. Sixty four cases of adverse reactions in 32 546 patients was monitored, adverse rate was 0.197%, mainly characterized by skin itching, rash, flu-like, dyspnea, palpitations, headache, chest tightness and other allergic reactions. Adverse reaction occurred mainly in elderly patients and medication was consistent with the instruction. Based on these results, safety of Shuxuetong injection in clinical application is excellent.

Contamination and health risks from heavy metals in cultivated soil in Zhangjiakou City of Hebei Province, China.

A total of 79 topsoil samples (ranging from 0 to 20 cm in depth) were collected from a grape cultivation area of Zhangjiakou City, China. The total concentrations of As, Cd, Hg, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn in soil samples were determined to evaluate pollution levels and associated health risks in each sample. Pollution levels were calculated using enrichment factors (EF) and geoaccumulation index (I geo). Health risks for adults and children were quantified using hazard indexes (HI) and aggregate carcinogenic risks (ACR). The mean concentrations of measured heavy metals Cd, Hg, and Cu, only in the grape cultivation soil samples, were higher than the background values of heavy metals in Hebei Province. According to principal component analysis (PCA), the anthropogenic activities related to agronomic and fossil fuel combustion practices attributed to higher accumulations of Cd, Hg, and Cu, which have slightly polluted about 10-40% of the sampled soils. However, the HI for all of the heavy metals were lower than 1 (within safe limits), and the ACR of As was in the 10(-6)-10(-4) range (a tolerable level). This suggests the absence of both non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic health risks for adults and children through oral ingestion and dermal absorption exposure pathways in the studied area. It should be also noted that the heightened vulnerability of children to health risks was accounted for higher HI and ACR values. Consequently, heavy metal concentrations (e.g., Cd, Hg, Cu) should be periodically monitored in these soils and improved soil management practices are required to minimize possible impacts on children's health.

[Study on medical pattern of traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine diagnosis and treatment of hypertension patients in 30 034 cases in real world].

Select patients diagnosed of hypertension in the first place in 16 hospitals and the patients were described by association rules analysis and distribution for the analysis in the study,in order to understand the information of diagnosis and treatment in hypertension patients in real world. The information include age, gender, admission condition, inpatient department, hospitalization expenses, western medicine comorbidities, the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndrome and the medicine. The average age of patients was 64 years in the study. The proportion of men to women about 1. 10: 1. Admission condition is critical for about 10.12% of the total and more concentrated in the cardiovascular department. Hospital stay ranged from 8 to 14 d. Inpatients with medical insurance is 62.93%. Total hospitalization cost distribution most is the 5 000-10 000 RMB. Hypertension complicated with coronary heart disease, blood lipoprotein disorder disease; phlegm and blood stasis and Yin deficiency of liver and kidney are the most in TCM syndrome type. Promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis is the major in Chinese medicine treatment. Western medicine treatment basically conforms to the guidelines. The most antihypertensive drugs is calcium antagonistst, accounting for about 81.2% of the total number. Class ACEI, class ARB, beta blockers, diuretics class are accounted for 43.0%, 43.4%, 42.4%, 42.4%, fixed compound is only 2 393, accounting for about 8%. the total frequency of five classes of antihypertensive drugs is 78 206 times. The principal conclusions of this analysis are as follows: the elderly people is the most in hypertension, more men than women; medical insurance is the majority type in hospitalization cost; nearly half of the population is combined with coronary heart disease; phlegm and blood stasis and yin deficiency of liver and kidney are the most in TCM syndrome type; western medicine treatment basically conforms to the guidelines. Combination therapy is more, less fixed compound preparation in western medicine. Chinese medicine is mainly to promoting blood circulation. Suggesting that the clinical treatment in strict blood pressure and at the same time, pay attention to combination therapy and the use of fixed compound preparation,it's useful to control the blood pressure better. Combined with traditional Chinese medicine and resolving phlegm and removing blood stasis, reduce the target organ damage, reduce complications, the prevention and control work of hypertension in China still faces enormous challenges at present. The result provides reference information for clinical medicine and medical research.

[Analysis on clinical features and treatment of herpes zoster patients hospitalized in real world].

From the hospital information system (HIS) of 20 national grade III-A general hospitals, 2 960 cases of herpes zoster as the research object, analyzes the relations between the general information, syndrome of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), western medicine combined diseases, the relationship between the solar term and the incidence of herpes zoster, and the combined use of Chinese and western medicine. Among the patients with 46-65 year old has the highest percentage of diseased; admission to general outpatient clinic is the most; the most common medical payment is medicare; combined disease such as hypertension, diabetes and coronary heart disease is more common; early treatment effect of herpes zoster is better than the sequelae; summer and autumn solar term patients is hospitalized more, TCM syndrome is damp heat of liver fire; about drugs, western medicine is the most commonly used vitamin B1 and mecobalamin, traditional Chinese medicine is the most frequently used Danhong injection, combination therapy with promoting blood circulation drugs and neurotrophic drugs. Thus, herpes zoster, more common in elderly patients, with no obvious relationship between solar term, should be early diagnosis and early treatment, often with combination of Chinese traditional and western medicine treatment.

[Study on drug properties of components in Euodiae Fructus based on rat stress gastric ulcer model with cold syndrome].

OBJECTIVE: To clarify drug properties of components in Euodiae Fructus. METHOD: The rat cold syndrome model was induced by cold water stress method. The content of neurotransmitters sand hormones such as DA, 5-HT, NE, AChE and 17-OHCS in serum of model rats were taken as the indexes to evaluate drug properties of components in Euodiae Fructus. RESULT: Euodiae Fructus and its components could correct or relief the content of energy metabolism and substance metabolism-related neurotransmitters sand hormones in serum of model rats with water-stressed cold syndrome. CONCLUSION: Euodiae Fructus and its components are proved to show hot property.

Effect of electroacupuncture of "Jiaji" (EX-B2) on NOD-like receptor protein 3 mediated pyroptosis in spinal cord tissue of rats with acute spinal cord injury. / å¤¹è„Šç”µé’ˆå¯¹æ€¥æ€§è„Šé«“æŸä¼¤å¤§é¼ è„Šé«“ç»„ç»‡NODæ ·å—ä½“çƒ­è›‹ç™½ç»“æž„åŸŸç›¸å ³è›‹ç™½3介导的细胞焦亡的影响.

OBJECTIVES: To observe the effect of electroacupuncture (EA) stimulation of "Jiaji"(EX-B2) on motor function, histomorphology, and expression of NOD-like receptor protein 3 (NLRP3) and N-terminal domain of gasdermin D (GSDMD-N) in the spinal cord tissue of rats with spinal cord injury (SCI), so as to explore its mechanism underlying improvement of SCI. METHODS: Forty eight female SD rats were randomly divided into sham surgery (sham), SCI model (model), EA, and NLRP3 agonist (monosodium urate, MSU) combined with Jiaji EA (MSU+EA) groups, with 12 rats in each group which were further divided into 3 d and 7 d subgroups, with 6 rats at each time point. Two EA groups received EA stimulation of EX-B2 with a frequency of 100 Hz, electrical current of 1-2 mA for 30 min, once a day for 3 or 7 days. After 5 min, 6 h, and 24 h of modeling, rats of the MSU+EA group received intraperitoneal injection of MSU (200 µg/kg, 200 µg/mL) . The motor function was evaluated using Basso-Beattie-Bresnahan (BBB) scale, the morphological structure of rat spinal cord tissue was observed by H.E. staining. The expression of pyroptosis related factors NLRP3, cleaved Caspase-1 and GSDMD-N of the spinal cord was observed by using immunohistochemistry and Western blot separately, the expression and localization of Iba-1 and GSDMD-N in the spinal cord tissue were observed using immunofluorescence double staining method. RESULTS: Compared with the sham group, the BBB scores after modeling and on day 3 and 7 were decreased (P<0.05), while the average OD values (immunoactivity) and expression levels of NLRP3, cleaved Caspase-1 and GSDMD-N proteins, and the immunofluorescence intensity of Iba-1/GSDMD-N (co-expression) of the spinal cord tissues on day 3 and 7 were significantly increased in the model group (P<0.05). In comparison with the model group, the BBB scores on day 3 and 7 were obviously increased (P<0.05), while the immunoactivity and expression levels of NLRP3, cleaved Caspase-1 and GSDMD proteins, and the immunofluorescence intensity of Iba-1/GSDMD-N on day 3 and 7 significantly down-regulated in the EA group (P<0.05) but not in the MSU+EA group (P>0.05), suggesting an elimination of the effects of EA after administration of NLRP3 agonist (MSU). H.E. staining showed obvious bleeding area in the spinal cord tissue, loose tissue and inflammatory cell infiltration on day 3 after modeling, and basic absorption of the bleeding, loose tissue, obvious vacuolar changes of the white matter area, loss and contraction of neurons with infiltration of a large number of inflammatory cells, which was milder in the EA group but not in the MSU+EA group. CONCLUSIONS: EA of EX-B2 can improve the motor function of SCI rats, which may be related to its functions in inhibiting pyroptosis of microglia mediated by NLRP3/Caspase-1 signaling pathway.

Dual Branch Multi-Level Semantic Learning for Few-Shot Segmentation.

Few-shot semantic segmentation aims to segment novel-class objects in a query image with only a few annotated examples in support images. Although progress has been made recently by combining prototype-based metric learning, existing methods still face two main challenges. First, various intra-class objects between the support and query images or semantically similar inter-class objects can seriously harm the segmentation performance due to their poor feature representations. Second, the latent novel classes are treated as the background in most methods, leading to a learning bias, whereby these novel classes are difficult to correctly segment as foreground. To solve these problems, we propose a dual-branch learning method. The class-specific branch encourages representations of objects to be more distinguishable by increasing the inter-class distance while decreasing the intra-class distance. In parallel, the class-agnostic branch focuses on minimizing the foreground class feature distribution and maximizing the features between the foreground and background, thus increasing the generalizability to novel classes in the test stage. Furthermore, to obtain more representative features, pixel-level and prototype-level semantic learning are both involved in the two branches. The method is evaluated on PASCAL- 5i 1 -shot, PASCAL- 5i 5 -shot, COCO- 20i 1 -shot, and COCO- 20i 5 -shot, and extensive experiments show that our approach is effective for few-shot semantic segmentation despite its simplicity.

[Research progress of acupuncture-moxibustion in treatment of spinal cord injury through mediating inflammatory reaction].

Inflammatory reaction after spinal cord injury (SCI) is the main obstacle to the recovery of neural function. In the occurrence and development of SCI, the complex regulatory mechanisms are involved in inflammatory reaction, including the activation of inflammatory cells (e.g.macrophages and microglia), and the release of cytokines (e.g. tumor necrosis factor, interleukin and chemokines). Acupuncture-moxibustion is significantly effective in clinical treatment of SCI, and its mechanism is related to adjusting the function of inflammatory cells after SCI, modulating the expression of cytokines and the activation of NLRP3 inflammatory bodies, as well as the expression of high mobility group protein B1 and calcitonin gene related peptide. This article summarizes the research progress of mechanism of inflammatory reaction after SCI and the effects of acupuncture-moxibustion intervention in recent years so that the new ideas can be provided to clarify the pathogenesis of SCI and the effect of acupuncture-moxibustion intervention.

Intelligent fault monitoring and diagnosis of tunnel fans using a hierarchical cascade forest.

Tunnel fan is critical fire-fighting equipment, and its safe and stable operation is very important for the efficiency and safety of tunnel traffic. Existing studies commonly train the fault diagnosis methods with the goal of minimizing mean error which ignores the difference between classes in feature distribution. To solve the problem of inaccurate prediction caused by mean error evaluation, this paper presents a non-neural deep learning model, namely hierarchical cascade forest, which has three characteristics: (1) A hierarchical cascade structure is constructed, of which the output comes from each layer; (2) Each fault class is evaluated and recognized independently, the result of fault classes that are easy to distinguish is output earlier; (3) A confidence-based threshold estimate method is proposed in HCF and used to improve the training method to increase the reliability of HCF. Based on these, HCF improves the cascade forest structure and implements the proper matching of different depth of feature and fault patterns. The effect of HCF is verified through experiments based on the tunnel fans testing rig. Experimented results show that, compared to Deep Forest, the accuracy of HCF increases by 0.6% to 10.8%, and the training time of HCF is reduced 33.24%.

[Evaluation of the clinical effect of acupuncture in treatment of neck pain in cervical spondylosis based on propensity score matching].

OBJECTIVE: To observe the clinical effect and safety of acupuncture in treatment of neck pain due to cervical spondylosis. METHODS: According to the patients' preference and acceptance for the interventions of neck pain induced by cervical spondylosis, an acupuncture group (221 cases) and a non-acupuncture group (251 cases) were divided. After the control of confounding factors with propensity score matching, 218 cases were included in either acupuncture group or non-acupuncture group. In the acupuncture group, acupuncture was applied to Dazhui (GV 14), Baihui (GV 20), ashi points, bilateral neck-Jiaji (EX-B 2), Fengchi (GB 20), Houxi (SI 3), Shenmai (BL 62), etc. The treatment was given once daily, one course of intervention was composed of 5 treatments and 3 courses were included. In the non-acupuncture group, the oral administration of imrecoxib tablets and cobalt tablets was prescribed for 2 weeks. Before and after treatment, the scores of Northwick Park questionnaire (NPQ) and the simplified McGill pain questionnaire (SF-MPQ) were observed, and the safety was assessed in patients of the two groups. RESULTS: After treatment completion, the scores of NPQ and SF-MPQ were all reduced when compared with those before treatment in each group (P<0.001), and the scores of NPQ and SF-MPQ in the acupuncture group were lower than those of the non-acupuncture group (P<0.001). The incidence of adverse reactions was 6.0% (13/218) in the acupuncture group and was 10.1% (22/218) in the non-acupuncture group, without statistical significance in comparison (P>0.05). CONCLUSION: Acupuncture is effective and safe in the relief of neck pain and the improvement of comprehensive quality of life in the patients with cervical spondylosis.