[Review on advantages and evidence of treating and preventing urinary tract infection in traditional Chinese medicine].

Urinary tract infection (UTI) in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) belongs to the category of stranguria. This article describes the unsatisfactory situations in clinical practice such as antibiotics abuse, increasing of drug-resistant bacteria, high recurrence rate, etc. According to evidence-based medicine, literatures as evidence are collected for summarizing and analyzing and the result shows the advantages of TCM of relieving symptoms, reducing the dosage of antibiotics, less side effects, lower recurrence rate, etc. In the field of fundamental research, literatures associated with UTI are also summarized and analysed from several perspectives, such as causes, pathogenesis, syndrome differentiation, pharmacological effects of Chinese herbal medicine, working mechanism of non-drug therapy, etc and the result presents that integrated treatment of TCM in UTI has significant advangtages and its own characteristic.

HBsAg loading on dendritic cells in patients with chronic hepatitis B: expressions of phenotypic molecules.

BACKGROUND: The antigen reducing ability of dendritic cells (DCs), a kind of antigen presenting cells (APCs) initiating immune response, is associated with the specific immune tolerance of chronic hepatitis B (CHB) patients. However, the dysfunction of DCs can be possibly reversed by the stimulation of antigen peptides. In this study, DCs were cultured from peripheral blood monocytes (PBMCs) in patients with CHB in vitro, and the expression of phenotypic molecules on DCs loaded by different concentrations of HBsAg was observed. METHODS: Forty patients with CHB were divided randomly into 4 groups (10 patients in each group). PBMCs were isolated, and DCs were cultured after addition of granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and interleukin 4 (IL-4). On the 9th day, DCs of the experimental groups were loaded at HBsAg concentrations of 2.5 mg/L, 5 mg/L and 10 mg/L for 24 hours, whereas those of the control group were not loaded. An electron microscope was used to analyze the morphological changes of the DCs. The expression of phenotypic molecules on DCs in different groups was detected with flow cytometry. RESULTS: A combination of GM-CSF and IL-4 produced DCs from PBMCs in patients with CHB after being cultured for 9 days, whose morphological changes were tested by an electron microscope. The expression of phenotypic molecules on DCs in the control group was as low as CD83 (8.02+/-3.99)%, CD80 (8.77+/-2.06)%, and MHC-DR (14.05+/-2.66)%. Loaded by different concentrations of HBsAg, the up-regulation of phenotypic molecules on DCs was found, with CD83 (18.35+/-2.93)%, CD80 (42.63+/-7.15)% and MHC-DR (47.49+/-6.59)% in 2.5 mg/L HBsAg loading group, CD83 (17.88+/-3.12)%, CD80 (45.24+/-10.93)% and MHC-DR (47.07+/-8.52)% in 5 mg/L HBsAg loading group and CD83 (16.74+/-2.86)%, CD80 (44.59+/-6.99)% and MHC-DR (48.59+/-7.42)% in 10 mg/L HBsAg loading group, respectively. Compared with the control group, the phenotypic molecules in the experimental groups were all different significantly (P<0.01), but among them, there were no differences (P>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: DCs cultured from PBMCs in the patients with CHB under the conditions of GM-CSF and IL-4 present on the typical dendritic morphology but are immature for expressing low phenotypic molecules. Loaded by different concentrations of HBsAg, the immature DCs can differentiate to mature DCs for expressing increasing phenotypic molecules.