Comparable prognosis in different neonatal histidine-tryptophan-ketoglutarate dosage management.

BACKGROUND: Histidine-tryptophan-ketoglutarate (HTK) is a solution commonly used for organ transplantation. However, there is no certified fixed regimen for on-pump heart surgery in neonates. We aimed to retrospectively evaluate the outcomes related to different HTK dosages and to analyze the safety of high-dosage perfusion. METHODS: A total of 146 neonates who underwent on-pump heart surgery with single-shot HTK perfusion were divided into two groups according to HTK dosages: a standard-dose (SD) group (n = 63, 40 mL/kg < HTK ≤ 60 mL/kg) and a high-dose (HD) group (n = 83, HTK >60 mL/kg). Propensity score matching (PSM) was performed to control confounding bias. RESULTS: The SD group had a higher weight (3.7 ±â€Š0.4 vs. 3.4 ±â€Š0.4 kg, P < 0.0001), a lower proportion of complete transposition of the great artery (69.8% vs. 85.5%, P = 0.022), a lower cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) time (123.5 [108.0, 136.0] vs. 132.5 [114.8, 152.5] min, P = 0.034), and a lower aortic x-clamp time (82.9 ±â€Š27.1 vs. 95.5 ±â€Š26.0 min, P = 0.005). After PSM, 44 patients were assigned to each group; baseline characteristics and CPB parameters between the two groups were comparable. There were no significant differences in peri-CPB blood product consumption after PSM (P > 0.05). The incidences of post-operative complications were not significantly different between the two groups. There were no significant differences in ventilation time, intensive care unit stay, and post-operative hospital stay (P > 0.05). Follow-up echocardiography outcomes at 1 month, 3 to 6 months, and 1 year showed that left ventricular ejection fraction and end-diastolic dimension were comparable between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS: In neonatal on-pump cardiac surgery patients, single-shot HD (>60 mL/kg) HTK perfusion had a comparable heart protection effect and short-term post-operative prognosis as standard dosage perfusion of 40 to 60 mL/kg. Thus, this study provides supporting evidence of the safety of HD HTK perfusion.

Discovery of 3,5-Dimethyl-4-Sulfonyl-1H-Pyrrole-Based Myeloid Cell Leukemia 1 Inhibitors with High Affinity, Selectivity, and Oral Bioavailability.

Myeloid cell leukemia 1 (Mcl-1) protein is a key negative regulator of apoptosis, and developing Mcl-1 inhibitors has been an attractive strategy for cancer therapy. Herein, we describe the rational design, synthesis, and structure-activity relationship study of 3,5-dimethyl-4-sulfonyl-1H-pyrrole-based compounds as Mcl-1 inhibitors. Stepwise optimizations of hit compound 11 with primary Mcl-1 inhibition (52%@30 µM) led to the discovery of the most potent compound 40 with high affinity (Kd = 0.23 nM) and superior selectivity over other Bcl-2 family proteins (>40,000 folds). Mechanistic studies revealed that 40 could activate the apoptosis signal pathway in an Mcl-1-dependent manner. 40 exhibited favorable physicochemical properties and pharmacokinetic profiles (F% = 41.3%). Furthermore, oral administration of 40 was well tolerated to effectively inhibit tumor growth (T/C = 37.3%) in MV4-11 xenograft models. Collectively, these findings implicate that compound 40 is a promising antitumor agent that deserves further preclinical evaluations.

Defining Acupuncture-Moxibustion: A Delphi Study Protocol.

BACKGROUND: With the worldwide use and modern development of acupuncture-moxibustion, there is disagreement on its basic definition. There has been an obstacle for clinical practice, research, and legislation. Considering this challenge, the World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies proposes to develop the definition and basic scope of acupuncture-moxibustion with a Delphi study. METHODS: A reactive Delphi method will be used to ask a group of experts to rate the relevance and clarity of a predesigned initial item list. This list was generated by the steering committee through a literature review and group discussion. Forty experts will be selected from many disciplines and continents to ensure appropriate representation. Predefined rules will be applied to modify the items until a consensus is achieved. After achieving the consensus on all items through the survey round, the steering committee will form the definition and basic scope of acupuncture-moxibustion by organizing a literal statement with a detailed explanation.

[Analysis of hot spots and trend of molecular pharmacognosy research based on project supported by National Natural Science Foundation of 1995-2014].

This study collected 1995-2014 molecular pharmacognosy study, a total of 595 items, funded by Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). TDA and Excel software were used to analyze the data of the projects about general situation, hot spots of research with rank analytic and correlation analytic methods. Supported by NSFC molecular pharmacognosy projects and funding a gradual increase in the number of, the proportion of funds for pharmaceutical research funding tends to be stable; mainly supported by molecular biology methods of genuine medicinal materials, secondary metabolism and Germplasm Resources Research; hot drugs including Radix Salviae Miltiorrhizae, Radix Rehmanniae, Cordyceps sinensis, hot contents including tanshinone biosynthesis, Rehmannia glutinosa continuous cropping obstacle.

[Application of molecular biotechnology in Pharmacognosy].

Using the methods of informetrics analysis, articles retrieved from the database of CNKI were statistically analyzed on development course and knowledge system, so as to reflect the overall situation of pharmacognostical studies by molecular biotechnology. The result shows that the research on pharmacognosy by molecular biotechnology is an inter-disciplinary research area, the major research fields can be divided into 7 categories, including molecular identification of Chinese medicinal materials, molecular systematics and genetic diversity analysis of Chinese medicinal materials, biosynthesis and bioregulation of secondary metabolites in medicinal plants, molecular mechanism and genetic basis of Dao-di Herbs, and tissue culture and molecular breeding in medicinal plants. The research on pharmacognosy by molecular have achieved remarkable progress in recent 20 years, and have broad development prospects.

[Development of molecular pharmacognosy in China based on bibliometric analysis].

The method of bibliometrics was used to analyze the literature about the application of molecular biotechnique to pharmacognosy which were searched and obtained from the CNKI database and Shanghai intellectual property information platform from the year 1995 to 2015.It was found that 22 462 articles were published and the 63% were funded, 50 core institutions and 888 authors, 18 core journals were engaged in this subject.496 items of patents were authorized and 90 kinds of Chinese Materia Medica were involved.In the view of the quantity and quality of published literature, the scale and influence of journals, institutions, and the extent of subject categories have made remarkable achievement. Molecular pharmacognosy has completed the germination stage of a new subject, and has been in a relatively mature and stable development status.

[Analysis on Current State of Acupuncture Clinical Trials with Sham Acupuncture Design in Western Countries].

The design of "sham acupuncture" is necessary in clinical trials of acupuncture for confirming its effectiveness in the treatment of different disorders. The authors of the present paper made a comprehensive analysis on "sham acupuncture"or "placebo acupuncture" in clinical trials of acupuncture therapy in western countries from 1) the definition and background of sham acupuncture, 2) current state of acupuncture clinical trials with sham acupuncture design in different countries, 3) current situations of acupuncture clinical trials with sham acupuncture design in Germany, and 4) current state of large sample, randomized controlled clinical trials of acupuncture therapy with sham acupuncture design in other western countries. The authors of the present paper also make an analysis on the developing trends of acupuncture clinical trials with sham acupuncture design and put forward some problems existing in current acupuncture researches.

[Analysis of the status and trends of international research in complementary and alternative medicine based on literature mining].

OBJECTIVE: To have an overview of the international status and trends of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research, and to provide a reference tool for researchers. METHODS: Taking PubMed as the retrieval source, and using the methods of informetrics analysis (such as Price's Law of exponential growth, Bradford's law) and text mining (association rules), CAM articles published between 1998 and 2010 were statistically analyzed on, for example, document growth, core journals and active fields. RESULTS: The literature about CAM research published between 1998 and 2010 showed the trends of exponential growth in quantity. Regional distribution of literature was extensive; China and the United States were the two major sources. Forty-five periodicals were selected from core journals based on Bradford's law of scattering; some colleges and schools constituted the main force in research on CAM. The active fields mainly focus on (1) acupuncture research; (2) phytotherapy research; (3) mind-body medicine; (4) integrative medicine; (5) treatment and prevention of key conditions such as neoplasm, low back pain, mental disorder and chronic diseases. CONCLUSION: (1) CAM research has attracted attention from all over the world, and it will enter a rapid development stage in the future; (2) Treatment and prevention of neoplasm is a consistent key subject and research field in global CAM research; (3) Elucidating clinical effects, mechanisms of action, and safety of major CAM methods constitutes the most important task; (4) Studies on mind-body medicine have increased in recent years, so clinical evaluation and studies of mind-body interventions should be supported; (5) Research has been done increasingly for identification of the clinical effects and biological mechanisms of CAM interventions in symptom management; (6) Research on CAM will stimulate the development of modern medical model; (7) TCM is an active discipline of CAM, and China will thus face increasing challenges.

[Bibliometrics study of the development trend of acupuncture-moxibustion clinical trials in foreign countries].

On the basis of MEDLINE and EMBASE database, through bibliometrics, the quantitative research was conducted on the published literatures on the acupuncture-moxibustion clinical trial abroad. The situation of published articles in each continent, country and institution was analyzed statistically. It was found that the number of published articles was higher in Germany, America, England, Sweden, Austria, Japan, South Korea, etc. In Europe, the clinical trial of acupuncture and moxibustion was in the tendency of more country participants, wider distribution and larger amount of research. In North America, America was the main country for the study. In Asia, Japan and South Korea played the leading role. Of those countries, some institutions in Germany America, and South Korea were on the top of the list. In future, the above-mentioned countries and institutions should be monitored specifically so as to launch the active cooperation and strategic project.

[Development of clinical trials for acupuncture treatment of common illnesses or clinical conditions in countries outside China].

In the present paper, the authors analyze current state of clinical trials for acupuncture treatment of various types of diseases or clinical conditions in countries outside China in the past 30 years. The published top 5 more papers involve disorders of muscle-skeleton and connective tissues (295 papers), disorders of the nerve system (230), problems of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics (164), post-surgical complications (134), and addiction (70). The top 5 countries having more papers published are Germany (59 papers on disorders of muscle-skeleton and connective tissues, 62 on neurological disorders, 17 on problems of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics, 21 on post-surgical complications, and 8 on addiction), USA (43 papers on disorders of muscle-skeleton and connective tissues, 27 on neurological disorders, 24 on problems of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics, 27 on post-surgical complications, and 29 on addiction), British (38 papers on disorders of muscle-skeleton and connective tissues, 17 on neurological disorders, 14 on post-surgical complications, and 6 on addiction), Sweden (17 papers on disorders of muscle-skeleton and connective tissues, 16 on neurological disorders, and 28 on problems of the department of gynaecology and obstetrics), and South Korea (14 papers on neurological disorders, 5 on post-surgical complications, and 3 on addiction).

[Bibliometrics study on indications of acupuncture therapy based on foreign acupuncture clinical trials].

In the present paper, the authors make a bibliometrics study on clinical indications of acupuncture therapy based on the published foreign articles about acupuncture clinical trials collected from PubMed database and Excerpta Medica database (EMbase). In 1996, 64 acupuncture indications were declared by WHO in Milan conference. But in recent 15 years, clinical trials have been conducted extensively in the foreign countries. Till now, 77 new indications for acupuncture therapy have been found in the foreign journals. The authors recommended that 29 indications (knee osteoarthritis, critique age problems, muscular fasciae ache, anxiety, etc.) should be added to the first class, 4 indications (irritable bowel syndrome, malposition, backache, simple obesity) should be upgraded from the second class to the first class, and the other 3 indications (childbirth pain, male and female barren) should be upgraded from the third class to the first class due to their application frequency in clinical trials. Increase of clinical indications reflects extensive application of acupuncture therapy and may help providing a better service for people's health.

Active research fields of acupuncture research: a document co-citation clustering analysis of acupuncture literature.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to gain an overview of the active fields of acupuncture research in the last 5 to 10 years and before that. METHODS: Document co-citation clustering analysis method was used in this article. ISI web of knowledge-SCI-EXPANDED was used to retrieve the cited references of the documents published under the topic "acupuncture." In order to identify the highly frequently cited articles, the cited references were ranked by occurrence frequency; the frequent threshold value of highly frequently cited articles was set at 20, and their cumulative frequency percentage was nearly 10%. In order to identify the correlation between these highly frequently cited articles, a references co-occurrence matrix was constructed and then transformed into a correlation matrix for co-citation cluster analysis with SPSS 11.5 (SPSS Inc, Chicago, Illinois). RESULTS: Between 2006 and 2008, 985 original articles involving acupuncture were published, and their nearly 20000 references were downloaded. Forty-one frequently cited references ranging from 1976 to 2005 were identified, and a 41x41 co-citation matrix was acquired. The active fields of acupuncture research were identified after co-citation cluster analysis. CONCLUSION: The active fields in the last 5 to 10 years and previously could be identified as follows. (1) Clinical research on acupuncture; (a) studies on the safety of acupuncture; (b) the quest for the "placebo" needle and assessment of the placebo effect; (c) assessment of the efficacy of acupuncture for chronic back pain, osteoarthritis of the knee, and chronic headache. (2) Usage of acupuncture: (a) surveys on the trends of acupuncture use; (b) ethical guidelines of acupuncture experiments and quality assessment. (3) Experimental research on acupuncture mechanism: (a) the neurochemical basis of acupuncture analgesia and (b) evaluation of the effects of acupuncture using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Traditional Chinese Medical Journals currently published in mainland China.

BACKGROUND: Traditional Chinese Medical (TCM) journals have been playing an important role in scholarly communication in China. However, the information in those periodicals was not enough for international readers. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to provide an overview of TCM journals in China. METHODS: TCM journals currently published in mainland China were identified from Chinese databases and journal subscription catalogs. Data on publication start year, publishing region, language, whether core journals, whether indexed in famous international databases, with/without accessible URL were investigated, and subjects of journals were categorized. RESULTS: One hundred and forty-nine (149) TCM journals are currently published in mainland China; 88.59% of them are academic journals. The subjects of those journals are various, ranging from the general TCM, integrative medicine, herbal medicines, to veterinary TCM. The publishing areas are distributed in 27 regions, with Beijing having the most TCM journals published. One hundred and forty-two (142) of those periodicals are in Chinese, while 4 are also in English, and 3 in other languages. Only 8 TCM journals were recognized as core journals, and 5 were identified as both core journals and journals with high impacted articles by all evaluation systems in China. A few of the TCM journals from mainland China are indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE (10), EMBASE (5), Biological Abstracts (2), or AMED (1). Online full-text Chinese databases CJFD, COJ, and CSTPD cover most of TCM the journals published in the country. One hundred (100) TCM journals have accessible URLs, but only 3 are open access with free full texts. CONCLUSIONS: Publication of TCM journals in China has been active in academic communication in the past 20 years. However, only a few of them received recognized high evaluation. English information from them is not sufficient. Open access is not extensively acceptable. The accessibility of those journals to international readers needs to be improved.