Clinical features and recurrence predictors of histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis in Chinese children.

OBJECTIVES: To characterize the clinical features and to identify the predictors of recurrence of histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis (HNL) in Chinese children. STUDY DESIGN: This study retrospectively analyzed the clinical characteristics, laboratory and pathological findings, and recurrence status of children diagnosed with HNL at a single center in China from January 2018 to May 2023. Logistic regression analysis was employed to identify predictors of HNL recurrence. RESULTS: 181 Chinese children with histopathologically confirmed HNL were enrolled (121 males and 60 females). The mean age was 9.3 ± 2.9 years. The most prominent clinical features were fever (98.9%) and cervical lymphadenopathy (98.3%). Aseptic meningitis was the most frequent complication (38.5%), while hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and autoimmune disease were rare (1.7% and 1.2%, respectively). Recurrence occurred in 12.7% of patients. Erythrocyte sedimentation rate (> 30 mm/h) was the significant predictors of HNL recurrence, with odds ratios of 6.107, respectively. CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrates that fever and cervical lymphadenopathy are the most frequent clinical manifestations of HNL in Chinese children, which often coexist with aseptic meningitis. HNL patients with risk factors require follow-up for recurrence.

Carbon Quantum Dots: Properties, Preparation, and Applications.

Carbon quantum dots are a novel form of carbon material. They offer numerous benefits including particle size adjustability, light resistance, ease of functionalization, low toxicity, excellent biocompatibility, and high-water solubility, as well as their easy accessibility of raw materials. Carbon quantum dots have been widely used in various fields. The preparation methods employed are predominantly top-down methods such as arc discharge, laser ablation, electrochemical and chemical oxidation, as well as bottom-up methods such as templates, microwave, and hydrothermal techniques. This article provides an overview of the properties, preparation methods, raw materials for preparation, and the heteroatom doping of carbon quantum dots, and it summarizes the applications in related fields, such as optoelectronics, bioimaging, drug delivery, cancer therapy, sensors, and environmental remediation. Finally, currently encountered issues of carbon quantum dots are presented. The latest research progress in synthesis and application, as well as the challenges outlined in this review, can help and encourage future research on carbon quantum dots.

Research on a Wind Turbine Gearbox Fault Diagnosis Method Using Singular Value Decomposition and Graph Fourier Transform.

Gearboxes operate in challenging environments, which leads to a heightened incidence of failures, and ambient noise further compromises the accuracy of fault diagnosis. To address this issue, we introduce a fault diagnosis method that employs singular value decomposition (SVD) and graph Fourier transform (GFT). Singular values, commonly employed in feature extraction and fault diagnosis, effectively encapsulate various fault states of mechanical equipment. However, prior methods neglect the inter-relationships among singular values, resulting in the loss of subtle fault information concealed within. To precisely and effectively extract subtle fault information from gear vibration signals, this study incorporates graph signal processing (GSP) technology. Following SVD of the original vibration signal, the method constructs a graph signal using singular values as inputs, enabling the capture of topological relationships among these values and the extraction of concealed fault information. Subsequently, the graph signal undergoes a transformation via GFT, facilitating the extraction of fault features from the graph spectral domain. Ultimately, by assessing the Mahalanobis distance between training and testing samples, distinct defect states are discerned and diagnosed. Experimental results on bearing and gear faults demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits enhanced robustness to noise, enabling accurate and effective diagnosis of gearbox faults in environments with substantial noise.

Pulmonary Thrombotic Complication of Mycoplasma pneumoniae Pneumonia in Chinese Children: Clinical Feature and Risk Factor Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Thrombotic disease is a rare but severe complication of Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia in children, with pulmonary thrombosis (PT) being the most frequent type. This study aims to describe the clinical features of pediatric severe Mycoplasma pneumoniae pneumonia (SMPP) patients with PT, and to identify risk factors predictive of PT development in this population. METHODS: We retrospectively enrolled 60 children with SMPP complicated by PT who were admitted to Children's Hospital Affiliated to Zhengzhou University from January 2019 to October 2023. We reviewed their demographic data, laboratory tests and imaging examinations to describe their clinical features. We used multivariate logistic regression analysis to identify significant risk factors for PT in SMPP. RESULTS: The PT group exhibited higher incidences of chest pain, hemoptysis, inflammation and elevated D-dimer levels, as well as more severe pulmonary damage and transaminitis complication, compared to the non-PT group. The left pulmonary artery was the predominant location of PT in SMPP children. A multivariate analysis revealed that C-reactive protein (CRP) and D-dimer were significant predictors of PT in SMPP patients, with odds ratios of 1.10 and 3.37, respectively. The optimal cutoff values of CRP and D-dimer for predicting PT in SMPP were 76.73 mg/L and 3.98 µg/mL, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In SMPP, CRP >76.73 mg/L and D-dimer >3.98 µg/mL are independent predictors of PT. These findings suggest that SMPP-induced excessive inflammation may contribute to PT pathogenesis. Early and intensive anticoagulant, anti-inflammatory and antimycoplasma therapy may improve the disease course and prognosis.

Augmentative Plating in the Treatment of Femoral Nonunion after Intramedullary Nail Fixation.

Objective: Failure of bone healing after intramedullary nailing (IMN) of a femoral diaphyseal fracture is an uncommon condition, which can cause obvious pain symptoms and seriously affect the daily life of patients. Ununion of femoral fracture requires treatment to promote successful bone union. Augmentative plating (AP) has yielded good results in treating femoral nonunion after IMN. However, there are few large cohort studies and no technical standard for this treatment. To determine (1) the proportion of individuals with femoral nonunion after IMN who achieved radiographic signs of osseous union following the additional treatment of AP and autogenous bone grafting and (2) the factors associated with the failure of this treatment. Methods: Nonunion after IMN fixation is defined as an unhealed fracture with no radiographic signs of osseous union at least six months after IMN treatment. Osseous union as bridging bone on three of four cortices with the absence of a radiolucent line. Between January 2011 and January 2022, 83 individuals diagnosed with femoral nonunion after IMN fixation underwent AP and an autogenous bone graft. Results: Seventy-six of the 83 nonunion individuals attained osseous union by 12 months. Six of 36 (16.7%) subjects with mono-cortical plates had non-union. Conversely, one of 47 subjects (2%) with bi-cortical plates had non-union. There were 18 individuals whose AP had ≤6 cortices. Five of these 18 (38.5%) individuals had non-union. Two of 65 with an AP of >6 cortices had non-union. AP with ≤ 6 cortices was a major risk factor for the likelihood of unsuccessful procedures compared to AP with > 6 cortices. Three individuals experienced incision infection at the bone graft harvest site and were treated with local wound care. Conclusions: A high proportion of individuals with femoral nonunion after IMN fixation were salvaged by AP and an autogenous bone graft. Bi-cortical plate and screw intersection of more than six cortices may increase the treatment effectiveness. Limitations: There were limitations of this study. First, it was a retrospective study over a 10-year period, and the patients were treated by different orthopedic surgeons. Second, lack of functional evaluation is another limitation of the present work. Generalizability: The technique of bi-cortical plate and screw intersection of more than six cortices is not difficult for experienced orthopedic surgeons, and no special surgical tools is required. Closing Statement: Many literature has confirmed the good effect of APP technology in treating femoral nonunion after intramedullary nail fixation, but there are still cases of failure. Our study may enable this technology to achieve better therapeutic effects.

A Hybrid Feature Selection and Multi-Label Driven Intelligent Fault Diagnosis Method for Gearbox.

Gearboxes are utilized in practically all complicated machinery equipment because they have great transmission accuracy and load capacities, so their failure frequently results in significant financial losses. The classification of high-dimensional data remains a difficult topic despite the fact that numerous data-driven intelligent diagnosis approaches have been suggested and employed for compound fault diagnosis in recent years with successful outcomes. In order to achieve the best diagnostic performance as the ultimate objective, a feature selection and fault decoupling framework is proposed in this paper. That is based on multi-label K-nearest neighbors (ML-kNN) as classifiers and can automatically determine the optimal subset from the original high-dimensional feature set. The proposed feature selection method is a hybrid framework that can be divided into three stages. The Fisher score, information gain, and Pearson's correlation coefficient are three filter models that are used in the first stage to pre-rank candidate features. In the second stage, a weighting scheme based on the weighted average method is proposed to fuse the pre-ranking results obtained in the first stage and optimize the weights using a genetic algorithm to re-rank the features. The optimal subset is automatically and iteratively found in the third stage using three heuristic strategies, including binary search, sequential forward search, and sequential backward search. The method takes into account the consideration of feature irrelevance, redundancy and inter-feature interaction in the selection process, and the selected optimal subsets have better diagnostic performance. In two gearbox compound fault datasets, ML-kNN performs exceptionally well using the optimal subset with subset accuracy of 96.22% and 100%. The experimental findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in predicting various labels for compound fault samples to identify and decouple compound faults. The proposed method performs better in terms of classification accuracy and optimal subset dimensionality when compared to other existing methods.

Multiscale Convolutional Neural Network Based on Channel Space Attention for Gearbox Compound Fault Diagnosis.

Gearboxes are one of the most widely used speed and power transfer elements in rotating machinery. Highly accurate compound fault diagnosis of gearboxes is of great significance for the safe and reliable operation of rotating machinery systems. However, traditional compound fault diagnosis methods treat compound faults as an independent fault mode in the diagnosis process and cannot decouple them into multiple single faults. To address this problem, this paper proposes a gearbox compound fault diagnosis method. First, a multiscale convolutional neural network (MSCNN) is used as a feature learning model, which can effectively mine the compound fault information from vibration signals. Then, an improved hybrid attention module, named the channel-space attention module (CSAM), is proposed. It is embedded into the MSCNN to assign weights to multiscale features for enhancing the feature differentiation processing ability of the MSCNN. The new neural network is named CSAM-MSCNN. Finally, a multilabel classifier is used to output single or multiple labels for recognizing single or compound faults. The effectiveness of the method was verified with two gearbox datasets. The results show that the method possesses higher accuracy and stability than other models for gearbox compound fault diagnosis.

Multi-Object Detection in Security Screening Scene Based on Convolutional Neural Network.

The technique for target detection based on a convolutional neural network has been widely implemented in the industry. However, the detection accuracy of X-ray images in security screening scenarios still requires improvement. This paper proposes a coupled multi-scale feature extraction and multi-scale attention architecture. We integrate this architecture into the Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD) algorithm and find that it can significantly improve the effectiveness of target detection. Firstly, ResNet is used as the backbone network to replace the original VGG network to improve the feature extraction capability of the convolutional neural network for images. Secondly, a multi-scale feature extraction (MSE) structure is designed to enrich the information contained in the multi-stage prediction feature layer. Finally, the multi-scale attention architecture (MSA) is fused onto the prediction feature layer to eliminate the redundant features' interference and extract effective contextual information. In addition, a combination of Adaptive-NMS and Soft-NMS is used to output the final prediction anchor boxes when performing non-maximum suppression. The results of the experiments show that the improved method improves the mean average precision (mAP) value by 7.4% compared to the original approach. New modules make detection much more accurate while keeping the detection speed the same.

Compound Fault Diagnosis of a Wind Turbine Gearbox Based on MOMEDA and Parallel Parameter Optimized Resonant Sparse Decomposition.

Wind turbines usually operate in harsh environments. The gearbox, the key component of the transmission chain in wind turbines, can easily be affected by multiple factors during the operation process and develop compound faults. Different types of faults can occur, coupled with each other and staggered interference. Thus, a challenge is to extract the fault characteristics from the composite fault signal to improve the reliability and the accuracy of compound fault diagnosis. To address the above problems, we propose a compound fault diagnosis method for wind turbine gearboxes based on multipoint optimal minimum entropy deconvolution adjusted (MOMEDA) and parallel parameter optimized resonant sparse decomposition (RSSD). Firstly, the MOMEDA is applied to the preprocess, setting the deconvolution period with different fault frequency types to eliminate the interference of the transmission path and environmental noise, while decoupling and separating the different types of single faults. Then, the RSSD method with parallel parameter optimization is applied for decomposing the preprocessed signal to obtain the low resonance components, further suppressing the interference components and enhancing the periodic fault characteristics. Finally, envelope demodulation of the enhanced signal is applied to extract the fault features and identify the different fault types. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified using the actual data from the wind turbine gearbox. In addition, a comparison with some existing methods demonstrates the superiority of this method for decoupling composite fault characteristics.

Identifying Irregular Potatoes Using Hausdorff Distance and Intersection over Union.

Further processing and the added value of potatoes are limited by irregular potatoes. An ellipse-fitting-based Hausdorff distance and intersection over union (IoU) method for identifying irregular potatoes is proposed to solve the problem. First, the acquired potato image is resized, translated, segmented, and filtered to obtain the potato contour information. Secondly, a least-squares fitting method fits the extracted contour to an ellipse. Then, the similarity between the irregular potato contour and the fitted ellipse is characterized using the perimeter ratio, area ratio, Hausdorff distance, and IoU. Next, the characterization ability of the four features is analyzed, and an identification standard of irregular potatoes is established. Finally, we discuss the algorithm's shortcomings in this paper and draw the advantages of the algorithm by comparison. The experimental results showed that the characterization ability of perimeter ratio and area ratio was inferior to that of Hausdorff distance and IoU, and using Hausdorff distance and IoU as feature parameters can effectively identify irregular potatoes. Using Hausdorff distance separately as a feature parameter, the algorithm achieved excellent performance, with precision, recall, and F1 scores reaching 0.9423, 0.98, and 0.9608, respectively. Using IoU separately as a feature parameter, the algorithm achieved a higher overall recognition rate, with precision, recall, and F1 scores of 1, 0.96, and 0.9796, respectively. Compared with existing studies, the proposed algorithm identifies irregular potatoes using only one feature, avoiding the complexity of high-dimensional features and significantly reducing the computing effort. Moreover, simple threshold segmentation does not require data training and saves algorithm execution time.

Protective effect of Astragaloside IV on chronic intermittent hypoxia-induced vascular endothelial dysfunction through the calpain-1/SIRT1/AMPK signaling pathway.

Vascular endothelial dysfunction (VED) is linked with the pathogenesis of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) comorbidities, such as cardiovascular disease. Astragaloside IV (As-IV) has exhibited significant improvement for endothelial dysfunction. Nonetheless, the protective mechanism is not clear. Therefore, the present study investigated the potential mechanism of As-IV on VED. Calpain-1 knockout and wild-type C57BL/6 mice exposed to chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) were established and treated with As-IV (40, 80 mg/kg) for 4 weeks. Human coronary artery endothelial cells (HCAECs) subjected to CIH exposure were pretreated with As-IV, MDL-28170 (calpain-1 inhibitor) and SRT1720 (SIRT1 activator) for 48 h in vitro. The endothelial function, inflammation, oxidative stress and mitochondrial function were measured to evaluate VED. Our data revealed that As-IV treatment ameliorated CIH-induced endothelial-dependent vasomotion and augmented nitric oxide (NO) production. As-IV administration suppressed the secretion of inflammation, oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. As-IV treatment reduced the expression of calpain-1 and restored the downregulated expression of SIRT1 and Thr172 AMPK and Ser1177 eNOS phosphorylation. The effects of calpain-1 knockout and SRT1720 were similar to the effect of As-IV on VED. These findings demonstrated that As-IV ameliorated VED induced by chronic intermittent hypoxia via the calpain-1/SIRT1/AMPK signaling pathway.

Rational design and fabrication of monophasic bioceramic microspheres with enhanced mechanical and biological performances in reconstruction of segmental bone defect.

Over the past decades, there has been extensive study on the design of porous bioceramic scaffolds with controlled bioactivity and biodegradation in bone tissue repair. A variety of suggestive models and concepts have been proposed with regard to the role of microstructure and composition of biomaterials which affect new bone tissue growth. However, it is a challenge to fabricate functional scaffolds with the desired physiological properties and osteogenic potentials that is comparable to the bone's natural healing time scale. We demonstrate a one-step versatile fabrication of a single-phase and homogenously mixed bioactive load-bearing scaffolds (Sr-CS, CaSiO3/Ca2SiO4, and CaP) with superior biological properties in a critical size bone defect (Ø ~ 6.0 × 8.0 mm). In vivo study revealed the CaSiO3/Ca2SiO4 scaffold had the best amount of new bone growth and osteogenic repair. The Sr-CS exhibited an adequate pore network for rapid inorganic exchange and moderate mechanical stability; however, the CaSiO3/Ca2SiO4 saw over-fast resorption and mass loss compared to the Sr-CS and CaP. On the other hand, the CaP scaffold saw mechanically outstanding elastroplastine and stability but had limited biodegradation of its constructs which retarded new cancellous bone growth. The CaSiO3/Ca2SiO4 group saw superior acceleration and formation of mineralized new bone tissues in the defect. Moreover, the CaSiO3/Ca2SiO4 showed appreciable decay of the biomaterials beneficial for osteogenic cell activity. The dramatic stimulation of bone repair and angiogenesis with the CaSiO3/Ca2SiO4 suggests a promising application of this novel bioactive scaffold in the repair of skeletal defects. Systemic representation of the fabricated microspheres with in vivo and in vitro study analysis.

Enhancing methanogenesis of anaerobic granular sludge by incorporating Fe/Fe oxides nanoparticles aided with biofilm disassembly agents and mediating redox activity of extracellular polymer substances.

Anaerobic granular sludge (AGS) is a promising technology for organic wastewater treatment and energy recovery. In this study, three different kinds of Fe and Fe oxides nanoparticles (Fe3O4, Fe2O3 and ZVI) were tried to be incorporated into AGS through direct loading or aided with biofilm disassembly agents of norspermidine and D-tyrosine, which was aimed to enhance methane production capacity of AGS via increasing redox activity of extracellular polymer substance (EPS) and interspecies electron transfer. Despite the loading methods, incorporation of Fe and Fe oxides nanoparticles into AGS increased methane production capacity remarkably, with an enhancement of 36.49-85.17%, 20.37-204.95% and 189.71-243.32%, respectively, for the Fe3O4, Fe2O3 and ZVI loaded AGS. Pretreatment of AGS using biofilm disassembly agents helped to incorporate more Fe and Fe oxides into the inner structure of AGS, which further enhanced methane production capacity by 48.68% and 184.58%, respectively, for the Fe3O4 and Fe2O3 loaded AGS. Loading Fe and Fe oxides into AGS not only introduced exogenous conductive substances and Fe(III)/Fe(II) redox couples into EPS matrix of AGS, but also stimulated the production of redox active components of flavins and c-Cyts. All these factors may contribute to the reduced resistance of EPS, enhanced interspecies electron transfer and methane production capacity of AGS. This study provides a novel strategy and facile method to accelerate interspecies electron transfer and enhance methane production for matured AGS.

Research on Root Strain Response Characteristics of Inner Ring of Planetary Gear Transmission System with Crack Fault.

This paper established the system dynamics model for two kinds of tooth cracks of different depths of the sun gear and inner gear ring to study the influence mechanism of crack failure on the tooth root strain of the planetary gear transmission system. Combined with the finite element model of the inner gear ring, the tooth root strain of the ring was solved. Experiments verified the correctness of the solution method. The root strain under the crack fault of the sun gear and the tooth crack fault of the inner gear ring is analyzed, and the following conclusions are drawn: Periodic fault impact occurs in the strain signal of the tooth root of the inner gear ring during the crack fault of the sun gear root. The fault can be extracted by the fast spectral kurtosis method (FSK), and the fault components are used to determine whether the sun gear cracks. The Lempel-Ziv index showed a tendency to increase gradually during the process of solar wheel crack deepening, which could be used as the damage index of crack depth. The results can provide a basis and reference for fault diagnosis.

In-situ formation and self-immobilization of biogenic Fe oxides in anaerobic granular sludge for enhanced performance of acidogenesis and methanogenesis.

Addition of ferric oxides into flocculent anaerobic sludge was reported to enhance methanogenesis due to accelerated direct interspecies electron transfer (DIET) between syntrophic microbial communities. However, it is generally hard to incorporate Fe oxides into already matured anaerobic granular sludge (AGS) due to its special aggregated structure. In this study, a novel method was attempted to fast incorporate Fe oxides into AGS through in-situ microbial formation and immobilization of biogenic Fe oxides. Factors influencing the formation of Fe oxides were investigated and effects of Fe oxides on the acidogenic and methanogenic performance of AGS were assessed. Results showed that AGS could form Fe oxides mainly in the form of magnetite and hematite through biological reduction of Fe(III) oxyhydroxide. A maximum loading amount of 83.9 mg Fe/g MLVSS was obtained at pH 7 after contacting with 60 mM Fe(III) oxyhydroxide. The efficiency of electron donors which supported Fe(III) reduction followed the order of pyruvate > propionate > glucose > acetate > lactate > formate. Addition of electron transfer mediators (ETMs) promoted the formation of Fe oxides and their performance followed the order of AQDS > AQC > humics > FMN > riboflavin. Presence of Fe oxides in AGS (134.6 Fe/g VSS) increased the production of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) and methane by 16.28% and 41.94% respectively, comparing to the control. The enhancement may be attributed to increased conductivity and stimulated growth of exoelectrogens (Clostridium and Anaerolinea) and methanogenic endoelectrogens Methanosaeta in granular sludge which may strengthen direct interspecies electron transfer between syntrophic microbial communities. Overall, this study provides an alternative strategy to improve the digestion performance of AGS through in-situ formation and immobilization of biogenic Fe oxides.

Transcription factor ELK1 accelerates aerobic glycolysis to enhance osteosarcoma chemoresistance through miR-134/PTBP1 signaling cascade.

Osteosarcoma is a malignancy that primarily affects children and young adults. The poor survival is largely attributed to acquisition of chemoresistance. Thus, the current study aimed to elucidate the role of ELK1/miR-134/PTBP1 signaling cascade in osteosarcoma chemoresistance. Doxorubicin (DXR)-resistant human osteosarcoma cells were initially self-established by continuous exposure of MG-63, U2OS and HOS cells to increasing DXR doses. Osteosarcoma chemoresistance in vitro was evaluated using CCK-8 assays and EdU staining. Aerobic glycolysis was evaluated by lactic acid production, glucose consumption, ATP levels, and Western blot analysis of GLUT3, HK2 and PDK1 proteins. The nude mice were injected with 5.0 mg/kg DXR following the subcutaneous transplantation of osteosarcomas. PTBP1 was upregulated in tumor tissues derived from non-responders to DXR treatment and correlated with patient poor survival. PTBP1 enhanced chemoresistance in cultured osteosarcoma cells in vitro and in vivo by increasing aerobic glycolysis. Additionally, miR-134 inhibited translation of PTBP1. ELK1 bound to miR-134 promoter and inhibited its expression. Overexpressed ELK1 enhanced chemoresistance and increased aerobic glycolysis by downregulating miR-134 and upregulating PTBP1 in DXR-resistant cells. Altogether, the key findings of the present study highlight ELK1/miR-134/PTBP1 signaling cascade as a novel molecular mechanism underlying the acquisition of osteosarcoma chemoresistance.

Chronic bilateral asynchronous achilles tendon rupture treated using modified whole flexor hallucis longus transfer reconstruction: A case report.

INTRODUCTION: Achilles tendon rupture is common, but bilateral ruptures are very rare. Treatment of chronic Achilles tendon rupture is very challenging due tendon retraction and atrophied. We report a case of bilateral asynchronous Achilles tendon rupture patient who was treated with modified minimally invasive whole flexor hallucis longus (FHL) tendon transfer to repair the defects. PATIENT CONCERNS: A 52-year-old male farmer presented to our hospital complaining of bilateral heel pain that had disrupted his walking for 6 months. The patient had been misdiagnosed and under-treated for 1 year. Physical examination showed that his plantar flexors were tender and weak, with marked hypotrophy of the calf muscles. Bilateral ankle radiographs of both X-ray and computed topography (CT) revealed no bone injure. DIAGNOSIS: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) indicated a bilateral Achilles tendon rupture. The diagnosis was further confirmed by postoperative histological examination, which revealed Achilles tendonitis accompanied by regional calcification and chondrometaplasia. INTERVENTIONS: Surgical reconstruction of the ruptured Achilles tendons was done through a modified minimally invasive whole FHL tendon transfer followed by physiotherapy. OUTCOMES: The patient was immobilized in a cast for the next 6 weeks, gradual weight bearing gradually was then encouraged for another 6 weeks, and full weight-bearing started 3 months after surgery. By 6-month postoperation, the patient could walk and jog normally returned to his pre-injury working condition. CONCLUSION: Surgical intervention is among the primary treatment of chronic Achilles tendon rupture. However, one of the challenges in its treatment is providing suitable graft for tendon reconstruction. Our case presents a successful reconstruction procedure using less-invasive whole FHL transfer technique. This surgical technique provides satisfactory clinical and functional outcome and can be considered for future therapy.

Current and future uses of skeletal stem cells for bone regeneration.

The postnatal skeleton undergoes growth, modeling, and remodeling. The human skeleton is a composite of diverse tissue types, including bone, cartilage, fat, fibroblasts, nerves, blood vessels, and hematopoietic cells. Fracture nonunion and bone defects are among the most challenging clinical problems in orthopedic trauma. The incidence of nonunion or bone defects following fractures is increasing. Stem and progenitor cells mediate homeostasis and regeneration in postnatal tissue, including bone tissue. As multipotent stem cells, skeletal stem cells (SSCs) have a strong effect on the growth, differentiation, and repair of bone regeneration. In recent years, a number of important studies have characterized the hierarchy, differential potential, and bone formation of SSCs. Here, we describe studies on and applications of SSCs and/or mesenchymal stem cells for bone regeneration.

Composition control in biphasic silicate microspheres on stimulating new bone regeneration and repair of osteoporotic femoral bone defect.

Application of bioactive materials as synthetic bone graft substitutes in regenerative medicine has seen great evolution over the past decades in treating challengeable bone defects. However, balancing the preparation conditions and biological performances of inorganic biomaterials remain a great challenge, especially when there is lack of biomaterial design on how to control component distribution and how pathological bone responds to the biomaterial stimulations and osteogenesis. Here, our objective is to develop yolk-shell Ca-silicate microspheres and to investigate the potential biological performances to overcome the limitations in repair of osteoporotic bone defects. The introduction of ß-calcium silicate (CaSiO3 ) or mesoporous bioactive glass (MBG) into self-curing ß-dicalcium silicate (Ca2 SiO4 ) cement shell to form spherical granules (CaSiO3 @Ca2 SiO4 , MBG@Ca2 SiO4 ) was to retain the physicochemical property and/or microstructure of each component for optimizing bioactive ion release that could maximize osteostimulation in osteoporosis. We report a scalable shape-controlled mild fabrication protocol to yield the yolk-shell granules, endowing to different phases in yolk layer and interconnected macropore networks in the closely packed granule scaffolds. This unique heterostructure preparation is governed by coaxially aligned bilayer nozzle, inorganic powders and biocompatible binders. Extensive in vitro and in vivo evaluation showed that the CaSiO3 @Ca2 SiO4 and MBG@Ca2 SiO4 granules exhibited many superior properties such as controllable ion release, improved biodegradation and enhanced osteogenic capability in comparison with the pure Ca2 SiO4 @Ca2 SiO4 , thereby opening new mild-condition approach in fabricating osteogenesis-tailored silicate biomaterials for bone regenerative medicine, especially for efficient reconstruction of challenging pathological bone defects.