RESUMEN
Diabetic nephropathy (DN) has been recognized as a severe complication of diabetes mellitus and a dominant pathogeny of end-stage kidney disease, which causes serious health problems and great financial burden to human society worldwide. Conventional strategies, such as renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system blockade, blood glucose level control, and bodyweight reduction, may not achieve satisfactory outcomes in many clinical practices for DN management. Notably, due to the multi-target function, Chinese medicine possesses promising clinical benefits as primary or alternative therapies for DN treatment. Increasing studies have emphasized identifying bioactive compounds and molecular mechanisms of reno-protective effects of Chinese medicines. Signaling pathways involved in glucose/lipid metabolism regulation, antioxidation, anti-inflammation, anti-fibrosis, and podocyte protection have been identified as crucial mechanisms of action. Herein, we summarize the clinical efficacies of Chinese medicines and their bioactive components in treating and managing DN after reviewing the results demonstrated in clinical trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses, with a thorough discussion on the relative underlying mechanisms and molecular targets reported in animal and cellular experiments. We aim to provide comprehensive insights into the protective effects of Chinese medicines against DN.
RESUMEN
Bone tissue engineering and bone scaffold development represent two challenging fields in orthopaedic research. Micro-computed tomography (mCT) allows non-invasive measurement of these scaffolds' properties in vivo. However, the lack of standardized mCT analysis protocols and, therefore, the protocols' user-dependency make interpretation of the reported results difficult. To overcome these issues in scaffold research, we introduce the Heidelberg-mCT-Analyzer. For evaluation of our technique, we built 10 bone-inducing scaffolds, which underwent mCT acquisition before ectopic implantation (T0) in mice, and at explantation eight weeks thereafter (T1). The scaffolds' three-dimensional reconstructions were automatically segmented using fuzzy clustering with fully automatic level-setting. The scaffold itself and its pores were then evaluated for T0 and T1. Analysing the scaffolds' characteristic parameter set with our quantification method showed bone formation over time. We were able to demonstrate that our algorithm obtained the same results for basic scaffold parameters (e.g. scaffold volume, pore number and pore volume) as other established analysis methods. Furthermore, our algorithm was able to analyse more complex parameters, such as pore size range, tissue mineral density and scaffold surface. Our imaging and post-processing strategy enables standardized and user-independent analysis of scaffold properties, and therefore is able to improve the quantitative evaluations of scaffold-associated bone tissue-engineering projects.
