The influence of near-infrared therapy on arteriovenous fistula patency in haemodialysis patients: A multicentre, randomised, controlled clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Arteriovenous fistula (AVF) is the preferred vascular access for patients undergoing haemodialysis (HD). AVF malfunction remains a major clinical problem and is a significant independent risk factor for death. Although far-infrared (FIR) therapy has been shown to reduce complications and improve the patency rate of AVFs in various studies, it has been cautiously recommended by the Kidney Disease Outcome Quality Initiative (KDOQI) guidelines for AVF care due to insufficient evidence. Therefore, it is necessary to identify more effective methods for preventing AVF dysfunction. Many in vitro studies and few clinical studies have examined the effects of near-infrared (NIR) therapy on the vasculature. This study will examine the effects of NIR therapy on AVF. METHODS: A randomised, controlled, open-label, multicentre trial will compare the effect of NIR on AVF patency after 1 year of therapy with that of a control group of patients with existing AVF. One group of patients received NIR treatment above their AVFs, whereas the control group received regular care. The primary outcome is the primary fistula patency rate within 12 months. In addition, acute changes in inflammatory, vasodilatory and haemodynamic parameters after a single treatment in the first 40 participants will be examined. This study was registered in the Clinical Trials Registry (ChiCTR2300071305) at https://register.clinicaltrials.gov/. DISCUSSIONS: This study will explore the long-term and acute effects of NIR on AVFs. The study findings will provide information that can be used to develop new technical support for the prevention of AVF dysfunction in patients undergoing haemodialysis.

Integration strategy of network pharmacology in Traditional Chinese Medicine: a narrative review.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been extensively used as a mainstay for treating various pathologies. Combing the pharmacology and systems biology approaches, the network pharmacology (NP) approach was developed to predict the probable mechanism underlying the therapeutic effect of TCM. However, approaches solely based on NP cannot effectively elucidate the curative mechanism in a holistic and reliable manner due to limitations in NP-based methods and complexity of TCM components. Thus, integration strategies combining NP with other approaches are increasingly being used. Since the interdisciplinary research in TCM has received much attention in the advent of the big data era of which the NP-based integration strategy is broadly used, the strategy is clearly elaborated in the present review. We summarized several NP-based integration strategies and their applications in TCM studies, including multi-omics approach, gut microbiota study, chemical information analysis, data-mining, and network toxicology study.