[Effect of Qingfei Quyu Decoction in Prevention of Radiation Pneumonitis Induced by Concurrent Chemoradiotherapy for Esophageal Carcinoma Patients].

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effect of Qingfei Quyu Decoction (QQD) in preventing radiation pneumonitis in esophageal carcinoma patients by concurrent using it with chemoradiotherapy. METHODS: A total of 120 patients with mid-late stage esophageal carcinoma were randomly assigned to the treatment group (60 cases) and the control group (60 cases). All patients received concurrent radiochemotherapy. Patients in the treatment group additionally took QQD, one dose per day for 8 successive weeks. The incidence of radiation pneunonitis was compared between the two groups. The improvement rates of short-term benefit rate, Karnofsky performance scale (KPS), and body weight (BW) improvement rate were calculated between the two groups. The 1-and 2-year overall survival rates were compared between the two groups. RESULTS: The incidence of radiation pneunonitis was 8.93% (15/56) in the treatment group and 18.64% (11/59) in the control group (P < 0.05). The short-term benefit rate was 92.86% (52/56) in the treatment group and 69.49% (41/59) in the control group (P < 0.05). Besides, the KPS and BW improvement rate were higher in the treatment group [89.29% (50/56) and 83.05% (49/59) ] than in the control group [80.36% (45/56) and 66.10% (39/59)] (P < 0.05). The 1-and 2-year overall survival rate were 66.07% and 35.71% in the treatment group, higher than those of the control group (61.02% and 30.51%; P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: Concurrent using QQD with chemoradiotherapy for treating esophageal carcinoma patients could lower the incidence of radiation pneumonitis, attenuate the degree of radiation induced lung injury, improve clinical benefit rate, and elevate their QOL.

Malignant potential of oral and labial chronic discoid lupus erythematosus: a clinicopathological study of 87 cases.

AIMS: To investigate clinicopathological features and identify clinicopathological risk factors for the malignant transformation of oral and labial chronic discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE) in a relatively large number of patients from China. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 87 patients with clinical and histopathological diagnosis of DLE between 1993 and 2009 were reviewed retrospectively in our hospital. The average age at diagnosis was 51.7 years, with a male:female ratio of 1:1.8. The lower lip was the most common site (71.3%). We documented six DLE patients with malignant transformation. On univariate analysis, patients with high-risk dysplasia (P = 0.002) or aged >60 (P = 0.045) were associated with DLE malignant transformation, but gender, lesion site, smoking and alcohol intake were not risk factors. On multivariate analysis, high-risk dysplasia was a significant indicator for DLE malignant transformation. High-risk dysplasia was associated with a 14.24-fold [95% confidence interval (95% CI), 1.97-102.88; P = 0.008] increased risk of malignant transformation, compared with non/low-risk dysplasia. CONCLUSIONS: The utilization of high-risk dysplasia as a significant indicator for evaluating malignant transformation risk in patients with DLE is suggested, which may be helpful to guide treatment selection.

A novel GC-MS method for rapid determination of headspace oxygen in vials of pharmaceutical formulations.

A novel GC-MS method which requires small injection volumes was developed for fast and selective determination of headspace oxygen in pharmaceutical packages. This method does not require a specific GC column for separation of oxygen from other permanent gases such as nitrogen; instead it offers the advantage of using co-eluting nitrogen as the internal standard for quantifying oxygen in the headspace under electron ionization (EI, 70 eV) conditions. The relative ionization efficiency of oxygen to nitrogen, termed as ionization efficiency correction factor (IECF), can be measured using a control sample with known composition of oxygen and nitrogen such as the standard dry air used in this study. To avoid contamination, it is necessary to flush the syringe with pure helium. The measurements by the method are independent of the variations of sampling volumes. The determined headspace oxygen contents (R.S.D.<1%) in the containers of an investigational intravenous formulation using this method are consistent with the results obtained by an oxygen instrument at the manufacturing facility. The performance of the analytical approach was evaluated in the study of the container closure integrity at various storage conditions including upright and inverted orientations. The results suggest that there is no obvious oxygen penetration over 12 months. This method provides a convenient tool for measuring the levels of HS oxygen in vials of pharmaceutical formulations.