The efficacy and safety of silver needle in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: A protocol of randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid arthritis is a kind of chronic crippling disease, the condition is complex, the course of the disease is repeated, seriously affecting the quality of life of patients. Adverse reactions and drug resistance associated with conventional treatment can no longer meet the clinical need. Therefore, complementary and alternative therapies need to be explored. The evidence shows that silver needle therapy has advantages in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, but there is a lack of standard clinical studies to verify this conclusion. METHODS: This is a prospective randomized controlled trial to study the efficacy and safety of silver needles in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Approved by the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of our hospital. The patients are randomly divided into a treatment group (silver needle treatment group) or control group (routine western medicine treatment group). The patients are followed up for 2 months after 4 weeks of treatment. Observation indicators include: TCM symptom score, HAQDI score, DAS-28 score, laboratory indicators, adverse reactions and so on. Data will be analyzed using the statistical software package SPSS version 18.0 (Chicago, IL). DISCUSSION: This study will evaluate the clinical efficacy of a silver needle in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The results of this study will provide a reliable reference for the clinical use of a silver needle in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. TRIAL REGISTRATION: OSF Registration number: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/4X5QB.

[Genetic diversity of ancient tea gardens and tableland tea gardens from Yunnan Province as revealed by AFLP marker].

This study was conducted to evaluate the genetic diversity within and among the plants of four ancient tea gardens and two tableland tea gardens form Yunnan Province, China by AFLP technique. The percentage of polymorphic loci (P) of the plants from six tea gardens was 92.31%. The genetic diversity within the six gardens demonstrated by Nei cents genetic diversity (He) was estimated to be 0.1366, while Shannon indices (Ho) were 0.2323. The percentage of polymorphic loci of the four ancient tea populations was 45.55% on average, with a range of 36.44% (Mengsong) to 59.11% (Mengla). But the percentages of polymorphic loci of the plants from two tableland gardens were 13.77% (Yunkang 10) and 24.2% (Menghai Daye), respectively. There was a great genetic difference between ancient tea gardens and tableland tea gardens. The genetic diversity among the plants of the ancient tea garden was higher than those of the sexual tableland tea garden and the clone tableland tea garden based on P valve. The four ancient tea gardens and two tableland gardens could be differentiated with AFLP markers. The results show that AFLP marker is an effective tool in the discrimination of tea germplasm, as well as sundried green tea.