Spinal Fixed-point Rotating Reduction for Treatment of Facet Joint Disorders.

Context: Facet joint disorder is a series of clinical syndromes that lumbar trauma or degenerative disease can cause, and it can result in lumbar pain and restricted movement. Despite use of conventional Western and traditional Chinese treatments, patients can still experience many clinical symptoms, with no effective improvements in lumbar-spine movement or quality of life. Objective: The study intended to investigate the effects of spinal, fixed-point, rotating reduction on the pain levels and daily living abilities of patients with facet joint disorders. Design: The research team performed a prospective, randomized controlled study. Setting: The study took place at Wuhan Central Hospital, Affiliated to Tongji Medical College, at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. Participants: Participants were 88 patients with facet joint disorders who had been admitted to the hospital between June 2021 and August 2022. Intervention: The research team randomly divided participants into two groups, with 44 participants in each group, using the numerical table method: (1) the intervention group, who received treatment using the spinal, fixed-point, rotating reduction method, and (2) the control group, treated who received treatment using conventional tui-na, acupuncture, and traction. Outcome Measures: The research team measured changes: (1) in pain, (2) in lumbar mobility, (3) in lumbar-spine function, and (4) in daily living abilities. Results: In the comparisons between the groups at baseline, no significant differences existed: (1) in pain levels (P = .656); (2) in forward flexion (P = .982), extension (P = .887), lateral flexion (P = .408), or rotation (P = .888); (3) in the scores for clinical symptoms (P = .982), subjective symptoms (P = .887), or limitations in daily activities (P = .408); or (4) in the scores for daily living abilities (P = .427). In the comparisons between the groups at two weeks postintervention, the intervention group's: (1) pain levels were significantly lower than those of the control group (P < .001); (2) forward flexion, extension, lateral flexion, and rotation were significantly higher than those of the control group (all P < .001); (3) scores for clinical symptoms, subjective symptoms, and limitations in daily activities were significantly better than those of the control group (all P < .001); and (4) scores for daily living abilities were subjective higher than those of the control group (P < .001). Conclusion: Spinal, fixed-point, rotating reduction can significantly relieve the pain of patients with facet joint disorders restore their lumbar spine mobility, improve their lumbar spine function, increase their ADL abilities, and facilitate patients' recovery. Practitioners can promote it in clinical practice.

Convenient tumor 3D spheroid arrays manufacturing via acoustic excited bubbles for in situ drug screening.

The quick and convenient fabrication of in vitro tumor spheroids models has been pursued for clinical drug discovery and personalized therapy. Here, uniform three-dimensional (3D) tumor spheroids are quickly constructed by acoustically excited bubble arrays in a microfluidic chip and performed drug response testing in situ. In detail, bubble oscillation excited by acoustic waves induces second radiation force, resulting in the cells rotating and aggregating into tumor spheroids, which obtain controllable sizes ranging from 30 to 300 µm. These spherical tumor models are located in microfluidic networks, where drug solutions with gradient concentrations are generated from 0 to 18 mg mL-1, so that the cell spheroids response to drugs can be monitored conveniently and efficiently. This one-step tumor spheroids manufacturing method significantly reduces the model construction time to less than 15 s and increases efficiency by eliminating additional transfer processes. These significant advantages of convenience and high-throughput manufacturing make the tumor models promising for use in tumor treatment and point-of-care diagnosis.

Discrimination of the harvesting season of green tea by alcohol/salt-based aqueous two-phase systems combined with chemometric analysis.

The flavor and aroma quality of green tea are closely related to the harvest season. The aim of this study was to identify the harvesting season of green tea by alcohol/salt-based aqueous two-phase system (ATPS) combined with chemometric analysis. In this paper, the single factor experiments (SFM) and response surface methodology (RSM) optimization were designed to investigate and select the optimal ATPS. A total of 180 green tea samples were studied in this work, including 86 spring tea and 94 autumn tea. After the active components in green tea samples were extracted by the optimal ethanol/(NH4)2SO4 ATPS, the qualitative and quantitative analysis was realized based on HPLC-DAD combined with alternating trilinear decomposition-assisted multivariate curve resolution (ATLD-MCR) algorithm, with satisfactory spiked recoveries (86.00 %-112.45 %). The quantitative results obtained from ATLD-MCR model were subjected to chemometric pattern recognition analysis. The constructed partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) models showed better results than the principal component analysis (PCA) model, and the R2Xcum values (>0.835) and R2Ycum (>0.937) were close to 1, the Q2cum values were greater than 0.75 (>0.933), and the differences between R2Ycum and Q2cum were not larger than 0.2, indicating excellent cross-validation prediction performance of the models. Furthermore, the classification results based on the hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) were consistent with the PCA, PLS-DA and OPLS-DA results, establishing a good correlation between tea active components and the harvesting seasons of green tea. Overall, the combination of ATPS and chemometric methods is accurate, sensitive, fast and reliable for the qualitative and quantitative determination of tea active components, providing guidance for the quality control of green tea.

Application Effect of Silver-Containing Dressings in the Repair of Chronic Refractory Wounds.

Chronic refractory wounds have complicated pathogenesis, repeatedly prolonged course of disease, high difficulty in cure, and may even endanger life due to the spread of wound infection. Silver ion dressing is a new type of dressing applied clinically in recent years. It can prevent infection and promote wound healing by releasing a low level of active silver ions into wound fluid or secretion. Some scholars have found that silver ion dressings can promote the healing of refractory wounds. In this study, 80 cases of chronic refractory wounds treated in our department from June 2019 to January 2022 were selected as the research subjects and the effect of silver ion dressing coverage on the repair of chronic refractory wounds after debridement was explored.

Corrigendum: Total flavonoids of Rhizoma Drynariae ameliorate bone growth in experimentally induced tibial dyschondroplasia in chickens via regulation of OPG/RANKL axis.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2022.881057.].

Total Flavonoids of Rhizoma Drynariae Ameliorate Bone Growth in Experimentally Induced Tibial Dyschondroplasia in Chickens via Regulation of OPG/RANKL Axis.

Background: Rhizoma Drynariae, traditional Chinese herb, is widely used to treat and prevent bone disorders. However, experimental evidence on the use of Rhizoma Drynariae extract, total flavonoids of Rhizoma Drynariae (TFRD) to treat tibial dyschondroplasia (TD) in chickens and its underlying mechanisms have not been investigated. Purpose: To evaluate the therapeutic effect of TFRD on leg disease caused by TD and elucidate its mechanisms in modulating the bone status. Methods: Thiram-induced chicken TD model has been established. The tibia status was evaluated by analyzing tibia-related parameters including tibial weight, tibial length and its growth plate width and by performing histopathological examination. The expression of tibial bone development-related genes and proteins was confirmed by western blotting and qRT-PCR. Results: The results showed that administration of TFRD mitigated lameness, increased body weight, recuperated growth plate width in broilers affected by TD and the increase of tibia weight and tibia length is significantly positively correlated with body weight. Compared with the TD group broilers, 500 mg/kg TFRD evidently reduced the damage width of the growth plate and improved its blood vessel distribution by elevating the gene expression levels of BMP-2 and Runx2 and OPG/RANKL ratio. Furthermore, correlation analysis found that the damage width of the growth plate was negatively correlated with the expression levels of BMP-2 and OPG. Conclusion: The present study revealed that TFRD could promote the bone growth via upregulating OPG/RANKL ratio, suggesting that TFRD might be a potential novel drug in the treatment of TD in chickens.

Nonthermal Irreversible Electroporation to the Esophagus: Evaluation of Acute and Long-Term Pathological Effects in a Rabbit Model.

Background Esophageal ulceration and fistula are severe complications of pulmonary vein isolation using thermal ablation. Nonthermal irreversible electroporation (NTIRE) is a promising new technology for pulmonary vein isolation in patients with atrial fibrillation. NTIRE ablation technology has been used to treat atrial fibrillation; however, the effects of NTIRE on esophageal tissue have not been clearly described. Methods and Results A typical NTIRE electrical protocol was directly applied to esophagi in 84 New Zealand rabbits. Finite element modeling and histological analysis with 120 slices were used to analyze electric field intensity distribution and subsequent tissue changes. A parameter combination of 2000 V/cm multiplied by 90 pulses output is determined to be an effective ablation parameters combination. Within 16 weeks after ablation, no obvious lumen stenosis, epithelial erythema, erosion, ulcer, or fistula was observed in the esophageal tissue. NTIRE effectively results in esophageal cell ablation to death, and subsequently, signs of recovery gradually appear: creeping replacement and regeneration of epithelial basal cells, repair and regeneration of muscle cells, structural remodeling of the muscle layer, and finally the restoration of clear anatomical structures in all layers. Conclusions Monophasic, bipolar NTIRE delivered using plate electrodes in a novel esophageal injury model demonstrates no histopathologic changes to the esophagus at 16 weeks. Data of this study suggest that electroporation ablation is a safe modality for pulsed electroporation ablation near the esophagus.

On-chip rapid drug screening of leukemia cells by acoustic streaming.

Rapid and personalized single-cell drug screening testing plays an essential role in acute myeloid leukemia drug combination chemotherapy. Conventional chemotherapeutic drug screening is a time-consuming process because of the natural resistance of cell membranes to drugs, and there are still great challenges related to using technologies that change membrane permeability such as sonoporation in high-throughput and precise single-cell drug screening with minimal damage. In this study, we proposed an acoustic streaming-based non-invasive single-cell drug screening acceleration method, using high-frequency acoustic waves (>10 MHz) in a concentration gradient microfluidic device. High-frequency acoustics leads to increased difficulties in inducing cavitation and generates acoustic streaming around each single cell. Therefore, single-cell membrane permeability is non-invasively increased by the acoustic pressure and acoustic streaming-induced shear force, which significantly improves the drug uptake process. In the experiment, single human myeloid leukemia mononuclear (THP-1) cells were trapped by triangle cell traps in concentration gradient chips with different cytarabine (Ara-C) drug concentrations. Due to this dual acoustic effect, the drugs affect cell viability in less than 30 min, which is faster than traditional methods (usually more than 24 h). This dual acoustic effect-based drug delivery strategy has the potential to save time and reduce the cost of drug screening, when combined with microfluidic technology for multi-concentration drug screening. This strategy offers enormous potential for use in multiple drug screening or efficient drug combination screening in individualized/personalized treatments, which can greatly improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Comparison of three second-order multivariate calibration methods for the rapid identification and quantitative analysis of tea polyphenols in Chinese teas using high-performance liquid chromatography.

Retention time shifts in second-order calibration-assisted chromatographic analysis seriously impact the modeling and quantitative accuracies in complex systems. In this work, three second-order methods, i.e. alternating trilinear decomposition (ATLD) algorithm, multivariate curve resolution-alternating least squares (MCR-ALS), alternating trilinear decomposition-assisted multivariate curve resolution (ATLD-MCR), were compared their performance to process liquid chromatographic data in the presence of retention time shifts and overlapped peaks. Firstly, the validation samples contain five tea polyphenols at three concentrate levels within the calibration ranges, helped to understand, visualize and interpret these features of three second-order multivariate methods. Secondly, experimental data were studied concerning the determination of polyphenols in Chinese tea samples by HPLC-DAD. The results showed that all three second-order multivariate methods realized satisfactory quantification for five targeted analytes in Pu-Er ripe tea samples and Green tea samples even with the interference of slight retention time shifts, average recoveries were 91.23% -113.16% for ATLD, 89.96%-115.96% for ATLD-MCR, 90.64%-117.60% for MCR-ALS, respectively. However, ATLD was disappointing in the case of larger time shifts (approx. 4.00 s and 6.40 s) occurring for the quantitative analysis of Black tea and Clinacanthus nutans tea, the average recoveries were just 67.33-84.05%. Relatively, MCR-ALS and ATLD-MCR were more significantly excellent, satisfactory results still can be obtained, the average recoveries for MCR-ALS and ATLD-MCR were in the range of 86.04-117.60% and 89.96-115.96%, respectively.