Spectroscopic profiling-based geographic herb identification by neural network with random weights.

Daodi medicinal material plays an important role in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This study researches and validates the NNRW (neural network with random weights) model on spectroscopic profiling data for geographical origin identification. NNRW is a special neural network model that does not require an iterative training process. It has been proved effective in various resource-limited data-driven applications. However, whether NNRW works for spectroscopic profiling data remains to be explored. In this study, the Raman and UV (ultraviolet) profiling data of 160 radix astragali samples from four geographic regions are trained and evaluated by four classification models, i.e., NNRW, MLP (multi-layer perceptron), SVM (support vector machine), and DTC (decision tree classifier). Their validation accuracies are 96.3%, 98.0%, 98.4%, and 92.8% respectively. The training/fitting times are 0.372 ms (milli-seconds), 57.9 ms, 2.033 ms, and 3.351 ms, respectively. This study shows that NNRW has a significant training time cut while keeping a high prediction accuracy, and it is a promising solution to resource-limited edge computing applications.

Markedly Increasing Antibiotic Resistance and Dual Treatment of Neisseria gonorrhoeae Isolates in Guangdong, China, from 2013 to 2020.

The emergence of multidrug resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae is concerning, especially the cooccurrence of azithromycin resistance and decreased susceptibility to extended-spectrum cephalosporin. This study aimed to confirm the antibiotic resistance trends and provide a solution for N. gonorrhoeae treatment in Guangdong, China. A total of 5,808 strains were collected for assessment of antibiotic MICs. High resistance to penicillin (53.80 to 82%), tetracycline (88.30 to 100%), ciprofloxacin (96 to 99.8%), cefixime (6.81 to 46%), and azithromycin (8.60 to 20.03%) was observed. Remarkably, spectinomycin and ceftriaxone seemed to be the effective choices, with resistance rates of 0 to 7.63% and 2.00 to 16.18%, respectively. Moreover, the rates of azithromycin resistance combined with decreased susceptibility to ceftriaxone and cefixime reached 9.28% and 8.64%, respectively. Furthermore, genotyping identified NG-STAR-ST501, NG-MAST-ST2268, and MLST-ST7363 as the sequence types among representative multidrug-resistant isolates. Evolutionary analysis showed that FC428-related clones have spread to Guangdong, China, which might be a cause of the rapid increase in extended-spectrum cephalosporin resistance currently. Among these strains, the prevalence of N. gonorrhoeae was extremely high, and single-dose ceftriaxone treatment might be a challenge in the future. To partially relieve the treatment pressure, a susceptibility test for susceptibility to azithromycin plus extended-spectrum cephalosporin dual therapy was performed. The results showed that all the representative isolates could be effectively killed with the coadministration of less than 1 mg/liter azithromycin and 0.125 mg/liter extended-spectrum cephalosporin, with a synergistic effect according to a fractional inhibitory concentration (FIC) of <0.5. In conclusion, dual therapy might be a powerful measure to treat refractory N. gonorrhoeae in the context of increasing antibiotic resistance in Guangdong, China.

Moutan cortex extract exerts protective effects in a rat model of cardiac ischemia/reperfusion.

Moutan cortex (MC) is a traditional Chinese medicine with diverse biological effects. The present study was performed to investigate the effects of MC on myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) in rats and to explore its possible mechanisms. Sprague-Dawley rats were administered MC extract (1.98 g/kg, i.g.) for 14 days and underwent a subsequent open-chest procedure involving 30 min of myocardial ischemia and 60 min of reperfusion. The cardioprotective effect of MC was demonstrated by reduced infarct size and marked improvement in the histopathological examination. The increase in the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione (GSH) as well as the reduction of malondialdehyde (MDA) indicated that MC effectively promoted the anti-oxidative defense system. Increased anti-oxidative defense was accompanied by decreased release of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and creatine kinase (CK). The reduction in TUNEL-positive myocytes demonstrated that MC decreased myocardial apoptosis. The mRNA expression of B cell leukemia-2 (Bcl-2) was upregulated by MC and the ratio of Bcl-2/Bcl-2-associated X protein (Bax) mRNA expression was increased. MC pretreatment decreased the mRNA expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS). The data from this study suggest that MC exerted protective effects on acute myocardial I/R injury via anti-oxidative and anti-apoptotic activities.

[Protecting effect of Chaenomeles speciosa broth on immunosuppressive mice induced by cyclophosphamide].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effects of Chaenomeles speciosa broth on immunoregulation for anti-tumor chemotherapy. METHODS: Immunosuppressive model was induced by cyclophosphamide (CTX) in mice. The mice were treated with the broth for 15 days. The serum hemolysin was observed in mouse sera. Spleen lymphocyte transformation and gene transcription related to the immunoregulation in spleen lymphocytes were detected. RESULTS: After administrated the broth, the serum hemolysin and lymphocyte transformation rates significantly increased and the mRNA expression of foxp3, TGF-beta, PD1, Fas, Bax were downregulated compared with CTX-group. CONCLUSION: Chaenomeles speciosa broth has protective effects on the immunosuppressive mouse induce by CTX.