[Effects of Zhuang-medical thread moxibustion combined with needle-pricking on vascular oxidative stress injury in the rat].

OBJECTIVE: To observe the effect of Zhuang-medical thread moxibustion combined with needle-pricking on vascular oxidative stress injury in oxidative stress injury rats. METHODS: Eighty Wistar rats were randomly allocated to normal control, sham operation (sham), model, and combined treatment groups (n=20 in each group). The oxidative stress injury model was established by ligation of the left sciatic nerve to induce chronic constriction injury (CCI) pain stress stimulation. Zhuang-medical thread moxibustion was applied to bilateral "Zusanli" (ST 36), once a day for 3 weeks. Needle-pricking was applied to left "Yanglingquan" (GB 34) and left "Huantiao" (GB 30), once a day for 3 weeks except Sundays. Plasma 6-keto-PGF 1α, thromboxane B 2 (TXB 2), NO and ET contents were assayed by radioimmunoassay. COX-2 immunoactivity of the femoral artery was determined by immunohistochemistry, and pathological changes of the femoral artery were detected by H. E. staining. RESULTS: Compared with the control group, the levels of plasma 6-keto-PGF 1α and NO in the model group were significantly reduced (P<0.05), while those of plasma TXB 2 and ET and COX-2 expression in the femoral artery were obviously increased in the model group (P<0.01). After moxibustion plus needle-pricking treatment, CCI-induced decrease of plasma 6-keto-PGF 1α and NO contents, and increase of plasma TXB 2 and ET and COX-2 expression levels were obviously reversed (P<0.05, P<0.01). The tubal wall of the femoral artery in rats of the model group got thicker, while that of the combined treatment group was relatively thinner, suggesting an inhibition of vascular intimal hyperplasia after the treatment. CONCLUSION: Zhuang-medical thread moxibustion combined with needle-pricking of ST 36, GB 34 and GB 30 can reduce the expression of femoral artery COX-2 and regulate the balance of both plasma PGI 2/TXA 2 and plasma NO/ET in CCI-induced oxidative stress rats, which may contribute to its effect in suppressing oxidative stress-induced vascular intimal hyperplasia.

Syndrome classification based on manifold ranking for viral hepatitis.

Treatment determination based on syndrome differentiation is the key of Chinese medicine. A feasible way of improving the clinical therapy effectiveness is needed to correctly differentiate the syndrome classifications based on the clinical manifestations. In this paper, a novel data mining method based on manifold ranking (MR) is proposed to explore the relation between syndromes and symptoms for viral hepatitis. Since MR could take the symptom data with expert differentiation and the symptom data without expert differentiation into the task of syndrome classification, the clinical information used for modeling the syndrome features is greatly enlarged so as to improve the precise of syndrome classification. In addition, the proposed method of syndrome classification could also avoid two disadvantages in previous methods: linear relation of the clinical data and mutually exclusive symptoms among different syndromes. And it could help exploit the latent relation between syndromes and symptoms more effectively. Better performance of syndrome classification is able to be achieved according to the experimental results and the clinical experts.

[Study on method for formulating clinical practice guidelines of common Chinese patent medicines based on clinical practices].

The clinical application of Chinese patent medicines has suffered sever problems and required guidelines for clinical practices. Currently, the expert consensus method is more suitable for formulating clinical practice guidelines of Chinese patent medicines than the evidence-based method. However, there remain problems in the application of the expert consensus method. This study proposed a derivative expert consensus method--a method for formulating clinical practice guidelines of common Chinese patent medicines based on clinical practices, and introduced the method in terms of research thought, methodology and implementation procedure.

"Intensity-response" effects of electroacupuncture on gastric motility and its underlying peripheral neural mechanism.

The aim of this study was to explore the "intensity-response" relationship between EAS and the effect of gastric motility of rats and its underlying peripheral neural mechanism by employing ASIC3 knockout (ASIC3-/-), TRPV1 knockout (TRPV1-/-), and C57BL/6 mice. For adult male Sprague-Dawley (n = 18) rats, the intensities of EAS were 0.5, 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 mA, respectively. For mice (n = 8 in each group), only 1 mA was used, by which C fiber of the mice can be activated. Gastric antrum motility was measured by intrapyloric balloon. Gastric motility was facilitated by EAS at ST36 and inhibited by EAS at CV12. The half maximal facilitation intensity of EAS at ST36 was 2.1-2.3 mA, and the half maximal inhibitory intensity of EAS at CV12 was 2.8 mA. In comparison with C57BL/6 mice, the facilitatory effect of ST36 and inhibitive effect of CV12 in ASIC3-/- mice decreased, but the difference was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). However, these effects in TRPV1-/- mice decreased significantly (P < 0.001). The results indicated that there existed an "intensity-response" relationship between EAS and the effect of gastric motility. TRPV1 receptor was involved in the regulation of gastric motility of EAS.

Transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation for the treatment of depression: a study protocol for a double blinded randomized clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Depressive disorders are the most common form of mental disorders in community and health care settings. Unfortunately, the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is far from satisfactory. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is a relatively new and promising physical treatment for depressive disorders. One particularly appealing element of VNS is the long-term benefit in mood regulation. However, because this intervention involves surgery, perioperative risks, and potentially significant side effects, this treatment has been limited to those patients with treatment-resistant depression who have failed medication trials and exhausted established somatic treatments for major depression, due to intolerance or lack of response.This double-blinded randomized clinical trial aims to overcome these limitations by introducing a novel method of stimulating superficial branches of the vagus nerve on the ear to treat MDD. The rationale is that direct stimulation of the afferent nerve fibers on the ear area with afferent vagus nerve distribution should produce a similar effect as classic VNS in reducing depressive symptoms without the burden of surgical intervention. DESIGN: One hundred twenty cases (60 males) of volunteer patients with mild and moderate depression will be randomly divided into transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation group (tVNS) and sham tVNS group. The treatment period lasts 4 months and all clinical and physiological measurements are acquired at the beginning and the end of the treatment period. DISCUSSION: This study has the potential to significantly extend the application of VNS treatment for MDD and other disorders (including epilepsy, bipolar disorder, and morbid obesity), resulting in direct benefit to the patients suffering from these highly prevalent disorders. In addition, the results of this double-blinded clinical trial will shed new light on our understanding of acupuncture point specificity, and development of methodologies in clinical trials of acupuncture treatment. TRIALS REGISTRATION: Clinical Trials. ChiCTR-TRC-11001201 http://www.chictr.org/cn/