Efficacy and safety of infliximab in the treatment of Kawasaki disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Infliximab is a monoclonal antibody specifically binding tumor necrosis factor-alpha and has been approved for the treatment of several inflammatory disorders. However, the efficacy of infliximab in primary treatment of Kawasaki disease (KD) or retreatment of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG)-resistant KD in children is controversial. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis to compare the efficacy of infliximab alone or in combination with IVIG to IVIG. Eligible randomized and non-randomized trials were retrieved by searching literature databases prior to May 31, 2023. Pooled odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were calculated for dichotomous variables, and mean difference (MD) with 95% CI was estimated for continuous variables. A total of 14 eligible studies comprising 1257 participants were included. In refractory KD, infliximab alone was associated with a higher effectiveness rate (OR = 4.48, 95% CI 2.67-7.52) and defervescence rate (OR = 5.01, 95% CI 2.99-8.37) and resulted in a 1.08-day-shorter duration of fever (95% CI 0.61-1.55, P < 0.001) and 1.36-day-shorter length of hospital stay (95% CI 0.65-2.08) compared with IVIG. Incidences of coronary artery lesions (CALs), newly developing CALs, and CAL regression did not differ between both groups. For initial treatment of KD, infliximab in addition to IVIG led to a nominally significant higher effectiveness rate (OR = 2.26, 95% CI 1.02-5.01) and a larger reduction of right coronary artery Z score (MD = -0.24, 95% CI -0.27 to -0.21) but did not show additional efficacy in improving other outcomes. The safety profile was similar between both groups.   Conclusion: The meta-analysis demonstrates that infliximab alone is a well-tolerated and effective treatment for IVIG-resistant KD. The additional efficacy of infliximab to IVIG for initial treatment of KD is limited. More large and high-quality trials are needed to confirm the efficacy of infliximab, especially for intensification of primary treatment for KD. What is Known: • Infliximab is a novel monoclonal antibody specifically blocking tumor necrosis factor-alpha and is approved for treatment of several immune-mediated inflammatory disorders. • The efficacy of infliximab in treating children with Kawasaki disease is controversial. What is New: • Infliximab is an effective and safe treatment for children with refractory Kawasaki disease but adds limited efficacy to intravenous immunoglobulin for initial treatment of Kawasaki disease.

Study on the preparation and mechanical properties of purple ceramics.

This paper aims at preparing a smart wearable purple ceramic that meet the color requirements of purple smart wear in the market after using zirconate neodymium as a chromogenic agent. However, the mechanical performance of zirconate neodymium purple ceramic is not satisfactory, especially it has an extremely low fracture toughness. To solve this, a 3 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (3YSZ) is added to zirconate neodymium in the preparation of multiphase ceramics to improve its mechanical properties. In this experiment, a series of ceramic samples with addition of increasing amount of 3YSZ 0, 20, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80% were prepared in the 1400-1500 °C sintering temperature range. It was found that at the same temperature, the mechanical properties of the ceramic samples gradually improved with the increase in the 3YSZ content. Moreover, with the same content, the mechanical properties of the ceramic samples gradually improved with the decrease in temperature. The results show that when 3YSZ has a mass fraction of 80% and is sintered at 1400 °C, the fracture toughness of the prepared ceramic samples reaches 8.15 MPa‧m1/2, which is nearly two times higher than that of the monolithic neodymium zirconate 2.57 MPa‧m1/2. The Vickers hardness of the prepared ceramic samples reached 12.93 GPa, which is nearly 88% higher than the undoped neodymium zirconate. This indicates that the samples can be applied in smart wearables, such as mobile phone backplane, with a certain practical significance for engineering toughening of zirconate ceramics.

miRNA-214-5p inhibits prostate cancer cell proliferation by targeting SOX4.

BACKGROUND: Prostate cancer is the most common malignant tumor in men. Due to the lack of theoretical research on its pathogenic mechanism, the current cure rate is still low. miRNAs play an important role in the pathogenesis of various cancers. miRNA-214-5p plays an important role in the development of a variety of cancers. This study aims to explore the expression level of miR-214-5p in prostate cancer and make a preliminary study of its molecular mechanism in the development of prostate cancer to provide effective new strategies for the treatment of prostate cancer. METHODS: The target genes of miRNA-214-5p were predicted with bioinformatics technology, and the target relationship between miRNA-214-5p and its target genes was verified with dual luciferase reporter assay. RT-qPCR and Western blot were used to detect the expression levels of miRNA-214-5p and target genes in 50 clinical samples and two common prostate continuous cell lines, respectively. The targeting relationship between miRNA-214-5p and its target genes was verified with clinical data. miRNA-214-5p and miRNA-214-5p inhibitor was over-expressed in DU-145 cell lines to verify the effect of miRNA-214-5p on prostate cancer cell proliferation and SOX4 gene expression. And the mechanism of miRNA-214-5p inhibiting the proliferation of prostate cancer cells were analyzed by detecting the expression difference of downstream factors of SOX4 pathway. Bioinformatics analysis showed that miRNA-214-5p combined with SOX4 3'UTR region, and dual luciferase reporter assay further verified the reliability of the predicted results. The low expression of miRNA-214-5p was observed in prostate cancer tissues and cells, while high expression of SOX4 was observed in prostate cancer tissues and cells. RESULTS: Overexpression of miRNA-214-5p to prostate cancer cells significantly inhibited the proliferation of cancer cells, and the expression of SOX4 was inhibited in the transfected cell line. After transfection of miRNA-214-5p inhibitor into prostate cancer cells, the cell proliferation rate further increased. Meanwhile, overexpression of miRNA-214-5p effectively inhibited the expression of SOX4 downstream factors, including c-Myc, eIF4E, and CDK4. However, the specific knockdown of SOX4 through SOX4 shRNA significantly reduced the proliferation of prostate cancer cell lines. CONCLUSIONS: miRNA-214-5 can inhibit the proliferation of prostate cancer cells by specifically targeting S0X4 and inhibiting the expression of growth factors downstream of this pathway.

Electroacupuncture for postoperative pain management after total knee arthroplasty: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is one of the most common joint replacement surgeries in the United States. Postoperative pain is still a major complication after TKA. Electroacupuncture (EA) has been commonly used in clinical practice for pain after TKA, but its effects and safety remain uncertain. This protocol is described for a systematic review to investigate the beneficial effects and safety of EA for postoperative pain after TKA. METHODS: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) related to EA treatment of pain after TKA will be collected from 3 databases of English literature, namely PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library, and 4 databases of Chinese literatures, namely CBM, CNKI, VIP and Wanfang database. The retrieved trials will be those published from the time when the respective databases were built to January 2018. The therapeutic effects according to the change from baseline in the amount of pain measured by the visual analogue scale (VAS) or numerical rating scale, will be accepted as the primary outcomes. We will use RevMan V.5.3 software as well to compute the data synthesis carefully when a meta-analysis is allowed. RESULTS: This systematic review and meta-analysis will provide a high-quality synthesis of current evidence of EA for pain after TKA. CONCLUSION: The conclusion of our systematic review will provide evidence to judge whether EA is an effective intervention for patient with postoperative pain after TKA. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: PROSPERO CRD 42018082407.

Unbalanced MMP/TIMP-1 expression during the development of experimental pulmonary fibrosis with acute paraquat poisoning.

Paraquat (PQ)-induced pulmonary toxicity is known to result in pulmonary edema, infiltration of inflammatory cells and damage to the alveolar epithelium, which may progress to severe fibrosis. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their physiological inhibitors, tissue inhibitors of matrix metalloproteinases (TIMPs), which degrade and remodel the excess extracellular matrix, are believed to play an important role in the development of fibrotic tissue. In this study, we examined the sequential expression of MMP-2, MMP-9 and TIMP-1 in a rat model of pulmonary fibrosis induced by PQ. Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were treated intraperitoneally with PQ (20 mg/kg) and saline (control group). Rats were sacrificed at days 1, 3, 7 and 21 after the PQ treatment. Lungs were excised for histological evaluation and immunohistochemical analyses, as well as the determination of collagen content, gene expression by fluorimeter-based quantitive RT-PCR assay and gelatinolytic activity by zymography. Lung MMP-2 and -9 mRNA expression progressively increased and reached a peak on day 7 after PQ treatment, while TIMP-1 mRNA levels in the PQ-treated lungs reached a peak on day 21 after modeling. Lung zymography revealed an increase in progelatinase B, progelatinase A and their active forms. In conclusion, unbalanced MMP/TIMP-1 expression and excessive gelatinolytic activity contribute to PQ-induced pulmonary fibrosis. Their precise role should be studied in depth as they may represent relevant therapeutic targets for PQ poisoning-induced pulmonary fibrosis.

[Genetic diversity of different geographical populations of Rhodiola rosea based on AFLP markers].

OBJECTIVE: To research the genetic diversity of different Rhodiola rosea geographical populations in Tianshan Mountain, China; METHOD: The genetic diversity of eighteen R. rosea geological populations from six niches was estimated using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers. The data of amplified bands were analyzed by the software POPGENE v1.31 (32-bit) and SPSS. RESULT: The nine primers employed produced a total of 238 discernable and reproducible amplified fragments. There were 228 polymorphic bands. The percentage of polymorphic bands with in different populations was 95.6%. Genetic diversity analysis showed that average number of alleles per loci was Na = 1.4883, effective number of alleles per loci Ne = 1.3907, Neis gene diversity index H = 0.2170, Shannon's information index I = 0.3108, the percentage of polymorphic loci P = 52.71, genetic differentiation among populations Gst = 0.364; UPGMA cluster analysis based on genetic distance data divided eighteen populations into two clusters: Cluster I composed of twelve populations and Cluster II 6 populations which distributed in attitude upper 3 175 m; CONCLUSION: Our researches suggest that the best niche of R. rosea was at attitude between 3 150-3 250 m; this region is important for the conservation of R. rosea germplasm resource.

Parallelism of iterative CT reconstruction based on local reconstruction algorithm.

An iterative algorithm is suited to reconstruct CT images from noisy or truncated projection data. However, as a disadvantage, the algorithm requires significant computational time. Although a parallel technique can be used to reduce the computational time, a large amount of communication overhead becomes an obstacle to its performance (Li et al. in J. X-Ray Sci. Technol. 13:1-10, 2005). To overcome this problem, we proposed an innovative parallel method based on the local iterative CT reconstruction algorithm (Wang et al. in Scanning 18:582-588, 1996 and IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging 15(5):657-664, 1996). The object to be reconstructed is partitioned into a number of subregions and assigned to different processing elements (PEs). Within each PE, local iterative reconstruction is performed to recover the subregion. Several numerical experiments were conducted on a high performance computing cluster. And the FORBILD head phantom (Lauritsch and Bruder http://www.imp.uni-erlangen.de/phantoms/head/head.html) was used as benchmark to measure the parallel performance. The experimental results showed that the proposed parallel algorithm significantly reduces the reconstruction time, hence achieving a high speedup and efficiency.

[Effect of selenium-protein polysaccharide extracted from Se-rich Cordyceps militaris on tumor-bearing mice].

OBJECTIVE: To extract and analysis the active components of Se-protein polysaccharide from Se-rich Cordyceps militaris, and to discuss the anti-tumor effect of Se-protein polysaccharide. METHOD: Protein, polysaccharides and selenium content were determined by the methods of Folin-phenol reagent (lowry), phenol-sulfate and DAN fluorescence, respectively. Tumor-bearing mouse model was established and divided into the model group, cyclophosphamide group, cordyceps high and low dosage group (200, 100 mg x kg(-1)). Then the Se-protein polysaccharide's anti-tumor activity and immune function in vivo were observed by compare with model group in the weight of mice, inhibitory rate, conversion rate of peripheral blood lymphocytes, dissection index K, swallowed factor alpha, liver and spleen factor coefficient, GSH-Px and SOD activity and the content of MDA. RESULT: Se-protein polysaccharides from Se-rich Cordyceps militaris had a significant anti-tumor action with the inhibitory rate 46.92% and could avoid toxic effect of chemotherapy drug like cyclophosphamide. It also could enhance immune function and body antioxidant capacity by inhibiting the decline of tumor-bearing mouse liver coefficient and spleen coefficient in tumor-bearing mice caused by cyclophosphamide. CONCLUSION: Se-protein polysaccharide, the extraction of Se-rich Cordyceps militaris's can inhibit tumor grouth of tumor-bearing mouse.