Efficacy and safety of Lingnan surgery for the treatment of multi-quadrant acute incarcerated hemorrhoids: A retrospective study.

OBJECTIVE: In this study, we introduce a surgical procedure for multiple-quadrant hemorrhoid crisis, namely Lingnan surgery, and discuss its clinical efficacy and safety. METHODS: We performed a retrospective analysis of patients with acute incarcerated hemorrhoids who underwent Lingnan surgery at the Anorectal Department of Yunan County Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Guangdong Province from 2017 to 2021. The baseline data, preoperative condition, and postoperative condition of each patient were recorded in detail. RESULTS: A total of 44 patients were studied. There were no cases of massive hemorrhage, wound infection, wound nonunion, anal stenosis, abnormal anal defecation, recurrent anal fissure, or mucosal eversion within 30 days after surgery, and no recurrence of hemorrhoids and anal dysfunction occurred during the 6-month follow-up after surgery. The average operation time was 26.5 ± 6.2 min (17-43 min). The average length of hospital stay was 4.0 ± 1.2 days (2-7 days). In terms of postoperative analgesia, 35 patients took oral nimesulide, 6 did not use any analgesics, and 3 required nimesulide plus tramadol by injection. The mean Visual Analog Scale pain score was 6.8 ± 0.8 preoperatively and 2.9 ± 1.2, 2.0 ± 0.7, and 1.4 ± 0.6 at 1, 3, and 5 days postoperatively, respectively. The average basic activities of daily living score was 98.2 ± 2.6 (90-100) at discharge. CONCLUSION: Lingnan surgery is easy to perform and has obvious curative effects, providing an alternative to conventional procedures for acute incarcerated hemorrhoids.

A neural model of the frontal eye fields with reward-based learning.

Decision-making is a flexible process dependent on the accumulation of various kinds of information; however, the corresponding neural mechanisms are far from clear. We extended a layered model of the frontal eye field to a learning-based model, using computational simulations to explain the cognitive process of choice tasks. The core of this extended model has three aspects: direction-preferred populations that cluster together the neurons with the same orientation preference, rule modules that control different rule-dependent activities, and reward-based synaptic plasticity that modulates connections to flexibly change the decision according to task demands. After repeated attempts in a number of trials, the network successfully simulated three decision choice tasks: an anti-saccade task, a no-go task, and an associative task. We found that synaptic plasticity could modulate the competition of choices by suppressing erroneous choices while enhancing the correct (rewarding) choice. In addition, the trained model captured some properties exhibited in animal and human experiments, such as the latency of the reaction time distribution of anti-saccades, the stop signal mechanism for canceling a reflexive saccade, and the variation of latency to half-max selectivity. Furthermore, the trained model was capable of reproducing the re-learning procedures when switching tasks and reversing the cue-saccade association.

Acupuncture promotes angiogenesis after myocardial ischemia through H3K9 acetylation regulation at VEGF gene.

BACKGROUND: Acupuncture exerts cardioprotective effects on several types of cardiac injuries, especially myocardial ischemia (MI), but the mechanisms have not yet been well elucidated. Angiogenesis mediated by VEGF gene expression and its modification through histone acetylation has been considered a target in treating myocardial ischemia. This study aims to exam whether modulation of angiogenesis through H3K9 acetylation regulation at VEGF gene is one possible cardioprotective mechanism of acupuncture. RESULTS: We generated rat MI models by ligating the left anterior descending coronary artery and applied electroacupuncture (EA) treatment at the Neiguan (PC6) acupoint. Our results showed that acupuncture reversed the S-T segment change, reduced Q-wave area, decreased CK, CK-MB, LDH levels, mitigated myocardial remodeling, and promoted microvessel formation in the MI heart. RNA-seq analysis showed that VEGF-induced angiogenesis signaling was involved in the modulation of EA. Western blot results verified that the protein expressions of VEGF, Ras, phospho-p44/42 MAPK, phospho-p38 MAPK, phospho-SAPK/JNK and Akt, were all elevated significantly by EA treatment in the MI heart. Furthermore, increased H3K9 acetylation was also observed according with the VEGF. ChIP assay confirmed that EA treatment could notably stimulate the recruitment of H3K9ace at the VEGF promoter. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates for the first time that acupuncture can effectively up-regulate VEGF expression through H3K9 acetylation modification directly at the VEGF promoter and hence activate VEGF-induced angiogenesis in rat MI models. We employed high throughput sequencing in this study and, for the first time, generated genome-wide gene expression profiles both in the rat MI model and in acupuncture treatment.

Bifurcation analysis of a Morris-Lecar neuron model.

In this paper, we investigate the dynamical behaviors of a Morris-Lecar neuron model. By using bifurcation methods and numerical simulations, we examine the global structure of bifurcations of the model. Results are summarized in various two-parameter bifurcation diagrams with the stimulating current as the abscissa and the other parameter as the ordinate. We also give the one-parameter bifurcation diagrams and pay much attention to the emergence of periodic solutions and bistability. Different membrane excitability is obtained by bifurcation analysis and frequency-current curves. The alteration of the membrane properties of the Morris-Lecar neurons is discussed.