Biomedicine and traditional Chinese medicine: a fruitful scientific and cultural interaction.

Over the years, the approach of traditional Chinese medicine has changed, as has the concept of the health status. Particularly in this article we will focus on the importance of some techniques that we can define millennial, acupuncture. We will highlight a millenary system and the principles of modernity, emphasizing the relevance of a technique that appears to be in line with the latest scientific research and numerous studies of effectiveness, proposing therapeutic integration as a usable way. We will see how acupuncture has an anti-inflammatory effect, and has a beneficial role in subjects suffering from allergic or autoimmune diseases, including an antihistamine action and downregulation of proinflammatory cytokines (e.g. IL-1\u3b2, IL-6 and TNF-\u3b1). In addition, acupuncture could also act as an immunomodulatory agent, involving the neuroimmune network, T helper and natural killer cells. Traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture in particular, is widely used within Western health systems and there are many studies done regarding its efficacy in the clinical field. In addition to scientific validation, however, a comparison on a cultural level is also necessary. To build a constructive dialogue, indeed, it is necessary to deconstruct the preconceptions and prejudices concerning both biomedicine and traditional Chinese medicine. In fact, only through deconstruction we can understand that biomedicine and traditional Chinese medicine are both culturally connoted knowledge. In this article it will first be underlined how clinical observations can be better understood if we pay attention to analyzing the cultural context of the medical systems that here interact with each other

Giving in Chicago

The report examines the patterns of charitable giving by households and corporations in the region for 2013 and the characteristics of grantmaking by foundations in the same region for 2012 (the latest year with available data). Findings from the study offer a better picture of the philanthropic landscape in the Chicago metro area and how it compares to the national philanthropic environment

Analysis of Graves\u2019 disease from the origins to the recent historical evolution

Graves\u2019 disease (GD), also called Basedow\u2019s disease, owe the names respectively to the Irish physician Robert James Graves, who described the disease in 1835, and to Karl Adolph von Basedow, who reported the same clinical picture in Germany in 1840. Indeed, it was the Englishman Caleb Hillier Parry to firstly report a case of hyperthyroidism and goiter in 1786, but his report was not published until 1825. Earlier, in 1802, the Italian physician Giuseppe Flajani, described a disease characterized by the coexistence of palpitations and exophthalmos. Graves\u2019 disease is an autoimmune, organ-specific, disorder sustained by auto-antibodies stimulating the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) receptor (R). It is believed that the interaction between susceptible genes and environmental/endogen factors triggers the development of the disease. As a consequence of TSH-R improper stimulation, hyperthyroidism and goiter are the main clinical manifestations of the disease, accompanied, in the 25% of cases, by Graves\u2019 orbitopathy (GO). GD is primarily diagnosed by demonstrating the presence of thyrotoxicosis and the pathognomonic TSH-R antibodies (TSH-RAb). In this manuscript we will refer to the disease as Graves\u2019 disease

Regulation of macrophage differentiation and polarization pattern by human RNASET2 protein

ABSTRACT The human RNASET2 gene encodes for an evolutionarily conserved, extracellular ribonuclease, whose secretion by cancer cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) is likely involved in tumor suppression. Material and method Indeed, in two independent in vivo xenograft-based experimental models, high human RNASET2 expression levels were consistently associated with a marked suppression of both tumorigenic and metastatic potential in vivo. Noteworthy, histological characterization of RNASET2-suppresed tumors revealed a marked inflammatory infiltration within the tumor mass, represented by murine stromal cells belonging to the M1 anti-tumorigenic subclass of macrophages, thus suggesting the occurrence of a RNASET2-mediated non cell-autonomous oncosuppressive role. Results and discussion We thus speculate that early-stage tumor cells actively secrete RNASET2 in order to provide an \u201calarmin-like\u201d danger signal for cells belonging to the monocyte/macrophage lineage, whose role would be to trigger an effective oncosuppressive host immune response. In order to further validate in vitro the role of RNASET2 in macrophage differentiation and polarization previously observed in vivo, we present here preliminary results from human promyelocytic THP-1 cells treated with either human recombinant RNASET2 protein or conditioned media from RNASET2-overexpressing 22RV1 prostate cancer cells. Conclusion Taken together, these data provide a further confirmation of the ability of human RNASET2 to affect human macrophage\u2019s differentiation and polarization pattern in in vitro experimental settings