Effects of Fu’s Subcutaneous Needling on Postoperative Pain in Patients Receiving Surgery for Degenerative Lumbar Spinal Disorders: A Single-Blind, Randomized Controlled Trial

Chih-Ying Wu,1– 3 Li-Wei Chou,4– 6 Shih-Wei Huang,7 Wen-Ling Liao,1,8 Shiaw-Meng Chang,9 Han-Chung Lee,10 Cheng-Di Chiu,3,11– 14 Chih-Hsin Tang,13,15– 18 Ching-Liang Hsieh16,19,20 1Graduate Institute of Integrated Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 2Department of Neurosurgery, China Medical University Hsinchu Hospital, China Medical University, Hsinchu, Taiwan; 3Department of Neurosurgery, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 4Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 5Department of Physical Therapy and Graduate Institute of Rehabilitation Science, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 6Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Asia University Hospital, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan; 7Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, China Medical University Hsinchu Hospital, China Medical University, Hsinchu, Taiwan; 8Center for Personalized Medicine, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 9Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan; 10Neuroscience center, Everan Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 11Spine Center, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 12School of Medicine, College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 13Graduate Institute of Biomedical Science, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 14Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan; 15Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 16Chinese Medicine Research Center, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan; 17Department of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotechnology, College of Health Science, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan; 18Department of Medical Research, China Medical University Hsinchu Hospital, Hsinchu, Taiwan; 19Department of Chinese Medicine, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan; 20Graduate Institute of Acupuncture Science, China Medical University, Taichung, TaiwanCorrespondence: Chih-Hsin Tang, Graduate Institute of Biomedical Science, College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, 40402, Taiwan, Email [email protected] Ching-Liang Hsieh, Graduate Institute of Acupuncture Science, China Medical University, 91 Hsueh-Shih Road, Taichung, 40402, Taiwan, Tel +886-4-22053366, Fax +886-4-22037690, Email [email protected]: Fu’s subcutaneous needling (FSN) is a novel acupuncture technique for pain treatment. This study investigated the effects of postsurgical FSN on postoperative pain in patients receiving surgery for degenerative spinal disorders.Methods: This single-center, single-blind, randomized-controlled study involved patients undergoing surgery for degenerative spinal disorders. Participants were randomized into either an FSN group or a control group that received sham FSN. The primary outcomes were scores on the Brief Pain Inventory Taiwan version (BPI-T) and Oswestry Disability Index before and at 1, 24, and 48 hours after surgery. Secondary outcomes were muscle hardness, pethidine use, and inflammatory biomarker presence.Results: Initially, 51 patients met the inclusion criteria and were allocated (26 in the FSN group and 25 in the control group). Two patients were lost to follow-up, and finally, 49 patients (25 in the FSN group and 24 in the control group) who completed the study were analyzed. The FSN group had significantly lower pain intensity measured on the BPI-T compared with the control group at 1, 24, 48, and 72 hours after surgical treatment (all p 0.05).Conclusion: FSN treatment can reduce postoperative pain in patients receiving surgery for degenerative spinal disorders. However, larger sample sizes and multicenter clinical trials are required to verify these findings.Keywords: Fu’s subcutaneous needling, degenerative spinal disorders, postoperative pain, surgical treatment, clinical tria

Axion-like-particle search with high-intensity lasers

We study ALP-photon-conversion within strong inhomogeneous electromagnetic fields as provided by contemporary high-intensity laser systems. We observe that probe photons traversing the focal spot of a superposition of Gaussian beams of a single high-intensity laser at fundamental and frequency-doubled mode can experience a frequency shift due to their intermittent propagation as axion-like-particles. This process is strongly peaked for resonant masses on the order of the involved laser frequencies. Purely laser-based experiments in optical setups are sensitive to ALPs in the $\mathrm{eV}$ mass range and can thus complement ALP searches at dipole magnets.Comment: 25 pages, 2 figure

Seroepidemiology of coxsackievirus A6, coxsackievirus A16, and Enterovirus 71 infections among children and adolescents in Singapore, 2008-2010

10.1371/journal.pone.0127999PLoS ONE105e012799

A Herpesvirus Encoded Deubiquitinase Is a Novel Neuroinvasive Determinant

The neuroinvasive property of several alpha-herpesviruses underlies an uncommon infectious process that includes the establishment of life-long latent infections in sensory neurons of the peripheral nervous system. Several herpesvirus proteins are required for replication and dissemination within the nervous system, indicating that exploiting the nervous system as a niche for productive infection requires a specialized set of functions encoded by the virus. Whether initial entry into the nervous system from peripheral tissues also requires specialized viral functions is not known. Here we show that a conserved deubiquitinase domain embedded within a pseudorabies virus structural protein, pUL36, is essential for initial neural invasion, but is subsequently dispensable for transmission within and between neurons of the mammalian nervous system. These findings indicate that the deubiquitinase contributes to neurovirulence by participating in a previously unrecognized initial step in neuroinvasion

Hippocampal Desynchronization of Functional Connectivity Prior to the Onset of Status Epilepticus in Pilocarpine-Treated Rats

Status epilepticus (SE), a pro-epileptogenic brain insult in rodent models of temporal lobe epilepsy, is successfully induced by pilocarpine in some, but not all, rats. This study aimed to identify characteristic alterations within the hippocampal neural network prior to the onset of SE. Sixteen microwire electrodes were implanted into the left hippocampus of male Sprague-Dawley rats. After a 7-day recovery period, animal behavior, hippocampal neuronal ensemble activities, and local field potentials (LFP) were recorded before and after an intra-peritoneal injection of pilocarpine (350 mg/kg). The single-neuron firing, population neuronal correlation, and coincident firing between neurons were compared between SE (n = 9) and nonSE rats (n = 12). A significant decrease in the strength of functional connectivity prior to the onset of SE, as measured by changes in coincident spike timing between pairs of hippocampal neurons, was exclusively found in SE rats. However, single-neuron firing and LFP profiles did not show a significant difference between SE and nonSE rats. These results suggest that desynchronization in the functional circuitry of the hippocampus, likely associated with a change in synaptic strength, may serve as an electrophysiological marker prior to SE in pilocarpine-treated rats

Shifting patterns of natural variation in the nuclear genome of caenorhabditis elegans

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genome wide analysis of variation within a species can reveal the evolution of fundamental biological processes such as mutation, recombination, and natural selection. We compare genome wide sequence differences between two independent isolates of the nematode <it>Caenorhabditis elegans </it>(CB4856 and CB4858) and the reference genome (N2).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The base substitution pattern when comparing N2 against CB4858 reveals a transition over transversion bias (1.32:1) that is not present in CB4856. In CB4856, there is a significant bias in the direction of base substitution. The frequency of A or T bases in N2 that are G or C bases in CB4856 outnumber the opposite frequencies for transitions as well as transversions. These differences were not observed in the N2/CB4858 comparison. Similarly, we observed a strong bias for deletions over insertions in CB4856 (1.44: 1) that is not present in CB4858. In both CB4856 and CB4858, there is a significant correlation between SNP rate and recombination rate on the autosomes but not on the X chromosome. Furthermore, we identified numerous significant hotspots of variation in the CB4856-N2 comparison.</p> <p>In both CB4856 and CB4858, based on a measure of the strength of selection (k_a/k_s), all the chromosomes are under negative selection and in CB4856, there is no difference in the strength of natural selection in either the autosomes versus X or between any of the chromosomes. By contrast, in CB4858, k_a/k_svalues are smaller in the autosomes than in the X chromosome. In addition, in CB4858, k_a/k_svalues differ between chromosomes.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The clear bias of deletions over insertions in CB4856 suggests that either the CB4856 genome is becoming smaller or the N2 genome is getting larger. We hypothesize the hotspots found represent alleles that are shared between CB4856 and CB4858 but not N2. Because the k_a/k_sratio in the X chromosome is higher than the autosomes on average in CB4858, purifying selection is reduced on the X chromosome.</p

Design, Validation and Annotation of Transcriptome-Wide Oligonucleotide Probes for the Oligochaete Annelid Eisenia fetida

High density oligonucleotide probe arrays have increasingly become an important tool in genomics studies. In organisms with incomplete genome sequence, one strategy for oligo probe design is to reduce the number of unique probes that target every non-redundant transcript through bioinformatic analysis and experimental testing. Here we adopted this strategy in making oligo probes for the earthworm Eisenia fetida, a species for which we have sequenced transcriptome-scale expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Our objectives were to identify unique transcripts as targets, to select an optimal and non-redundant oligo probe for each of these target ESTs, and to annotate the selected target sequences. We developed a streamlined and easy-to-follow approach to the design, validation and annotation of species-specific array probes. Four 244K-formatted oligo arrays were designed using eArray and were hybridized to a pooled E. fetida cRNA sample. We identified 63,541 probes with unsaturated signal intensities consistently above the background level. Target transcripts of these probes were annotated using several sequence alignment algorithms. Significant hits were obtained for 37,439 (59%) probed targets. We validated and made publicly available 63.5K oligo probes so the earthworm research community can use them to pursue ecological, toxicological, and other functional genomics questions. Our approach is efficient, cost-effective and robust because it (1) does not require a major genomics core facility; (2) allows new probes to be easily added and old probes modified or eliminated when new sequence information becomes available, (3) is not bioinformatics-intensive upfront but does provide opportunities for more in-depth annotation of biological functions for target genes; and (4) if desired, EST orthologs to the UniGene clusters of a reference genome can be identified and selected in order to improve the target gene specificity of designed probes. This approach is particularly applicable to organisms with a wealth of EST sequences but unfinished genome