Clinical efficacy and safety of buyang huanwu decoction for acute ischemic stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 19 randomized controlled trials

Buyang Huanwu Decoction (BHD) is a well-known traditional Chinese herbal prescription for treating stroke-induced disability. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of BHD for acute ischemic stroke. A systematic literature search was performed in 6 databases until February 2012. Randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) that evaluate efficacy and safety of BHD for acute ischemic stroke were included. Nineteen RCTs with 1580 individuals were identified. The studies were generally of low methodological quality. Only one of the trial included death or dependency as a primary outcome measure. Only 4 trials reported adverse events. Meta-analysis showed the clinical effective rate of neurological deficit improvement favoring BHD when compared with western conventional medicines (WCM), P < 0.001. There is significant difference in the neurologic deficit score between the BHD treatment group and the WCM control group, P < 0.001. In Conclusion, BHD appears to improve neurological deficit and seems generally safe in patients with acute ischemic stroke. However, the current evidence is insufficient to support a routine use of BHD for acute ischemic stroke due to the poor methodological quality and lack of adequate safety data of the included studies. Further rigorously designed trials are required.published_or_final_versio

Clustering exact matches of pairwise sequence alignments by weighted linear regression

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>At intermediate stages of genome assembly projects, when a number of contigs have been generated and their validity needs to be verified, it is desirable to align these contigs to a reference genome when it is available. The interest is not to analyze a detailed alignment between a contig and the reference genome at the base level, but rather to have a rough estimate of where the contig aligns to the reference genome, specifically, by identifying the starting and ending positions of such a region. This information is very useful in ordering the contigs, facilitating post-assembly analysis such as gap closure and resolving repeats. There exist programs, such as BLAST and MUMmer, that can quickly align and identify high similarity segments between two sequences, which, when seen in a dot plot, tend to agglomerate along a diagonal but can also be disrupted by gaps or shifted away from the main diagonal due to mismatches between the contig and the reference. It is a tedious and practically impossible task to visually inspect the dot plot to identify the regions covered by a large number of contigs from sequence assembly projects. A forced global alignment between a contig and the reference is not only time consuming but often meaningless.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have developed an algorithm that uses the coordinates of all the exact matches or high similarity local alignments, clusters them with respect to the main diagonal in the dot plot using a weighted linear regression technique, and identifies the starting and ending coordinates of the region of interest.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This algorithm complements existing pairwise sequence alignment packages by replacing the time-consuming seed extension phase with a weighted linear regression for the alignment seeds. It was experimentally shown that the gain in execution time can be outstanding without compromising the accuracy. This method should be of great utility to sequence assembly and genome comparison projects.</p

Prospective relationship between objectively measured light physical activity and depressive symptoms in later life

BACKGROUND: The use of self-report measures of physical activity is a serious methodological weakness in many studies of physical activity and depressive symptoms. It is still equivocal whether light physical activity protects older adults from depressive symptoms. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to explore whether objectively measured light physical activity, independent of sedentary and moderate-to-vigorous activity, is associated with a reduced risk of subsequent depressive symptoms in older adults. METHODS: This was a 2-year prospective cohort study. A total of 285 community-dwelling older adults aged 65 years or older were interviewed in 2012. A second wave of assessment was carried out in 2014 involving 274 (96.1%) participants. Time spent in physical activity at different intensities was assessed using triaxial accelerometers. Depressive symptoms were measured using the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale. Negative binomial regression models with adjustment for baseline depressive symptoms, accelerometer wear time, socio-demographic variables, lifestyle behaviors, and chronic disease conditions were conducted. RESULTS: Time spent in moderate-to-vigorous and light physical activities were both inversely related to depressive symptoms at follow-up. Sedentary time was associated with an increased risk of subsequent depressive symptoms. When sedentary or moderate-to-vigorous activity were included in the multivariable-adjusted regression models with light physical activity simultaneously, only light physical activity remained significant. Sensitivity analyses for assessing confounding and reverse causation provided further support for the stability of these findings. CONCLUSION: Light physical activity, independent of sedentary and moderate-to-vigorous activity, is associated with a reduced risk of subsequent depressive symptoms in later life. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Membranes, molecules and biophysics: enhancing monocyte derived dendritic cell (MDDC) immunogenicity for improved anti-cancer therapy

Despite great medical advancement in the treatment of cancer, cancer remains a disease of global significance. Chemotherapeutics can be very expensive and drain medical resources at a national level and in some cases the cost of treatment is so great that it prohibits their use by local health authorities. Drug resistance is also a major limiting factor to the successful treatment of cancer with many patients initially responding well but then becoming refractory to treatment with the same drug and in some case may become multi-drug resistant. The immune system is known to be important in the prevention of tumors by eliminating pre-cancerous or cancerous cells. This concept of immune surveillance has largely been super-ceded by the concept of immunoediting whereby the immune system imposes a selective pressure on tumor cells which may either control tumor growth or inadvertently select for tumor cells which have evolved to escape the immune response and which may induce tumor development. Stimulation of the immune system by vaccination offers many benefits in the treatment of cancer. It is highly cost effective and vaccines can be manipulated to include multi-antigens which in some cases may overcome equilibrium (and selective pressure) while also preventing the establishment of reactivated cancer cells, since cancer antigen-specific memory would be induced following the initial vaccination/booster phase. To date studies using vaccination as a treatment for cancer have been a little disappointing, probably due to insufficient level of immunogenicity. In this review we will discuss methods of manipulation of the immune system to increase the anti-cancer activity of dendritic cells in vivo and how monocyte derived dendritic cells may be manipulated ex vivo to provide more robust, patient-specific treatments

Age-Related Attenuation of Dominant Hand Superiority

The decline of motor performance of the human hand-arm system with age is well-documented. While dominant hand performance is superior to that of the non-dominant hand in young individuals, little is known of possible age-related changes in hand dominance. We investigated age-related alterations of hand dominance in 20 to 90 year old subjects. All subjects were unambiguously right-handed according to the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory. In Experiment 1, motor performance for aiming, postural tremor, precision of arm-hand movement, speed of arm-hand movement, and wrist-finger speed tasks were tested. In Experiment 2, accelerometer-sensors were used to obtain objective records of hand use in everyday activities

Diabetes causes marked inhibition of mitochondrial metabolism in pancreatic β-cells

Diabetes is a global health problem caused primarily by the inability of pancreatic β-cells to secrete adequate levels of insulin. The molecular mechanisms underlying the progressive failure of β-cells to respond to glucose in type-2 diabetes remain unresolved. Using a combination of transcriptomics and proteomics, we find significant dysregulation of major metabolic pathways in islets of diabetic βV59M mice, a non-obese, eulipidaemic diabetes model. Multiple genes/proteins involved in glycolysis/gluconeogenesis are upregulated, whereas those involved in oxidative phosphorylation are downregulated. In isolated islets, glucose-induced increases in NADH and ATP are impaired and both oxidative and glycolytic glucose metabolism are reduced. INS-1 β-cells cultured chronically at high glucose show similar changes in protein expression and reduced glucose-stimulated oxygen consumption: targeted metabolomics reveals impaired metabolism. These data indicate hyperglycaemia induces metabolic changes in β-cells that markedly reduce mitochondrial metabolism and ATP synthesis. We propose this underlies the progressive failure of β-cells in diabetes.Peer reviewe

Neutrino-electron scattering in noncommutative space

Neutral particles can couple with the $U(1)$ gauge field in the adjoint representation at the tree level if the space-time coordinates are noncommutative (NC). Considering neutrino-photon coupling in the NC QED framework, we obtain the differential cross section of neutrino-electron scattering. Similar to the magnetic moment effect, one of the NC terms is proportional to $\frac 1 T$, where $T$ is the electron recoil energy. Therefore, this scattering provides a chance to achieve a stringent bound on the NC scale in low energy by improving the sensitivity to the smaller electron recoil energy.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Clinicopathologic characteristics and prognostic factors of ovarian fibrosarcoma: the results of a multi-center retrospective study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Ovarian fibrosarcomas are very rare tumors, and therefore, few case studies have evaluated the prognostic factors of this disease. To our knowledge, this study represents the largest study to evaluate the clinical and pathologic factors associated with ovarian fibrosarcoma patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Thirty-one cases of ovarian fibrosarcoma were retrospectively reviewed, which included medical records for eight patients, and 23 published case reports from 1995 through 2009. Patient treatment regimens included total hysterectomy with bilateral adnexectomy and an omentectomy (BAO) (n = 9), oophorectomy (OR) (n = 8), chemotherapy (CT) (n = 1), BAO followed by chemotherapy (BAO+CT) (n = 11), BAO followed by radiotherapy (BAO+RT) (n = 1), and oophorectomy followed by radiotherapy (OR + RT) (n = 1).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The patients of this cohort were staged according to the guidelines of the Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), with 15, 6, 9, and 1 stage I-IV cases identified, respectively. Mitotic count values were also evaluated from 10 high-power fields (HPFs), and 3 cases had an average mitotic count < 4, 18 cases were between 4 and 10, and 10 cases had an average mitotic count value ≥ 10. The Ki-67 (MIB-1) proliferation index values were grouped according to values that as follows: < 10% (n = 5), between 10% and 50% (n = 9), and ≥ 50% (n = 5). Positive expression of vimentin (100%, 22/22) and negative expression of CD117 (0%, 5/5) were also detected. Moreover, expression of smooth muscle actin (2/18), desmin (1/13), epithelial membrane antigen (0/11), S-100 (1/19), CD99 (0/6), CD34 (1/5), α-inhibin (7/15), estrogen receptor (1/6), and progesterone receptor (1/6) were reported for subsets of the cases examined. After a median follow-up period of 14 months (range, 2-120), the 2-year overall survival rates (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) rates for all patients were 55.9% and 45.4%, respectively. Cox proportional hazard regression analysis of survival showed that FIGO stage (<it>P </it>= 0.007) and treatment (<it>P </it>= 0.008) were predictive of poor prognosis. Furthermore, patients with stage I tumors that received BAO+CT were associated with a better prognosis.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Mitotic activity, and cells positive for Ki-67 were identified as important factors in the diagnosis of ovarian fibrosarcoma. Furthermore, FIGO stage and treatment modalities have the potential to be prognostic factors of survival, with BAO followed by adjuvant chemotherapy associated with an improved treatment outcome.</p

t2prhd: a tool to study the patterns of repeat evolution

BACKGROUND: The models developed to characterize the evolution of multigene families (such as the birth-and-death and the concerted models) have also been applied on the level of sequence repeats inside a gene/protein. Phylogenetic reconstruction is the method of choice to study the evolution of gene families and also sequence repeats in the light of these models. The characterization of the gene family evolution in view of the evolutionary models is done by the evaluation of the clustering of the sequences with the originating loci in mind. As the locus represents positional information, it is straightforward that in the case of the repeats the exact position in the sequence should be used, as the simple numbering according to repeat order can be misleading. RESULTS: We have developed a novel rapid visual approach to study repeat evolution, that takes into account the exact repeat position in a sequence. The "pairwise repeat homology diagram" visualizes sequence repeats detected by a profile HMM in a pair of sequences and highlights their homology relations inferred by a phylogenetic tree. The method is implemented in a Perl script (t2prhd) available for downloading at http://t2prhd.sourceforge.net and is also accessible as an online tool at http://t2prhd.brc.hu. The power of the method is demonstrated on the EGF-like and fibronectin-III-like (Fn-III) domain repeats of three selected mammalian Tenascin sequences. CONCLUSION: Although pairwise repeat homology diagrams do not carry all the information provided by the phylogenetic tree, they allow a rapid and intuitive assessment of repeat evolution. We believe, that t2prhd is a helpful tool with which to study the pattern of repeat evolution. This method can be particularly useful in cases of large datasets (such as large gene families), as the command line interface makes it possible to automate the generation of pairwise repeat homology diagrams with the aid of script