Real-world observations and impacts of Chinese herbal medicine for migraine: results of a registry-based cohort study

Background: Migraine is a prevalent, recurrent condition with substantial disease burden. Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) has been used frequently for migraine in controlled clinical settings. This study is to summarise the characteristics of patients who seek clinical care in a tertiary Chinese medicine hospital in China; to gather their preferences and values of using CHM; to explore the effect of CHM for migraine and its comorbidities in a real-world setting, and to collect first-hand expertise of clinicians’ practice pattern in prescribing CHM for migraine.Methods: This registry-based cohort study was prospectively conducted at Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine from December 2020 to May 2022. Adult migraine patients seeking their initial anti-migraine clinical care at the hospital were consecutively recruited and followed up for 12 weeks. Practitioners specialised in headache management prescribed individualised treatments without research interference. Standardised case report forms were employed to gather information on patients’ preferences and perspective of seeking clinical care, as well as to assess participants’ migraine severity, comorbidities, and quality of life, at 4-weeks intervals. Various analytical methods were utilised based on the computed data.Results: In this study, we observed 248 participants. Of these, 73 received CHM treatment for 28 days or longer. Notably, these participants exhibited a greater disease severity, compared to those treated with CHM for less than 28 days. Of the 248 participants, 83.47% of them expected CHM would effectively reduce the severity of their migraine, around 50% expected effects for migraine-associated comorbidities, while 51.61% expressing concerns about potential side effects. CHM appeared to be effective in reducing monthly migraine days and pain intensity, improving patients’ quality of life, and potentially reducing comorbid anxiety, with a minimum of 28 days CHM treatment. Herbs such as gan cao, gui zhi, chuan xiong, fu ling, bai zhu, yan hu suo, etc. were frequently prescribed for migraine, based on patients’ specific symptoms.Conclusion: CHM appeared to be beneficial for migraine and comorbid anxiety in real-world clinical practice when used continuously for 28 days or more.Clinical Trial Registration:clinicaltrials.gov, identifier ChiCTR2000041003

Convergent adaptation of the genomes of woody plants at the land-sea interface

Sequencing multiple species that share the same ecological niche may be a new frontier for genomic studies. While such studies should shed light on molecular convergence, genomic-level analyses have been unsuccessful, due mainly to the absence of empirical controls. Woody plant species that colonized the global tropical coasts, collectively referred to as mangroves, are ideal for convergence studies. Here, we sequenced the genomes/transcriptomes of 16 species belonging in three major mangrove clades. To detect convergence in a large phylogeny, a CCS+ model is implemented, extending the more limited CCS method (convergence at conservative sites). Using the empirical control for reference, the CCS+ model reduces the noises drastically, thus permitting the identification of 73 convergent genes with P-true (probability of true convergence) > 0.9. Products of the convergent genes tend to be on the plasma membrane associated with salinity tolerance. Importantly, convergence is more often manifested at a higher level than at amino-acid (AA) sites. Relative to >50 plant species, mangroves strongly prefer 4 AAs and avoid 5 others across the genome. AA substitutions between mangrove species strongly reflect these tendencies. In conclusion, the selection of taxa, the number of species and, in particular, the empirical control are all crucial for detecting genome-wide convergence. We believe this large study of mangroves is the first successful attempt at detecting genome-wide site convergence

A semi-analytical algorithm for deriving the particle size distribution slope of turbid inland water based on OLCI data: A case study in Lake Hongze

The particle size distribution (PSD) slope (ξ) can indicate the predominant particle size, material composition, and inherent optical properties (IOPs) of inland waters. However, few semi-analytical methods have been proposed for deriving ξ from the surface remote sensing reflectance due to the variable optical state of inland waters. A semi-analytical algorithm was developed for inland waters having a wide range of turbidity and ξ in this study. Application of the proposed model to Ocean and Land Color Instrument (OLCI) imagery of the water body resulted in several important observations: (1) the proposed algorithm (754 nm and 779 nm combination) was capable of retrieving ξ with R2 being 0.72 (p < 0.01, n = 60), and MAPE and RMSE being 4.37% and 0.22 (n = 30) respectively; (2) the ξ in HZL was lower in summer than other seasons during the period considered, this variation was driven by the phenological cycle of algae and the runoff caused by rainfall; (3) the band optimization proposed in this study is important for calculating the particle backscattering slope (η) and deriving ξ because it is feasible for both algae dominant and sediment governed turbid inland lakes. These observations help improve our understanding of the relationship between IOPs and ξ, which are affected by different bio-optic processes and algal phenology in the lake environment

Inverse design for material anisotropy and its application for a compact X-cut TFLN on-chip wavelength demultiplexer

Inverse design focuses on identifying photonic structures to optimize the performance of photonic devices. Conventional scalar-based inverse design approaches are insufficient to design photonic devices of anisotropic materials such as lithium niobate (LN). To the best of our knowledge, this work proposes for the first time the inverse design method for anisotropic materials to optimize the structure of anisotropic-material based photonics devices. Specifically, the orientation dependent properties of anisotropic materials are included in the adjoint method, which provides a more precise prediction of light propagation within such materials. The proposed method is used to design ultra-compact wavelength division demultiplexers in the X-cut thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) platform. By benchmarking the device performances of our method with those of classical scalar-based inverse design, we demonstrate that this method properly addresses the critical issue of material anisotropy in the X-cut TFLN platform. This proposed method fills the gap of inverse design of anisotropic materials based photonic devices, which finds prominent applications in TFLN platforms and other anisotropic-material based photonic integration platforms

Motion Prediction Based TDMA Protocol in VANETs

In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), the high mobility of vehicle nodes makes the network topology change frequently, reducing the forwarding efficiency of MAC protocol. In the existing enhanced TDMA-based MAC protocol, the farthest node in the current transmission range is chosen as the forwarding node to accelerate the multi-hop transmission. However, we use probabilistic model to show that there potentially exist better forwarding nodes, which could effectively improve transmission efficiency. Therefore, we propose a motion-prediction based TDMA protocol, which predicts the network topology in the next frame to select the better forwarding node. The test results of highway and urban scenarios show that the motion-prediction based TDMA protocol effectively reduces the number of hops in multi-hop transmission and decreases the broadcast delay by 50% to cover the whole network

Hypoxia Inhibits Cell Cycle Progression and Cell Proliferation in Brain Microvascular Endothelial Cells via the miR-212-3p/MCM2 Axis

Hypoxia impairs blood–brain barrier (BBB) structure and function, causing pathophysiological changes in the context of stroke and high-altitude brain edema. Brain microvascular endothelial cells (BMECs) are major structural and functional elements of the BBB, and their exact role in hypoxia remains unknown. Here, we first deciphered the molecular events that occur in BMECs under 24 h hypoxia by whole-transcriptome sequencing assay. We found that hypoxia inhibited BMEC cell cycle progression and proliferation and downregulated minichromosome maintenance complex component 2 (Mcm2) expression. Mcm2 overexpression attenuated the inhibition of cell cycle progression and proliferation caused by hypoxia. Then, we predicted the upstream miRNAs of MCM2 through TargetScan and miRanDa and selected miR-212-3p, whose expression was significantly increased under hypoxia. Moreover, the miR-212-3p inhibitor attenuated the inhibition of cell cycle progression and cell proliferation caused by hypoxia by regulating MCM2. Taken together, these results suggest that the miR-212-3p/MCM2 axis plays an important role in BMECs under hypoxia and provide a potential target for the treatment of BBB disorder-related cerebrovascular disease

Development and Validation of Rapid 3D Radiation Field Evaluation Technique for Nuclear Power Plants

Rapid 3D radiation field evaluation is the key point of occupational dose optimization for design and operation of nuclear power plant. Based on the requirement analysis from designers and operators of nuclear power plant, three key technical issues are identified and solved through the development of the RPOS system, which are rapid calculation of 3D radiation field, reconstruction of the calculated 3D radiation field based on measured data, and occupational dose optimization based on 3D radiation field. Operational measurements of dose rate from in-service nuclear power plants are used to test the RPOS system, which shows that accurate 3D radiation field can be rapidly generated by the RPOS system and effectively used on the occupational dose optimization for on-site workers. The applications of the established rapid 3D radiation field evaluation technique on HPR1000 unit design provide evidence on its feasibility in a large scale, the improvement of radiation protection design efficiency and the enhancement of ALARA assessment and justification for nuclear power plants

Oral Chinese Herbal Medicine as Prophylactic Treatment for Episodic Migraine in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Background. The prophylactic effects of Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) for migraine were examined in numerous clinical trials. This review aimed to analyze the effectiveness and safety of CHM as prophylactic treatment of migraine compared to flunarizine. Methods. Nine databases were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that evaluated effects of CHM for episodic migraine prophylaxis compared to flunarizine, published before March 2019. Results. Thirty-five RCTs with 2,840 participants met the inclusion criteria, and 31 of them were included in meta-analyses. The overall meta-analysis indicated that, when compared to flunarizine, CHM reduced the frequency of migraine attacks at the end of treatment (EoT) (21 studies, mean difference (MD) −1.23, 95% confidence interval (CI) (−1.69, −0.76)) and at the end of follow-up (EoFU) (five studies, MD −0.96, 95% CI (−1.70, −0.21)). Subgroup analyses based on the treatment duration, follow-up duration, and the dosage of flunarizine showed that CHM was superior to or comparable with flunarizine in reducing migraine frequency. Similar results were also found for secondary outcomes such as the pain visual analogue scale, migraine duration, responder rate, and acute medication usage. In particular, the studies that used CHM containing herb pairs (Chuan Xiong plus Bai Zhi and Chuan Xiong plus Tian Ma) showed promising results. However, the certainty of this evidence was evaluated as “low” or “very low” using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations approach. Conclusion. CHM appeared to be comparable with flunarizine in reducing the frequency of episodic migraine attacks in adults at EoT and EoFU and well-tolerated by participants, regardless of the treatment duration, follow-up duration, and dosage of flunarizine. Due to the low certainty of the evidence, the suggested promising prophylactic outcomes require higher quality evidence from further rigorous RCTs