Effects of moxibustion on serum cytokines in experimental animals with rheumatoid arthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis / 针刺研究

OBJECTIVE: To systematically review the effects of moxibustion on serum cytokines in experimental animals with rheumatoid arthritis. METHODS: PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, CNKI, VIP, Wanfang Data, and CBM were searched for animal experiments on moxibustion intervention for rheumatoid arthritis. Related data were extracted, and RevMan 5.3 was used to perform a meta-analysis of outcome measures, including serum tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-1 (IL-1), interleukin-6 (IL-6), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), interleukin-17 (IL-17), interleukin-2 (IL-2), interferon-γ (IFN-γ), receptor activator of nuclear factor-kappa B ligand (RANKL), transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), and degree of swelling of diseased joint. RESULTS: A total of 18 studies were included. The detection methods included radioimmunoassay and ELISA and the experimental animal species included rats and rabbits. The studies on serum TNF-α and degree of swelling of diseased joint had publication bias. Meta-analysis showed that the moxibustion group had significant reductions in the serum levels of TNF-α, IL-1, IL-2, IL-6, VEGF, IL-17, and RANKL, significant increases in the serum levels of TGF-β and IFN-γ, and a significant reduction in the degree of swelling of diseased joints in model animals. CONCLUSION: Moxibustion can effectively regulate levels of the serum cytokines in experimental animals of rheumatoid arthritis and thus reduce inflammatory response and alleviate the swelling of diseased joints.

Effect of TBLR1-RARα Fusion Gene on Erythroid Differentiation of K562 Cells / 中国实验血液学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To explore the effects of TBLR1-RARα on the differentiation induction of leukemia cell line K562 cells into erythroid lineage and to investigate its related mechanisms.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Tet-Off inducible system was used to construct the conditional expression vector of TBLR1-RARα fusion gene by cloning the TBLR1-RARα fragment into lentivirus vector pLVX-Tight-Puro, the expression of TBLR1-RARα fusion gene was induced by doxycycline (Dox). Then, K562 cells were transfected with lentivirus pLVX-Tight-Puro-TBLR1-RARα-flag, and the expression of fusion proteins was verified by Western blot. After treatment of K562 with all-trans retinoid acid (ATRA), real time RT-PCR was performed to test the expression of erythroid differentiation-related CD71 and α, ε, γ-globins gene. Flow cytometry was used also to analyze the expression of erythroid differentiation markers CD71 and CD235a. Benzidine staining was used to detect the production of hemoglobin in K562 cells.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>qRT-RCR showed that ATRA could increase the expression level of CD71 and α, ε, γ-globin genes when TBLR1-RARα was expressed. After treatment of ATRA, the proportion of CD71(+) cells detected by the flow cytometry also increased. Benzidine staining showed that ATRA could induce hemoglobin production in K562 cells with TBLR1-RARα fusion gene expression.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The expression of TBLR1-RARα fusion gene contribute to ATRA-inducing differentiation of K562 cells into erythroid lineage.</p>

Prediction of respiratory motion based on nonparametric regression for real-time tumor-tracking radiotherapy / 南方医科大学学报

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>It is necessary to compensate the system latencies in real-time tumor-tracking radiotherapy by prediction. However, due to the irregularities of respiratory motions, the results obtained with traditional methods were not acceptable. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the value of nonparametric regression model in respiratory motion prediction.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The data of respiratory trajectory of 11 volunteers were obtained and predicted based on nonparametric regression method. The results were compared with those of autoregressive model and back propagation neural network. An improved method was proposed to deal with the abnormal state in respiration. We combined the prediction method with the tracking system to test its performance in practical application.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The results indicated that the proposed method could predict the motion accurately in real-time for different latencies. This method decreased the error of the abnormal state substantially and also allowed effective prediction of respiration motion when combined with the tracking system.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The nonparametric regression model can predict the respiratory motion accurately in real-time and therefore meets the requirement of real-time tumor-tracking radiotherapy.</p>

Validation of an improved Demons deformable registration algorithm and its application in re-contouring in 4D-CT / 南方医科大学学报

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To validate the efficiency and accuracy of an improved Demons deformable registration algorithm and evaluate its application in contour recontouring in 4D-CT.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>To increase the additional Demons force and reallocate the bilateral forces to accelerate convergent speed, we propose a novel energy function as the similarity measure, and utilize a BFGS method for optimization to avoid specifying the numbers of iteration. Mathematical transformed deformable CT images and home-made deformable phantom were used to validate the accuracy of the improved algorithm, and its effectiveness for contour recontouring was tested.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The improved algorithm showed a relatively high registration accuracy and speed when compared with the classic Demons algorithm and optical flow based method. Visual inspection of the positions and shapes of the deformed contours agreed well with the physician-drawn contours.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Deformable registration is a key technique in 4D-CT, and this improved Demons algorithm for contour recontouring can significantly reduce the workload of the physicians. The registration accuracy of this method proves to be sufficient for clinical needs.</p>

Cone-beam CT reconstruction based on circular scan trajectory and ring artifact reduction / 南方医科大学学报

The FDK algorithm is one of the most widely used algorithms for cone-beam CT reconstruction in circular trajectory due to its simplicity of implementation and computational efficiency. However, the images reconstructed by the FDK algorithm based on real projection data may be blurred without electronic correction and geometric calibration, and are often plagued by deleterious ring artifacts and shading artifacts. We compared the images reconstructed with and without detector correction based on computer experiment of the real biological object. The experimental simulation shows that these algorithms are effective in reducing the ring artifact without compromising the image resolution, and produce satisfactory results.