Preliminary study on phonetic characteristics of patients with pulmonary nodules / 中西医结合学报

OBJECTIVE@#Pulmonary nodules (PNs) are one of the imaging manifestations of early lung cancer screening, which should receive more attention. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that voice changes occur in patients with pulmonary diseases. The purpose of this study is to explore the differences in phonetic characteristics between patients with PNs and able-bodied persons.@*METHODS@#This study explores the phonetic characteristics of patients with PNs in order to provide a simpler and cheaper method for PN screening. It is a case-control study to explore the differences in phonetic characteristics between individuals with and without PNs. This study performed non-parametric statistics on acoustic parameters of vocalizations, collected from January 2017 to March 2018 in Shanghai, China, from these two groups; it explores the differences in third and fourth acoustic parameters between patients with PNs and a normal control group. At the same time, computed tomography (CT) scans, course of disease, combined disease and other risk factors of the patients were collected in the form of questionnaire. According to the grouping of risk factors, the phonetic characteristics of the patients with PNs were analyzed.@*RESULTS@#This study was comprised of 200 patients with PNs, as confirmed by CT, and 86 healthy people that served as a control group. Among patients with PNs, 43% had ground glass opacity, 32% had nodules with a diameter ≥ 8 mm, 19% had a history of smoking and 31% had hyperlipidemia. Compared with the normal group, there were statistically significant differences in pitch, intensity and shimmer in patients with PNs. Among patients with PNs, patients with diameters ≥ 8 mm had a significantly higher third formant. There was a significant difference in intensity, fourth formant and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) between smoking and non-smoking patients. Compared with non-hyperlipidemia patients, the pitch, jitter and shimmer of patients with PNs and hyperlipidemia were higher and the HNR was lower; these differences were statistically significant.@*CONCLUSION@#This measurable changes in vocalizations can be in patients with PNs. Patients with PNs had lower and weaker voices. The size of PNs had an effect on the phonetic formant. Smoking may contribute to damage to the voice and formant changes. Voice damage is more pronounced in individuals who have PNs accompanied by hyperlipidemia.

Study on proteins in urine of chronic renal failure patients of different TCM syndrome types / 中国中西医结合杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To study different protein expressions in urine of chronic renal failure (CRF) patients of different Chinese medicine (CM) syndrome types.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Recruited were 251 CRF inpatients at the Department of Nephrology, Affiliated Longhua Hospital, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine from January 2009 to January 2010. Of them, there were 34 patients in Gan-Shen yin deficiency group (GSYDG), 75 in Pi-Shen qi deficiency group (PSQDG), 56 in Pi-Shen qi-yin deficiency group (PSQYG), 32 in Pi-Shen yang deficiency group (PSYDG), and 54 in yin-yang deficiency group (YYDG). Another 50 healthy subjects were recruited as the control group. The proteomic study of the urine was performed with H4 gene chip using surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS). The gene chips were scanned and analyzed using protein array reader PBSII.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>A total of 49 differential protein peaks were detected between CM syndrome types groups and the control group (P<0.01). The area under the ROC curve of different CM syndrome types showed that obvious difference existed between GSYDG and PSQDG, PSQYG, PSYDG, and YYDG. Obvious difference existed between PSQYD and PSYDG. General difference existed between PSQDG and PSQDG as well as PSYDG. General difference existed between PSQYD and YYDG or between PSYDG and YYDG. No obvious difference existed between PSQDG and YYDG.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Urine protein biomarkers could reflect different biological features of CRF patients of different CM syndrome types to some extent.</p>

Study on correlated proteins in the urine of chronic renal failure patients of Chinese medicine damp syndrome based on SELDI-TOF-MS technique / 中国中西医结合杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the protein markers in the urine of chronic renal failure (CRF) patients of Chinese medicine damp syndrome (CMDS) based on surface-enhanced laser desorption/ionization time of flight mass spectrometry (SELDI-TOF-MS) technique.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>The urine was sampled from 90 CRF patients of CMDS and 60 CRF patients of non-CMDS. Then the proteomics of the urine was studied by H4 gene chip. The chips were scanned and analyzed using PBS II (a protein chip reader).</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>(1) Totally 25 differential protein peaks were identified in the e/m range of 1 000-20 000 of the protein atlas of the two groups (P < 0.01). (2) The urine protein predictive model of CFR patients of CMDS was established after bioinformatic analysis. Totally 4 biomarkers consisting of M/Z 8 654.96, M/Z 2 081.65, M/Z 18 667.3, and M/Z 2 242.14 were obtained, which could better classify the samples of CMDS and those of non-CMDS. Its accuracy rate was 84.7%, the sensitivity was 92.2%, and the specificity was 73.3%. (3) Between the CMDS group and the non-CMDS group, 7 kinds of proteins in the urine were possibly identified by SwissProt Database.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>This study had primarily screened the protein markers in the urine of CRF patients of CMDS, and established the predictive model. The protein markers in the urine were identified by database, thus providing certain experimental evidence for clinical typing of CRF patients of CMDS.</p>