ABSTRACT
Intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) refers to the biomechanical and structural changes of intervertebral disc tissues due to the effects of a variety of factors. Theses physical or chemical factors lead to the rupture of the annulus fibrous, protrusion of the nucleus pulposus tissue, compression of the spinal cord and nerve roots and causing the patient's back and leg pain ultimately. Degeneration of intervertebral disc is a common condition in clinical practice, which affects working ability and daily living quality of patients seriously. Due to the change of living habits, the population with IDD tend to be younger recently. The etiology, pathogenesis and diagnosis and interventions of IDD have always been hot topics in spinal surgery. Thus, animal models of IDD close to the human body has a of great clinical significance for exploring the etiology, pathological mechanism and non-surgical treatment of IDD. At present, the establishment of IDD model mainly includes two following aspects, in vitro model and in vivo model. There are two main in vitro models, cell culture and tissue or organ culture. There are seven kinds of in vivo models, which can be divided into two categories, namely spontaneous and induced model. Among them, the spontaneous degeneration model is also regarded as age-related degeneration, while the induced model refers to the construction of the animal model of IDD by injuring the structure of the intervertebral disc, changing the biomechanical structure of the vertebral body, development spinal instability caused by surgery or constructing nerve root compression and gene knockout. Although there are many methods of animal modeling and literature reports, each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. The advantages and disadvantages should be weighed when choosing the animal models.
ABSTRACT
Low back pain is becoming an important factor affecting people's quality of life, while the age of its onset is getting younger and younger, and the social and economic losses caused by low back pain are huge every year. Intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is an important cause of low back pain. Due to multiple factors, biomechanical and structural changes occur in intervertebral disc tissue, including rupture of annulus fibrosus, protrusion of nucleus pulposus, which cause compression of spinal cord and nerve root, and lower back pain. Micro-RNA (miRNA) is a kind of single-stranded non-coding small molecule RNA, with 18-24 nucleotides in length, which exists widely in eukaryotes. As one of the important regulatory molecules of gene expression, it has been proved to play a key role in the initiation and progression of many diseases, and it may also play an important role in intervertebral disc degeneration. At present, the clinical treatment for IDD is mainly surgical treatment to alleviate clinical symptoms. Even if surgical treatment can achieve good results, it will bring great physical trauma and economic burden to patients. The role of miRNA in IDD is one of the hotspots in the current academic research. Studies have shown that miRNA has abnormal expression patterns in degenerative intervertebral disc tissues and participates in a variety of pathological processes of IDD. At present, some miRNAs have been proved to be related to a variety of pathological processes in IDD, including nucleus pulposus cell apoptosis and proliferation, extracellular matrix degradation, autophagy, inflammation and cartilage endplate degeneration. The comparative study of gene chip showed that there were significant differences in the expression of some miRNAs between degenerative and normal nucleus pulposus cells. These differentially expressed miRNAs may be involved in the process of nucleus pulposus cell degeneration by regulating their respective upstream or downstream pathways. Most of the regulatory pathways are crossed and parallel, thus constructing a huge miRNA regulatory network. Understanding the target genes and mechanisms of miRNA in the pathogenic process can provide an important reference for the origin, development and prognosis of IDD. In this article, the important role of miRNA in IDD and the potential significance of clinical treatment are reviewed. With the in-depth study of miRNA and the molecular biological mechanism can provide new ideas for the diagnosis and treatment of IDD, which is likely to become a new strategy for biological treatment of IDD.
ABSTRACT
Objective@#Study the clinical significance of HBX gene detection, sequence analysis in peripheral blood mononuclear cell(PBMC) of chronic hepatitis B(CHB) patients with serum HBV DNA negative conversion after treatment by nucleoside analogues(NAs).@*Methods@#Detected and analyzed the HBX gene sequence by real time PCR in PBMC of 60 patients with CHB including some with cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC), all the serum HBV DNA had turned negative after treatment by NAs, and explore the clinical significance of the HBX gene.@*Results@#HBX genes were detected in 37 cases(61.67%, 37/60). HBX positive rates of PBMC in HCC and cirrhosis patients were higher than that of CHB patients(P=0.000, P=0.010). HBX △120, HBX△129, HBX△131 truncations were detected in two HCC and one CHB cases. Two hotspot mutation including A389T/G391A, T380C had been found, and A389T/G391A double mutation in HCC patients was significantly higher than that in CHB patients(P=0.021). In cirrhosis and HCC patients, T380C mutation rate in HBeAg(-) cases was higher than that in HBeAg(+ ) cases(P=0.035).@*Conclusions@#In patients with serum HBV DNA negative conversion after treatment by NAs, PBMC HBX gene positive rates in cirrhosis or HCC cases are higher than that in CHB cases. A389T/G391A double mutation rate in HCC cases is significantly higher than that in CHB cases. In cirrhosis and HCC patients, T380C mutation rate in HBeAg(-) cases is higher than that in HBeAg(+ ) cases.
ABSTRACT
Objective To analyze the effect of erythropoietin therapy with oral iron supplementation on red blood cell distribution width (RDW)in chronic heart failure patients with anemia.Methods 148 patients of chronic heart failure with anemia from September 2014 to March 2015 in our hospital were included and randomly divided into two groups with the random number table,with 74 cases in each group.The control group were treated with convention-al anti heart failure therapy,the treatment group were treated with erythropoietin and oral iron supplementation on the basis of routine treatment for four weeks.RDW was tested by automatic five classification blood analyzer.The correla-tion between RDW and other detection indexes was analyzed.Results The levels of RDW in the treatment group were significantly lower than those of the control group[(13.08 ±0.792)vs (14.32 ±0.864),t =-8.974,P <0.01].Before treatment,bivariate analysis in the treatment group showed that RDW had positive correlation with NT-proBNP and high -sensitivity C -relative protein (hs -CRP)(r =0.783,P <0.01;r =0.870,P <0.01),but negative correlation with serum creatinine (Cr)and hemoglobin (r =-0.338,P <0.01;r =-0.743,P <0.01).Af-ter treatment,bivariate correlations analysis in the treatment group showed that the difference of RDW was positive correlation with the difference of NT -proBNP,high -sensitivity C -relative protein (hs -CRP)(r =0.783,P <0.01;r =0.680,P <0.01),but negative correlation with the difference of hemoglobin(r =-0.459,P <0.01),and no correlation with the others (Cr,UA,LDL,TC,TG and LVEF).Conclusion On the basis of conventional anti heart failure treatment,erythropoietin therapy with oral iron supplementation against anemia could improve heart func-tion of CHF and decrease the levels of RDW.RDW may be served as one of observing indexes of the worsening and effect judgment in chronic heart failure patients with anemia.