Microneedles in diagnosis and treatment: a review / 生物工程学报

Microneedles have been developed rapidly in the field of transdermal administration in the past few decades. In recent years, the development of microelectronics technology has expanded the applications of microneedles by combining with microelectronic systems, especially in biological diagnosis and treatment. Different types of microneedles have been designed to extract blood and tissue fluids for detection, or as electrodes to directly detect blood sugar, melanoma and pH in real-time in vivo, both show good prospects for real-time detection applications. In this paper, we review the design of materials and structure of microelectronic-based microneedles, and discuss their advances in biological diagnosis.

Correlation between carotid artery elasticity and ultrasonic classification of carotid plaques / 中华老年医学杂志

Objective To observe the relationship between carotid artery elasticity and ultrasonic classification of carotid plaques in elderly patients,and to provide the clinical basis for clinical treatment and prevention of atheroselerosis.Methods 682 elderly patients undergoing health physical examination were randomly selected in our hospital from February 2010 to February 2012.Clinical data were surveyed by using questionnaire method.Carotid artery color Doppler ultrasound detection and brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity (PWV) were measured and analyzed.The relationship between carotid artery elasticity and ultrasonic classification of carotid plaques in elderly patients were evaluated.Results A total of 186 cases with carotid atherosclerotic plaques (CAP) were found in 682 cases,accounting for 27.3％,among whom there were 123 patients (18.0％) with hard plaques and 63 patients (9.2％) with soft plaques.Patients with CAP were divided into hard plaque group and soft plaque group.There were significant differences in carotid intima media thickness (IMT) among carotid plaque grade 1 versus 2 versus 3[(0.8±0.2)mm,(0.88±0.23)mm,(0.97±0.17) mm,respectively,P＜0.05].There was a positive correlation between PWV and carotid plaque grade in the hard plaque group (r＝0.30,P＜0.05),but not in soft plaque group.Conclusions Arterial elasticity is an index for vascular disease,and is closely related to the severity of carotid atherosclerosis,which can be used as one of predictive indexes for carotid atherosclerosis.