Research progress in micro/nanobubbles for ultrasound diagnosis or treatment / 药学学报

In the past few decades, microbubbles were widely used as ultrasound contrast agents in the field of tumor imaging. With the development of research, ultrasound targeted microbubble destruction technology combined with drug-loaded microbubbles can achieve precise drug release and play a therapeutic role. As a micron-scale carrier, microbubbles are difficult to penetrate the endothelial cell space of tumors, and nano-scale drug delivery system—nanobubbles came into being. The structure of the two is similar, but the difference in size highlights the unique advantages of nanobubbles in drug delivery. Based on the classification principle of shell materials, this review summarized micro/nanobubbles used for ultrasound diagnosis or treatment and discussed the possible development directions, providing references for the subsequent development.

Impact of diagnosis-related groups point payment on hospitalization costs of parturition among lying-in women / 预防医学

Objective@#To examine the effect of diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) point payment on hospitalization costs of parturition among lying-in women, so as to provide the evidence for alleviating the burdens and saving medical resources among lying-in women.@*Methods@#Lying-in women's age, gestational age, parity, duration of hospital stay, DRGs grouping and hospitalization costs were collected from the Inpatient Medical Record System and DRG Operation Analysis System in a tertiary women and children's hospital in Ningbo City from 2020 to 2021. The changes of hospitalization costs of parturition were compared among lying-in women before and after DRGs point payments, and the association between DRGs point payments and gross hospitalization costs of parturition was examined among lying-in women using a multivariable logistic regression analysis.@*Results@# A total of 11 505 lying-in women after DRGs point payments, including 6 216 women at age of 30 years and below (54.03%), and 10 871 lying-in women before DRGs point payments, including 6 208 women at age of 30 years and below (57.11%), were enrolled. The median (interquartile range) gross hospitalization expenses, material expenses and laboratory testing expenses of parturition were 8 519.19 (2 456.61), 881.38 (816.16) and 939.00 (310.00) Yuan among lying-in women after DRGs point payments, which were significantly lower than those [9 123.13 (2 660.33), 915.57 (825.26), 1 036.00 (385.00) Yuan] among lying-in women before DRGs point payments (Z=-21.971,-16.061 and -27.199, all P<0.001). Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that DRGs point payment was statistically associated with lower gross hospitalization expenses of parturition among lying-in women after adjustment for age, duration of hospital stay, gestational age, parity, type of delivery and development of complications (OR=0.462, 95%CI: 0.432-0.494).@*Conclusion@#DRGs point payment is beneficial to reduce the hospitalization cost of parturition among lying-in women.

Advance on anti-tumor theranostics and biosafety of bismuth-based nanomedicine / 药学学报

Nanomedicine is one of the most promising fields in biomedicine. Inorganic nanomaterials stand out among many nanomaterials due to their excellent physicochemical properties, stable chemical properties and high biocompatibility. As an inorganic nanomaterial, bismuth-based nanomaterials have the advantages of adjustable band gap, low toxicity, easy functionalization, large X-ray attenuation coefficient, high photothermal conversion efficiency and long cycle half-life, so they have good promising application in cancer diagnosis and treatment. This review summarizes the recent research progress of bismuth-based nanomaterials in tumor diagnosis, treatment and biosafety, which provides a theoretical basis for the design and exploitation of a new generation of bismuth-based nanomedicine systems.

Progress in tumor microenvironment responsive nano-platforms for cancer theranostics / 药学学报

During growth and progression, the microenvironment of tumors suffers a series of abnormal characteristics, which include hypoxia, acid pH, increased oxidative stress, excess glutathione (GSH), as well as certain overexpressed enzymes. Although affect or limit the cancer therapeutic outcomes, these factors provide possible approaches to strategies for cancer detection and novel therapy at the same time. Recently, based on these properties of the tumor microenvironment (TME), various kinds of responsive nano-platforms have been continuously developed and applied in cancer theranostics preliminarily. Thus, this review would introduce the typical features of TME firstly, then detailly summarize the design principles and research progress of corresponding hypoxia-responsive, pH-responsive, redox-responsive, enzyme-responsive, dual-responsive and multi-responsive nano-platforms. Finally, the challenges and the perspectives of the TME-responsive nano-platforms are briefly discussed.

Advances in the research of exosome and exosomal non-coding RNA in the pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of polycystic ovary syndrome / 药学学报

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common reproductive endocrine disease, which is mainly characterized by hyperandrogenemia, rare or anovulation, and polycystic ovarian changes. PCOS is seriously harmful and its causes are complex, which has not yet been clarified. Studies have shown that non-coding RNAs play important roles in the development of PCOS, including the regulation of hormone metabolism and follicle development. Exosomes are natural nano-scale membrane vesicles that contain cell-specific proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and other biologically active molecules. Exosomes are important mediators for intercellular communication and new targets for disease diagnosis and treatment. Recent studies have shown that as an important component of follicle microenvironment, exosome is closely related to the pathogenesis of PCOS. Exosome and exosomal non-coding RNAs are expected to serve as potential new diagnostic and therapeutic targets for PCOS. In this review, we will summarize the function of exosome and exosomal non-coding RNA in the pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment of PCOS.

Metabolomic screening for diagnostic biomarkers of drug-induced chronic liver injury related cirrhosis / 药学学报

About 15%-20% of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) will progress to chronic manifestation (CH-DILI), which sometimes advances rapidly to liver cirrhosis (LC-DILI) within 0.5-1 year with deteriorative clinical prognosis. Therefore, it is important to find a non-invasive diagnosis for early detection of liver cirrhosis. In this study, the metabolomic profiles revealed significant differences in the metabolites from the plasma of LC-DILI versus CH-DILI. We found 35 differential metabolites through principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA). Through pathway enrichment analysis, some up-regulated metabolic pathways reflected impaired liver functions such as bile acid, lipid synthesis and decomposition during cirrhosis. Five biomarkers were found to exhibit effective diagnosis value (AUC > 0.6), including phosphatidylcholine, lysoPC (18:1 (9Z)), creatine, taurochenodeoxycholic acid and taurocholic acid. Furthermore, we found that the relative content ratio between phosphatidylcholine and lysoPC (18:1 (9Z)) had a better distinguishing ability (AUC = 0.867). The relative content ratio also had the feature to reduce systematic errors of sample processing and instrument detection, therefore having a greater value for clinical application.

A Novel Run-length based wavelet features for Screening Thyroid Nodule Malignancy

Abstract: Thyroid nodules are cell growths in the thyroid which might be for in one of two categories benign or malignant. Nodular thyroid disease is common and because of the associated risk of malignancy and hyper-function; these nodules have to be examined thoroughly. Hence diagnosing thyroid nodule malignancy in the early stage can mitigate the possibility of death. This paper presents an intelligent thyroid nodules malignancy diagnosis using texture information in run-length matrix derived from 2- level 2D wavelet transform bands (approximation and details). In this work, ANOVA test has been used to for feature selection to reduce for feature selection about 45 run-length features with and without wavelet generated, before feeding those features which clinical importance to the Support Vector Machine(SVM) and Decision Tree (DT) classifier to perform the automated diagnosis. The validation of this work is activated using 100-thyroid nodule images spliced equally between the two categories (50 Benign and 50 Malignant). The proposed system can detect thyroid nodules malignancy with an average accuracy of about 97% using SVM classifier for the run- length matrix, features derived from spatial domain while the average accuracy is increased to 98% in case of hybrid feature derived from spatial domain and 2-level wavelet decomposition. For the other proposed classifier (DT), the average accuracy in case of spatial domain based features is 93% whereas the average accuracy of the hybrid features system is 97%. Hence the proposed system can be used for the screening of thyroid nodules.