Interstitial ions regulate sleep and wakefulness / 中国临床药理学与治疗学

Electroencephalogram (EEG) is the super-imposed electrical signals at the scalp electrodes generated from neuronal activity. The combined signals of EEG and electromyogram (EMG) can be used to identify sleep and wake states. Therefore, factors affecting the neuronal activity could possibly modulate the state of sleep and wake. It has been well-defined in the past decades that postsynaptic neuronal activity is mediated by neurotransmitters release from presynaptic neurons. Neural circuits have been proposed to be the structural basis and functional system that regulate sleep-wake. Beside presynaptic inputs, neuronal activity can also be mediated by extracellular environment. All cellular elements of the central nervous system (CNS) are consistently exposed to the interstitial milieu. The interstitial ion compositions can affect action potential firings, neurotransmitter release, and synaptic transmission. The super-imposed single neuronal electrical activity will eventually integrate the whole brain state shift. Frontier studies suggest that the interstitial ion compositions could mirror or drive state transitions, such as, sleep, wakefulness and locomotion. Here we provide an literature review of the roles of interstitial ions in regulating neuronal activity, as well as sleep and wake state maintenances and transitions.

The expression and significance of serum ghrelin, leptin, IGF-1, and IGFBP3 in children with idiopathic short stature / 中华内分泌外科杂志

Objective To examine the expressions of serum growth hormone (ghrelin), leptin (LP), in sulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 (IGFBP3) in children with id-iopathic short stature (ISS), and their significance. Methods A total of 40 patients with ISS were selected from May. 2012 to Oct. 2014 in Fuyang Maternal and Child Health Hospital, while a total of 40 children in good health were selected as the control group. Serum ghrelin and LP levels were measured by ELISA. Serum IGF-1 and IGF-BP3 levels were detected by chemiluminescence immune assay. Results were analyzed statistically. Results The height, weight, BMI, GH, serum LP, IGF-1, and IGFBP3 levels in the observation group were significantly lower than those in the control group, while serum ghrelin expression level was significantly higher than that in the control group(P<0.05). The correlation analysis showed that ghrelin and LP were negatively correlated(r=-0.611, P<0.01), ghrelin and IGF-1 levels were negatively correlated(r=-0.520, P<0.05), Ghrelin and IGFBP3 were pos-itively correlated (r=0.586, P<0.01), IGF-1 and IGFBP3 was negatively correlated (r=-0.576, P<0.01), and LP and IGFBP3 were negatively correlated (r=-0.609, P<0.01). Conclusions It shows that ghrelin, LP, IGF-1, and IGFBP3 levels in children with ISS are related to growth hormone secretion status. The interactions between ghre-lin and insulin-like growth factor axis regulate growth and development of children.

Research on pretreatment and envelope extraction algorithm of heart sound signal / 生物医学工程学杂志

In this work, a new method of heart sound signal preprocessing is presented. First, the heart sound signals are decomposed by using multilayer wavelet transform. And then double parameters as thresholds are used in processing each layer after decomposition for denoising. Next, reconstruction of heart sound signals could be done after processing last layer. Four methods, i.e. wavelet transform, Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT), mathematical morphology, and normalized average Shannon energy, were used to extract the envelop of the heart sound signals respectively after reconstruction of heart sounds. All methods were improved in this study. We finally in our study chose 30 cases of raw heart sound signals, which were selected randomly from a database comed from The Clinical Medicine Institute of Montreal, and processed them by using the improved methods. The results were satisfactory. It showed that the extracted envelope with the original signal has a high degree of matching, whether it is a low frequency portion or high frequency portion. Most of all information of heart sound has been maintained in the envelope.

Treating Parkinson's disease with high and low frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation: a clinical study / 中华物理医学与康复杂志

Objective To investigate the therapeutic effects of repeated transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) at high and low frequency for the rigidity and tremors of Parkinson's disease (PD).Methods Sixty-nine patients with PD received rTMS at 5 Hz or 0.5 Hz.The efficacy was assessed using the unified Parkinson's disease rating scale (UPDRS),motor function tests and motor evoked potentials (MEPs).Results Thirty-two patients with rigidity from PD received 5 Hz rTMS therapy,and their UPDRS total scores decreased significantly.Their motor function test results improved significantly and their MEP relaxed motor thresholds were significantly elevated.Thirtyseven patients with tremors from PD received 0.5 Hz rTMS therapy,and their UPDRS total scores were significantly decreased.Their motor function test results improved significantly and their MEP relaxed motor thresholds were significantly elevated.Conclusion High frequency rTMS may improve the symptoms of patients with PD rigidity and low frequency rTMS may improve the symptoms of patients with PD tremors.