Study on the therapeutic effect of floating needle therapy combined with pressing acupoint embedding for female stress urinary incontinence after childbirth: a randomized trial.

BACKGROUND: Stress urinary incontinence is a common and widespread problem among women that can significantly reduce the quality of life of those affected and potentially result in limitations to the lives and activities of their friends and family members. We aimed to observe the effect of floating needle therapy combined with acupuncture point embedding in the treatment of female stress urinary incontinence after childbirth. METHODS: A total of 64 postpartum female stress urinary incontinence patients who were treated and hospitalized in the Urology Clinic of the Ningbo Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital of the Zhejiang Province from September 2020 to August 2021 were randomly allocated to the experimental group and the control group, each with 32 cases. The control group was treated with the drug midodrine combined with Kegel training, and the experimental group was treated with floating needle therapy combined with acupoint embedding. After 8 weeks of continuous treatment, the pelvic floor muscle strength, urinary incontinence score, and the improvement of urine leakage in the 1 h pad test were observed. We then evaluated the clinical efficacy of the 2 groups and the state of urinary incontinence at 3 months and 6 months as assessed by telephone follow-up. RESULTS: After treatment, the pelvic floor muscle strength of the 2 groups had significantly increased, and both the urinary incontinence score and the urine leakage volume of the 1 h pad test were significantly reduced. The pelvic floor muscle strength of the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group after treatment, the urinary incontinence score and the amount of urine leakage of the 1 h pad test were significantly lower than those of the control group. The total effective rate of the experimental group was 90.63% (27/32), which was higher than that of the control group (71.88%, 23/32). CONCLUSIONS: With the benefits of being both convenient and efficient, floating needle therapy combined with press-needle acupoint embedding is effective in treating female stress urinary incontinence after childbirth. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry ChiCTR2100047558.

Photocatalytic oxidation of Escherischia coli, Aspergillus niger, and formaldehyde under different ultraviolet irradiation conditions.

Ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation, including the type of light source, light intensity, and irradiation dosage, directly affects the photocatalytic reaction rate and energy consumption. In this study, we investigated the photocatalysis effect of decomposing organic matter and inactivation bacteria and fungi under various conditions of UV sources (UVA and UVC) and light intensities (from 0.01 to 10 W/m2). The effect of light intensity was evaluated by photocatalytic reaction rate and UV dosage defined as a product of light intensity and irradiation time necessary to achieve a certain reduction. The results confirmed the positive effect of increased light intensity on photocatalytic reactions and suggested that within the light intensity range applied in this study low light intensity with long exposure time has higher light utilization efficiency compared to that of high light intensity with short exposure time. A conception for selection of the appropriate light intensity and dosage for effective degradation of pollutants, while saving energy, was provided.

Correlation of photocatalytic bactericidal effect and organic matter degradation of TiO2. Part I: observation of phenomena.

This study aims to investigate the correlation of the photocatalytic oxidation effect of decomposing organic matter and inactivating bacteria using two different TiO2 materials: a Degussa P25 powder film and a commercial TiO2 thin film. The destructed organic matter was formaldehyde and the test bacterium was E. coli (JM 109 strain). The decomposition tests and the bactericidal tests were carried out in a plate reactor and on the TiO2 surface, respectively. Observations indicate that there exists an apparent correlation between the two photocatalytic processes of decomposing formaldehyde and inactivating E. coli. However, it is essential to distinguish the exact driver for microbe inactivation, in which both UV light irradiation and reactive oxygen species reaction are directfactors of disinfection, and for organic matter, in which only reactive oxygen species reaction contributes to degradation. Observations from this study would make it possible to use analogy as a potential method to evaluate the antimicrobial effect based on the organic compound degradation effect, whereby the latter is much easier to measure quantitatively.