Research Progress of Chinese Herbal Medicine Intervention in Renal Interstitial Fibrosis.

Chronic kidney diseases usually cause renal interstitial fibrosis, the prevention, delay, and treatment of which is a global research hotspot. However, no definite treatment options are available in modern medicine. Chinese herbal medicine has a long history, rich varieties, and accurate treatment effects. Hitherto, many Chinese herbal medicine studies have emerged to improve renal interstitial fibrosis. This paper reviews the mechanisms of renal interstitial fibrosis and recent studies on the disease intervention with Chinese herbal medicine through literature search, intend to reveal the importance of Chinese herbal medicine in renal interstitial fibrosis. The results show that Chinese herbal medicine can improve renal interstitial fibrosis, and the effects of Chinese herbal medicine on specific pathological mechanisms underlying renal interstitial fibrosis have been explored. Additionally, the limitations and advantages of Chinese herbal medicine in the treatment of renal interstitial fibrosis, possible research directions, and new targets of Chinese herbal medicine are discussed to provide a basis for studies of renal interstitial fibrosis.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of integrated traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine in treating glomerulosclerosis.

BACKGROUND: The combination of Traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine (TCM+WM) has been widely used in the treatment of glomerulosclerosis, but the results are still controversial. This study will assess the clinical efficacy of TCM+WM for glomerulosclerosis and provide evidence-based medical data via meta-analysis. METHOD: The MEDLINE, EMBASE, PubMed, Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials, and multiple Chinese databases (Wan Fang, CNKI, and VIP) were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCT) that compared the effects of WM and TCM+WM. Review Manager 5.3 software was used for the meta-analysis of selected studies, and appropriate tests were performed to determine the quality, heterogeneity and sensitivity of these studies. RESULTS: Sixteen RCTs met the inclusion criteria and were selected for the analysis. Compared with the placebo or WM-treated glomerulosclerosis patients, TCM+WM intervention significantly improved renal function indices including 24-hour urine protein quantity (24 h U-Pro), serum creatinine (Scr), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine clearance (Ccr). In addition, the serum albumin (ALB), triglyceride (TG), and cholesterol (CHOL) levels were also significantly improved (P < .05) in patients receiving the combination therapy. Finally, the combination of TCM+WM reduced the indices of glomerulosclerosis more effectively compared with WM alone. CONCLUSION: The combination of TCM+WM can significantly improve the renal function and prognosis of patients with glomerulosclerosis.

Tree species identification based on the fusion of bark and leaves.

For trees, leaves are often used for identification, but the shape of leaves changes greatly, bark will be another identifying feature. However, it is difficult to recognize by a single organ when there are intra class differences and inter class similarities between leaves or bark. So we fuse features of leaf and bark. Firstly, we collected 17 species of leaves and bark of trees through field shooting and web crawling. Then propose a method of combining convolution neural network (CNN) with cascade fusion, additive fusion algorithm, bilinear fusion and score level fusion. Finally, the features extracted from the leaves and bark are fused in the ReLu layer and Fully connected layer. The method was compared with single organ recognition, Support Vector Machines (SVM), and existing fusion methods, results show that the two organ fusion method proposed are better than the other recognition methods, and recognition accuracy is 87.86%. For similar trees, when it is impossible to accurately determine its species by a single organ, the fusion of two organs can effectively improve this situation.

An unusual double T5(2) water tape trapped in silver(I) coordination polymer hosts: influence of the solvent on the assembly of Ag(I)-4,4'-bipyridine chains with trans-cyclohexanedicarboxylate and their luminescent properties.

In this paper, four silver(I) compounds, namely, {[Ag(4)(bipy)(4)(chda)]·2NO(3)·10H(2)O}(n) (1), {[Ag(2)(bipy)(2)(chda)]·14H(2)O}(n) (2), {[Ag(2)(bipy)(2)(chda)]·3EG·2H(2)O}(n) (3) and {[Ag(2)(bipy)(2)(chda)]·H(2)chda}(n) (4) (where bipy = 4,4'-bipyridine, H(2)chda = trans-cyclohexane-dicarboxylate and EG = ethylene glycol), have been synthesized and characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analyses. In all of these compounds, the Ag(I) centers are linked by bipy ligands to form 1D Ag(I)-bipy chain structures. The chda(2-) anions of compound 1 adopt a µ(4)-coordination mode to connect the Ag(I)-bipy chains, forming a H-beam-like chain. In 2, the chda(2-) anions adopt a µ(2)-coordination mode to connect the Ag(I)-bipy chains resulting in two distinct 2D brick wall-like layers. These layers are further stacked in an ···ABAB··· fashion through interlayer π···π stacking interactions giving rise to a 3D framework consisting of quasi-rectangular channels, in which an unusual double T5(2) water tape is trapped. For 3 and 4, the chda(2-) anions show a similar µ(4)-coordination mode to that of 1 and connect the Ag(I)-bipy chains to form 2D grid layers with identical compositions and connective topologies. The experimental studies show that the final structures are greatly influenced by the molar ratio of the components and the solvents, which can be rationally interpreted by the existence of various supramolecular interactions between the host and guest molecules within these compounds through a systematic structural comparison. Additionally, the thermal stability and luminescent properties of these compounds were also studied.