Efficacy and safety of Xijiao Dihuang decoction in treating Henoch-Schönlein purpura: Study protocol for systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Henoch-Schönlein purpura is one of the most common systemic vascular inflflammatory disease in childhood with purpuric rash, arthritis, renal involvement, and abdominal pain. As a treatment for it, Xijiao Dihuang decoction, a traditional herbal formula, has been used. The object of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to assess the effificacy and safety on Xijiao Dihuang decoction in treating allergic purpura. METHODS: The following electronic databases will be systematically searched up to November 7, 2019 for eligible studies: The Cochrane Library, Embase, PubMed, Web of Science, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), the Chinese Biomedical LiteratureDatabase (CBM), the Chinese Scientifific Journal Database (VIP), andtheWanfang Database. Thetreatment group in the included studies will receive both routine western medicines and Xijiao Dihuang decoction, while the control group will receive routine western medicines. Data extraction and risk of bias assessments will be conducted by 2 independent reviewers. Heterogeneity will be assessed by I2 statistics, while reporting bias will be evaluated by funnel plots and Begg and Egger test. Sensitivity analysis and Subgroup analysis will be performed when necessary. Review Manager software (RevManV.5.3.0) and Stata will be used for all statistical analyses. Ethics approval is not required as no privacy data were involved. This systematic review and meta analysis will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. RESULTS: This study could provide a systematically evaluated therapeutic efficacy and safety of XJDHD on patients with HSP via including RCTs that matches the needs. And we also expect to find predictors of treatment through subgroup analysis, helping patients with HSP detect as well as cope with the disease as early as possible. CONCLUSION: The conclusion of our study will provide the systematical review of the efficacy and safety of XJDHD on patients with HSP, and provide predictors of treatment. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: PROSPERO CRD 42018111293.

Diagnostic value of neuronal pentraxin II methylation in patients with pancreatic cancer: Meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a devasting disease of which mortality almost parallels its incidence. PC tissue may express aberrantly methylated neuronal pentraxin II (NPTX2), but it is unclear what the consequences of this are. METHODS: We systematically searched PubMed, Web of Science, the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), from inception to July 15, 2020, to identify if the detection of methylated NPTX2 have sufficient sensitivity and specificity to identify PC from other benign pancreatic diseases. RESULTS: Majority of the studies obtained samples from pancreatic juice by endoscopy or surgery and composed of population with chronic pancreatitis, benign cystic lesion, intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm, and healthy controls. Our results demonstrated that the diagnostic value of methylated NPTX2 is of widely various sensitivity and specificity and it shown higher specificity in differentiate PC from benign diseases. The lab method of quantitative real-time methylation-specific PCR (QMSP) has higher specificity than real-time methylation-specific PCR (MSP) in detecting the indicator. CONCLUSIONS: NPTX2 methylation could serve as a promising molecular biomarker for pancreatic cancer diagnosis, for its high diagnostic value in differentiating pancreatic cancer from benign pancreatic disease with the lab method. The variable sensitivity of methylated NPTX2 was multifactorial, and it must be promoted before applied as screening test in clinical practice. Furthermore, experiments on methylated NPTX2 were needed to expanded for lower the heterogeneity.