RESUMO
Purpose: We aimed to investigate the efficacy of a combined herbal formula and electroacupuncture (EA) for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a neurodegenerative disease leading to dementia, and its underlying mechanisms of action. Patients and Methods: This was a prospective open-label observational pilot study at Daejeon Korean Medicine Hospital of Daejeon University in South Korea from March 2022 to March 2023. We included six Korean patients (50% male) aged ≥ 45 years and < 85 years with MCI, a clinical dementia rating score of 0.5, and a Montreal Cognitive Assessment-Korea (MoCA-K) score ≤ 22. The exclusion criterion was impaired cognitive function. Patients received combined therapy, including a herbal formula and EA, for 12-24 weeks. We prescribed the herbal formulas Gamiguibi-tang, Yukmijihwang-tang, and Banhasasim-tang to the patients for at least 70% of the treatment period, in combination with EA. Moreover, we investigated changes in cognitive and cognition-related symptoms and cytokine expression in the blood following combined traditional medicine therapy. At baseline and after 12 and 24 weeks, we administered the MoCA-K and cognitive-related questionnaires. We analyzed network pharmacology to reflect the herbal formula intervention mechanism comprehensively. Results: The median score [interquartile range] of MoCA-K at baseline was 19.5 [16.0, 22.0], which improved significantly (24.5 [24.0, 26.0], p < 0.01) over 24 weeks following combined therapy. We obtained no significant conclusion regarding cytokine changes due to the small sample size. In network pharmacology, we analyzed the brain, head, heart, peripheral nerves, peripheral nervous system, and pancreas as the enriched organs from the common targets of the three herbal formulas. Conclusion: Combined herbal medicine and EA improved cognitive function in patients with MCI. We assume the underlying mechanism of herbal formulas to be antioxidative and anti-inflammatory changes in cytokine expression. Combined traditional medicine has potential therapeutic application in preventing MCI progression to dementia.
This was a single-centered study focusing on the therapeutic effect of combined herbal medicine and electroacupuncture in patients with mild cognitive impairment, including a small number of participants, a relatively long treatment intervention of 12 weeks, and a follow-up assessment of 24 weeks. The intervention was a combination of a herbal formula and electroacupuncture treatment customized for each participant. The blood cytokine analyses of the participants were compared with the network analysis of the predicted target organs and pathways for the herbal formulas administered. Because each participant was not given the exact same intervention, we were unable to identify the specific treatment that produced the predicted effect. The observational study design of the study limited the ability to accurately assess causation between intervention and outcome. However, combined traditional medicine has potential therapeutic application in preventing mild cognitive impairment progression to dementia.
RESUMO
In this paper, we investigate the effects of charge storage engineering (CSE) on the NO2 gas sensing properties such as response, recovery, and sensitivity of a FET-type gas sensor with a horizontal floating-gate (FG) having tungsten trioxide (WO3) as a sensing layer. When the FET transducer is set at an erase state (ΔVth = -2 V), the holes injected into the FG by Fowler-Nordheim (F-N) tunneling increase the electron concentration at the WO3-passivation layer interface. Accordingly, an oxidizing gas, NO2, can take more electrons from WO3, which increases the change in the FG voltage (ΔVFG) by a factor of 2.4. Also, the recovery speed of the sensor in the erase state can be improved by applying pre-bias (Vpre) which is larger than the read bias (Vread). As the carriers in the WO3 film that can interact with NO2 increase by the excess holes stored in the FG by the erase operation, the sensitivity of the sensor also increases 3.2 times. The effects of CSE on various sensing performances are explained using energy band diagrams.
