A promising approach for asthma treatment by multiwayly modulating toll-like receptors.

Asthma is a major epidemic affecting up to one third people in developed countries over the last decades, and making a crucial impact on morbidity rates. The classical characters of asthma in human are airway inflammation, airway hyperreactivity, and airway remodeling. Hygiene hypothesis, inflammation cells and signaling pathway in asthma were involved in Toll-like receptors (TLRs). TLRs are a kind of pattern recognition receptors, which are important in recognition of various pathogens. TLRs have been seen as a key target for asthma treatment, so a promising approach for asthma treatment was adopted to the multiwayly modulating toll-like receptors way.  

Cost-effectiveness of treatment for acute childhood idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP)--a systematic review.

The cost-effectiveness of treatment for acute paediatric idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) was assessed to provide evidence for health-care decision making and rational drug use. A systematic review of studies published between 1980 and 7 September 2007 on the clinical effects and economic profiles of treating ITP was undertaken. The quality of the studies was critically appraised and checklists were developed to assess methodological quality and transferability to the Chinese setting. Out of 174 studies, five (one Chinese; four USA) satisfied all the predefined criteria for inclusion and form the basis of this report. Methodological quality of most of the foreign studies was high, but transferability to other countries was low. Use of steroids provided additional life years and was cost-effective compared with intravenous immunoglobulin G and anti-D immunoglobulin. In comparison, the quality of the Chinese studies was low and long-term research rare. It was difficult to compare cost-effectiveness in different health-care settings and no lifetime economic evaluations were available.