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The geometrical shape of the TRISO-coated particle is closely related to its performance and safety. In this paper, models were set up to study the failure fraction of TRISO particle, considering the real asphericity induced by manufacturing uncertainties. TRISO is simplified as a pressure vessel model, and micro X-ray CT was employed to detect the real geometrical shape. Key geometrical parameters, thickness and volume of the real particle, were then obtained with the 3D measurement method and input into PANAMA code (a German code for fuel performance simulation). Release fraction of fission gas and failure fraction of the TRISO-coated particle were revised with the aforementioned parameters with more accuracy and compared with those of the spherical particle. Obvious increment of failure fraction of the particle is found, which may contribute to the release of fission products.

Grid-to-rod fretting (GTRF) caused by flow induced vibration is one of the most important mechanisms of fuel rod failure in PWRs, which has a strong impact on the economy and safety of nuclear power plant. To avoid rod failure due to GTRF, several verification tests which are high costs and long term are always carried out for new design fuel assemblies. So as to deal with the disadvantages of tests and speed up progress in fuel design, a progressive analysis method to predict GTRF performance of fuel rod is developed, and systemic tests are carried out to verify the analysis method. The method consists of three main parts, including flow field analysis, structure vibration analysis and wear analysis. In the first part, the flow field excitation force is obtained by the large eddy simulation method, and this CFD method is verified by a particle image velocimetry (PIV) test with a 5 × 5 fuel bundle. In the second part, to get the vibration response of fuel rod, a nonlinear vibration model which can consider end-of-life gaps is established. Full scale fuel rod vibration in air and water conditions are tested to validate the predicted fuel rod response from analysis. In the third part, the fuel rod wear is estimated by tribological theory with fuel rod vibration response, the wear coefficient and the typical feature of wear scar. The GTRF method is finally verified by a long-term wear test of full-scale fuel assembly. It turns out that this method can effectively predict the wear characteristics of fuel rod cladding at the early stage of design. It provides a feasible solution for rapid design iteration of fuel assembly, and could reduce the development costs and risks.

Background Although recent studies have indicated that intestinal microbiota dweller are involved in the pathogenesis of allergy rhinitis (AR), the influence of gut microbiota on AR adult has not been fully elucidated yet. Hence, we carried out this study to uncover the distinctive bacterial taxa that differentiate allergy rhinitis patients from healthy individuals. Feces samples from thirty three AR patients and thirty one healthy individuals were analyzed by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Results Results showed that the bacterial diversity in AR group was significantly higher than that of the non-AR group. Bacterial communities between AR and non-AR group were significantly differentiated as revealed by Principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) and the variation within non-AR were higher than that of the counterpart. Firmicutes, Fusobacteria, Actinobacteria, Cyanobacteria and Chloroflexi were the significantly differed phyla taxa and the top significantly distinguished bacterial genus included Prevotella_9, Phascolarctobacterium, Roseburia, Megamonas, Alistipes, Lachnoclostridium and Fusobacterium. The higher network complexity in AR group were dominated by taxa belonging to Firmicutes. The predicted function, alpha linolenic acid metabolism and bacterial invasion of epithelial cells pathway were higher in non-AR group while gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) signaling pathway, Fc γ-R mediated phagocytosis and endocytosis were higher in AR patients. Although the bacterial diversity between moderate and severe AR patients showed no significant difference, the significant correlation between featured genus and total nasal symptom score or rhinoconjunctivitis quality of life questionnaire, such as Butyricicoccus and Eisenbergiella, revealed the potential to intervene the AR status by means of gut microbiota. Conclusions In conclusion, patients with allergy rhinitis had distinguished gut microbiota characteritics in comparison with healthy controls. The results suggest that gut microbiota might play crucial roles in influencing the course and different symptoms of AR. Trial registration ChiCTR, ChiCTR1900028613. Registered 29 December 2019, https://www.chictr.org.cn/showproj.aspx?proj=47650.

Introduction Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute febrile and eruptive disease with systemic vasculitis of unknown etiology presenting predominantly in early childhood, most commonly in those under 5 years old. Although KD has been reported in almost all populations, it is especially common in North East Asia such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan which has the highest incidence worldwide that in contrast to the US, Europe and Australia. It is reported that more than 1 in 100 Japanese have had KD by 12 years of age. KD is a potentially life-threatening condition because it can cause serious pediatric-acquired heart disease such as asymptomatic coronary artery ectasia or an aneurysm. Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is a routine and effective treatment for KD and significantly reduces risk of coronary artery abnormalities during the acute phase of illness from approximately 15%–25% to 5%–8%. In spite of its effectiveness, some patient do not respond to this therapy and still develop coronary aneurysms. Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) as a therapy alone for KD was rare. The success of this patient with KD treated by CHM provided a new way of thinking for harmonizing Eastern-Western drug for KD and the potential utilization of CHM as a source of new drugs could be an alternative. Clinical features and outcome A 17 month-old boy suffered from persistent fever, poor appetite, vomiting diarrhea, slight cough, running nose and throat congestion for 2 days and was diagnosed with an upper respiratory infection. He had taken cefprozil suspension plus ankahuangmin 2 days for his symptoms before his final diagnosis of KD, but it was unsuccessful. He continued to have a fever, in addition, he presented with bilateral bulbar conjunctival congestion without exudate, labial and lingual erythema and was diagnosed with KD before his first CHM visit, his parents refused to continue receiving Western medicine. Therefore, his parents sought CHM for further intervention. His symptoms subsided, and the blood tests, electrocardiogram (ECG) and echocardiographies show completely normal after regular therapy with Xiao Chai Hu Tang (小柴胡汤) combined with Bu Yang Huan Wu Tang (补阳还五汤), Huang Lian Jie Du Tang (黄连解毒汤), and Wu Ling San (五苓散) for approximately 21 days. Neither complications nor side-effects were noted during the CHM treatment. Conclusions In this case, CHM may be an effective alternative therapy for the treatment of KD, and furthermore, may also be applied as an option to salvage failed intravenous immunoglobulin procedures. Further controlled trials are warranted to determine whether this is an effective treatment option for other cases of KD.

Tri-structural Isotropic (TRISO)-coated particle is the fission energy source and the first safety barrier in high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs). The integrity of TRISO particle should be carefully tested before operation because the shape may affect the failure possibility of the particles, leading to increased risk of fission product release. Due to the large difference in density between the kernel and the coating layers in TRISO particles, traditional X-ray radiography cannot achieve a good image quality in terms of identifying coating layers reliably, while phase-contrast CT has the advantage of being sensitive to boundaries. This paper presents a non-destructive test and evaluation (NDT&E) method to facilitate 3-dimensional (3D) measurement of a TRISO particle's structure, using a synchrotron phase-contrast CT. After reconstructed, the TRISO particle was rendered in a 3D space and the thickness and asphericity of the TRISO particle's layers were measured. It was found that the thickness of coating layers of the tested particle obeys Gaussian distribution. The deviation of thicknesses of the kernel and the other four layers is −2.42%, −16.32%, 26.51%, 0.98% and 7.49% compared with the design parameters. The deviation of asphericity of the kernel, IPyC and OPyC layers is −11.51%, −0.41% and 3.39%, respectively. The effect of the deviations on the temperature distribution and failure probability calculation of the particle will be investigated in the future.

The fuel safety and performance of high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) are dependent on the integrity and geometric parameter of Tri-structural Isotropic (TRISO) coated particle. Micro X-ray computed tomography (CT) was used for nondestructive testing and three-dimensional measurement of the particle components which are composed of kernel, buffer layer, inner pyrolytic carbon layer (IPyC), silicon carbide (SiC) layer, and outer pyrolytic carbon (OPyC) layer. The thickness distribution and volume of kernel and coating layers are obtained by constructing 3D volume rendering of TRISO particle. Mean thickness of each layer is calculated for comparison with design value. A comparison between two-dimensional and three-dimensional measurement results is also made. It is found that the thickness distribution of all layers approximately obeys Gaussian distribution. Deviation of the thickness of kernel and coating layers between 3D measurement result and design value is 7.88%, -25.63%, -45.50%, 13.87%, and 14.73%, respectively. The deviation will affect the failure probability of TRISO particle. Obvious difference of the OPyC mean thickness between 3D measurement and 2D measurement is found, which proves that the proposed 3D measurement provides comprehensive information of the particle. However, 2D and 3D measured thickness of the kernel and IPyC layer tend to be similar.

Intestinal barrier dysfunction contributes to the development of intestinal diseases. Propionic acid (PA), a metabolite generated by anaerobic fermentation of dietary fiber in the intestinal cavity, has been proved to exert anti-inflammatory effects in a variety of diseases. However, the exact role of PA in LPS-induced intestinal barrier dysfunction is still unclear. Accordingly, we examined the latent mechanism of PA and its protective role in LPS-induced intestinal barrier dysfunction by both in vitro and in vivo experiments. In vitro, we identified that PA treatment could strongly promote cell migration, inhibit activation of NLRP3 inflammasome and maintain intestinal barrier function in LPS-induced IEC-6 cells, indicating the protective effect on the intestinal barrier function of PA. Further investigation of the mechanism involved revealed that PA could suppress the activation of TLR4/NF-κB pathway. In vivo, in a LPS-induced rat model, PA-induced protective effects in intestinal barrier dysfunction could be detected. In summary, our findings clarify the role of PA in intestinal barrier dysfunction and suggest that it is promising for the treatment of LPS-related intestinal diseases.

Additional file 2: Figure S1. The rarefaction curves of all sample. (A) Observed species and (B) chao1. Figure S2. The bacterial community difference between AR and non-AR group. (A) The ANOSIM analysis are made to compare the intergroup and within group of samples. (B) The bacterial community variation comparison in AR and non-AR group. Figure S3. The predicted expression of distinguished pathway. The significantly distinguished pathway predicted by PICRUSt were screened by comparison between AR and non-AR individuals by Wilcox test and based on |logFC|>1. FC denotes fold change. Figure S4. Comparisons of bacterial diversity between moderate and severe AR patients. (A) The bacterial α diversity indexes comparison between moderate and severe AR, including Chao1, J and Shannon. Letters indicate the ANOVA groupings. (B) Differences in bacterial community structures between moderate and severe AR patients.

Nonuniform distribution of tri-structural-isotropic (TRISO) fuel particles in a spherical fuel element (SFE) may increase the failure probability of the SFE in the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, leading to the release of fission products. To evaluate the uniformity of the TRISO particles nondestructively, 3-dimensional cone-beam computed tomography is used to image the SFE, and TRISO particles are segmented. After TRISO particle positions are identified, the Voronoi tessellation and Delaunay triangulation are used to extract several geometric metrics. Results indicate that both the Voronoi volume distribution and the nearest neighbor-distance distribution follow the log-normal distributions, which provide strong evidence that the TRISO particles are approximately randomly uniformly distributed. Further study will be focused on validating the conclusion with more SFE data.

Two 3D coordination polymers with the formulas: [Mn(HL)(H2O)]·0.5H2O (1) and [Cu3(L)2(H2O)2]·2H2O (2), were harvested by self-assembly of Mn(II) and Cu(II) metal ions with 4,4′-phosphinicobis-dibenzoic acid (H3L) through solvothermal process. With various characterization methods, their structures were confirmed. Both 1 and 2 crystallize in the monoclinic P21/c space group. In 1, each quadrangular tube links four other ones by phosphinates to produce a porous three-dimensional (3D) framework. Compound 2 contains the inorganic chains formed by paddle-wheel [Cu2(COO)4] unit and Cu(II) ions in alternate arrangement concatenated by phosphinates. Those chains grow up to a 3D network with the total accessible volume being 49.2% per unit cell volume. Magnetic analysis reveals that 1 and 2 display antiferromagnetic behavior.

Tri-structural Isotropic (TRISO) coated particles are the core fuel of high temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR), with four layers encasing the kernel. The layer thickness measurement must be established in that the particle failure probability is directly dependent on the layer thickness. The buffer layer retains the fission product and gas. Herein, we employed X-ray computed tomography to test the particle non-destructively. However, the inner pyrolytic carbon (IPyC) and buffer layer in the slice are hard to segment with the traditional thresholding method. In order to obtain the thickness distribution of the two layers, we utilized U-Net, a deep learning network for the segmentation. After segmentation, the two layers were unwrapped from its mass center to calculate thickness distribution at different angles. The results demonstrate the preliminary feasibility of the layer segmentation based on U-Net.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

In many manufacturing procedures, a large number of identical particles need to be disseminated uniformly into a given space. The uniformity of the spatial distribution of the particles can be critical to the properties of the final products. We proposed an image processing-based non-destructive technique to evaluate the particles’ spatial uniformity in a spherical space imaged with computed tomography. Both graphic (qualitative) and numerical (quantitative) methods were developed to demonstrate the (non-) uniformity of the particles. Simulation results indicated that the technique helped detecting the non-uniformity in the particles’ spatial distribution accurately. We conclude that the proposed technique can be used to test whether a number of particles in a sphere are uniformly distributed statistically and graphically.

Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) has been widely used as an adjunctive therapy for breast cancer, while its efficacy remains unexplored. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of CHM combined with chemotherapy for breast cancer. The study results showed that CHM combined with chemotherapy significantly increased tumor response and KPS as compared to using chemotherapy alone (RR = 1.36; 95% CI = 1.24–1.48;P<0.00001; RR = 1.38; 95% CI = 1.26–1.52;P<0.00001, resp.). Besides, CHM as an adjunctive therapy significantly reduced the nausea and vomiting at toxicity grade of III–IV (RR = 0.37; 95% CI = 0.27–0.52;P<0.00001). Moreover, the combined therapy significantly prevented the decline of WBC in patients under chemotherapy at toxicity grade of III–IV (RR = 0.49; 95% CI = 0.34–0.69;P<0.00001) and prevented the decline of platelet at toxicity grade of III–IV or I–IV (RR = 0.29; 95% CI = 0.12–0.73;P=0.008; RR = 0.77; 95% CI = 0.63–0.94;P=0.009, resp.). This study suggests that CHM combined with chemotherapy in comparison with chemotherapy alone can significantly enhance tumor response, improve KPS, and alleviate toxicity induced by chemotherapy in breast cancer patients. However, a firm conclusion could not be reached due to the lack of high quality trials and large-scale RCTs, so further trials with higher quality and larger scale are needed.

60Co radioactive sources are widely used in industrial and medical field. In 2008, Cobalt adjuster rod assemblies were loaded in the core of CANDU-6 reactor in order to produce industrial radioactive sources. Based on successful production and application of 60Co industrial radioactive sources, the program of developing cobalt adjuster rod for 60Co medical radioactive sources production was launched. Comparing with industrial radioactive sources, medical radioactive sources require higher activity ∼220Ci/g and smaller sources size, which cause challenges to cobalt adjuster rod design and manufacturing. In this paper, several types of cobalt pellets have been developed to match the medical radioactive sources size and the corresponding nuclear design, TH design & safety analysis, shielding design & safety analysis was also completed to prove that the design requirements could be satisfied. By now the development of cobalt adjuster rod for 60Co medical radioactive sources production has finished and the first batch of cobalt adjuster rod assemblies have been successfully loaded in core. The first batch of 60Co medical radioactive sources is expected to be put into application in 2019.

Due to debris in the coolant against clad, fuel clad wear, fuel handling fault and so on, fuel rods maybe be damaged during the operation of nuclear power plants, in order that the fuel assemblies with damaged fuel rods are discharged before scheduled. If the damaged fuel assemblies are not reloaded into the core of the nuclear power plant, the fuel utilization decreases and the economy of the nuclear power plant is partly lost. For retrieving the loss of the economy, the damaged fuel assemblies can be repaired by replacing damaged fuel rods with dummy rods which don’t include fissile nuclides. Then, the repaired fuel assemblies can be reloaded into the core. As the repaired fuel assemblies are different with the normal fuel assemblies, especially the number of the damaged fuel rods is considerable, a whole quantitative analysis is very necessary to evaluate the effects from the reuse of the repaired fuel assemblies. In this paper, a full scope evaluation of reload design are performed including nuclear design, fuel design, thermal hydraulic design and safety evaluation, and some necessary improvements are done for the software system, design methods and progress which have been used in the normal reload design. As results, an integrated evaluation technique is developed to evaluate the feasibility and safety of reusing the repaired fuel assemblies, and the key effects due to the reuse of the repaired fuel assemblies are extracted, and the different effects are studied for the different materials of the dummy rods which can be used to conduct how to choose the proper material of dummy rods. In addition, this technique has been successfully applied in the engineering and the loss of economy due to the damage of fuel assemblies was retrieved partly. Therefore, the integrated evaluation technique has also important directive to other nuclear power plants if the repaired fuel assemblies are planned to reuse.

During the development of zirconium alloys, the irradiation in the test reactor is a critical step to comparison the irradiation properties of candidate alloys, such as corrosion, creep and irradiation growth. In this paper, a small scaled fuel assembly for test reactor irradiation is designed, which meets the needs of new zirconium alloys development. The irradiation fuel assembly (IFA) can be easily disassembled, and the test fuel rods or irradiation specimen can be easily replaced, which makes it possible to do the further post-irradiation examination in the hot cell to obtain the irradiation performance data. Now the IFA has finish fabrication and the test reactor irradiation program is planned to launch in 2017.

In 1990s the first generation of PWR fuel assembly FA300 was developed in China. With constantly design improvements over the following 20 years, three types of FA300 fuel assemblies have been developed with max fuel assembly average burnup reach 40000 MWd/tU and successfully used in 300MWe PWRs. By now over 1100 fuel assemblies of FA300 series have been successfully operated in three different 300MWe PWRs with satisfied operation reliability. The CAP1400 fuel assembly development program was launched in 2010 which includes new zirconium cladding material development, UO2 pellet development, high performance fuel assembly mechanical structure development, fuel rod performance code and fuel assembly seismic analysis code development, out-of-pile fuel assembly test facility construction and in core irradiation program. The main purpose of CAP1400 fuel assembly development program is to meet the needs of self-sufficient fuel supply to CAP1400 reactor. Based on FA300 and CAP1400 fuel assembly development, a full series of PWR Fuel R&D technology and test system has been successfully established by SNERDI which will continuously support the fuel assembly improving and new type of fuel development. This paper will mainly describe the PWR fuel technology including cladding technology, pellet technology, fuel assembly mechanical design technology, fuel assembly test facility and test technology, fuel rod and fuel assembly code development progress. Furthermore, the development progress of CAP1400 fuel assembly will also be introduced. By now two types of new zirconium alloys have been selected as candidate alloys, all of the out-of pile performance tests have been finished. Both two alloys show good corrosion resistance. Through full series of fuel assembly components performance tests, the fuel assembly has finished design finalization. Most of the fuel assembly mechanical and hydraulic tests will be finished by the end of 2016. The test reactor irradiation program and commercial PWR irradiation program are also on the schedule. After the LTA program and commercial application licensing, the CAP1400 fuel assembly is anticipated to provide adequate burnup capability and operation reliability to CAP1400 reactor in China.

The anti-seismic performance of fuel assembly is mainly determined by the critical crush load and the stiffness of spacer grids. To comprehensive know about the influence of fuel rods on the spacer grid, a 5×5 spacer grid FEM model which including fuel rods is established. Basing the fact that the grid spring has remarkable influence on the grid crush strength which is found in experiment, some cases are carried out, which are used to analyze effects of grid with/without fuel rod, friction between the grid spring/dimple and the fuel rod, the deflection of grid spring on the static buckling strength. Results show that grids with fuel rods will have higher crush strength than those without fuel rods; at certain range, increasing grid spring deflection at working point will do help to increase the grid crush strength; higher friction coefficient of grid spring and fuel rod can enhance the crush strength. Comparing with experimental results in literatures, results from simulations show the same tendency with the experimental results. The conclusion and the simulation method involved in this paper can provide some guidelines to optimize the performance of spacer grid assembly.

C/EBP homologous protein (CHOP) is an important mediator of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-induced cell and organ injury. Here we show that lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced acute kidney injury (AKI) is associated with ER stress and elevated CHOP. We postulated that CHOP−/−mice would be protected against LPS-induced-AKI. Unexpectedly, while Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) expression levels were comparable in kidneys of CHOP−/−and wild-type (WT) mice, CHOP−/−mice developed more severe AKI after LPS injection. Furthermore, the severe kidney injury in CHOP−/−mice was associated with an exaggerated inflammatory response. Serum TNF-α levels were more elevated in LPS-treated CHOP−/−mice. There was a 3.5-fold higher amount of renal neutrophil infiltrates in LPS-treated CHOP−/−than in WT mice. Additionally, the kidneys of LPS-treated CHOP−/−mice had a more prominent increase in NF-κB activation and further upregulation of proinflammatory genes, i.e., c-x-c motif ligand 1 (CXCL-1), macrophage inflammatory protein-2 (MIP-2), and IL-6. Finally, proximal tubules, glomeruli, and podocytes isolated from CHOP−/−mice also had an exaggerated proinflammatory response to LPS. Since LPS directly increased CHOP in glomeruli and podocytes of WT mice, together these data suggest that the LPS-induced increase of CHOP in kidneys may inhibit inflammatory response in renal cells and provide protection against AKI.

Prostate cancer is the second most frequently diagnosed cancer among males around the world. Myosin VI (MYO6), as a motor protein, has been reported to be implicated in cancer-related cell migration and cellular functions. To investigate the role of MYO6 in prostate cancer, immunohistochemical analysis was firstly applied to prostate cancer tissues and revealed that MYO6 was closely related with the Gleason score in prostate cancer. Then we used specific short hairpin RNA (shRNA) to downregulate MYO6 expression in DU145 and PC-3 cells and found that decreased MYO6 expression significantly suppressed cell proliferation, as determined by MTT and colony formation assays. Flow cytometry confirmed that the suppression of MYO6 promoted cell cycle arrest at the G2/M and sub-G1 phase in the DU145 cells. Furthermore, PathScan intracellular signaling array analysis demonstrated that the phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and PRAS40 was downregulated in the DU145 cells following MYO6 knockdown. Knockdown of MYO6 downregulated the expression of AKT3 and upregulated the expression of PARP, as confirmed by western blot analysis. These results suggest that MYO6 plays an essential role in the progression of prostate cancer and silencing of MYO6 may be a promising therapeutic approach for prostate cancer.

Pyrroline-5-carboxylate reductase 1 (PYCR1) is an enzyme involved in cell metabolism, which has been shown to be up-regulated in cancers. However, the functions of PYCR1 in prostate cancers (PCa) are still largely unknown. In the present study, we found that PYCR1 was highly expressed in prostate cancer tissues and then knocked down PYCR1 in PCa cell lines (DU145, PC-3 and LNCap) via lentivirus-mediated gene delivery and analyzed its biological function. Both qRT-PCR and western blotting indicated that PYCR1 was suppressed efficiently after sh-PYCR1 infection. Further analysis indicated knockdown of PYCR1 significantly inhibited PCa cell growth and colony formation ability. The inhibition effects on growth were likely due to G2/M-phase arrest and enhanced cell apoptosis, as determined by flow cytometer analysis. At last, we verified the expression levels of cell cycle regulatory proteins, including CDK1, CDK2, CDK4 and Cyclin B1 were all downregulated and cell apoptotic-related proteins, including cleaved caspase 3 and cleaved PARP were increased in PCa cells after PYCR1 knockdown. Furthermore, PYCR1 has been shown not to be directly regulated by androgen receptor (AR) levels. These results show the functions of PYCR1 in PCa tumorigenesis for the first time and suggest that PYCR1 might be a good potential therapy approach for treating PCa.

Background: Tian Jiu Therapy (a medicinal vesiculation therapy according to traditional Chinese medicine theory) in San Fu Days (the three hottest days in a year is calculated by the Chinese ancient calendar) is widely used by patients with chronic asthma in China although from modern medicine perspective there is insufficient evidence of its effectiveness and safety issues. We investigated the efficacy and safety of Tian Jiu Therapy compared with placebo in patients with chronic asthma. Methods: Patients with chronic asthma were randomly assigned to Tian Jiu treatment group (n=165), placebo control group (n=158). Registered Chinese Medicine practitioners, in Orthopedics-Traumatology, Acupuncture, and Tui-na Clinical Centre for Teaching and Research, School of Chinese Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, administered Tian Jiu Therapy and placebo treatment in 3 times over 2 months. Patients completed questionnaires and lung function test before treatment and after treatment, 3, 6, 9, and 11 months, respectively. The primary outcome was the no of asthma-related sub-healthy symptoms and the percentage of patients with twenty-three symptoms. Results: 451 patients were recruited totally, 111 patients refused or did not participate according the appointment time and 17 did not meet the inclusion criteria. Consequently, 323 of eligible patients were enrolled. There was nothing difference between Tian Jiu Therapy group and placebo control group at the end of all treatments neither primary nor secondary outcomes. While Tian Jiu Therapy as compared with placebo significantly reduced the percentage of participants who are susceptible waken up by asthma symptoms from 27% to 14% at 2nd follow-up (P < 0.05). Similarly, Tian Jiu Therapy significantly reduced the proportion of participants who had the symptom of running nose and sneezing before onset from 18% to 8% at 2nd follow-up (P < 0.05). Additionally, Tian Jiu Therapy significantly reduced the level of asthma, the proportion of participants who don't need to processed during asthma attack increased from 6% to 15% at 1st follow-up and 0% to 7% at 3rd follow-up (P < 0.05). Improvements also occurred with Tian Jiu Therapy group, it reduced the proportion of participants who were spontaneously sweating at 3rd follow up and diarrhea after intake of oily food at 4th follow-up (P < 0.05). Conclusion: When added to a regimen of foundational therapy for chronic asthma participants, Tian Jiu Therapy further reduced the need for medications to control asthma, improved the quality of participants' life, and significantly reduced the level of asthma. What is more, this benefit seems to have an accumulative effect over time was in accordance with the TCM theory of 'winter disease is being cured in summer'.

In this study, we purified a homogeneous polysaccharide (S-CPPA1) with a molecular weight (Mw) of 133.2 kDa from the stem of Codonopsis pilosula for the first time. Gas chromatography (GC) analysis identified that S-CPPA1 contained glucose, galactose, and arabinose with a molar ratio of 10.5:3.4:1.7, along with a trace of mannose. Methylation analysis suggested S-CPPA1 was a branched polysaccharide, with five glucosidic linkage forms, namely (1→4)-linked Glcp (residue A), (1→6)-linked Galp (residue B), (1→2,6)-linked Glcp (residue C), (1→5)-linked Araf (residue D), and non-reducing terminal (1→)-linked Glcp (residue E). The protective effect of S-CPPA1 on kidney ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury was also evaluated. Blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine and TNF-α levels, as well as lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and alanine transaminase (AST) activities were elevated in the I/R group as compared to the sham group. On the other hand, S-CPPA1 treatment reversed all these biochemical indices, as well as histopathological alterations, which were induced by I/R. The findings imply that S-CPPA1 plays a causal role in the protection against I/R-induced renal injury and its renoprotective effect is probably mediated by inhibiting the proinflammatory cytokine TNF-α release.

Background Although China has a long history of using acupoints herbal patching (acupoints herbal patching means applying herbal patch on special acupoints to stimulate skin to form blisters, hyperemia, and even suppuration) in Sanfu Days (Sanfu Days are supposed to be the three hottest days in a year which is calculated by the ancient calendar) for the treatment of asthma, there is insufficient evidence to support its effectiveness and safety issues. This study investigated the efficacy and safety of acupoints herbal patching compared with placebo in participants with asthma in clinical remission stage. Methods We enrolled participants with asthma in clinical remission stage, above 13 years old and both genders in a randomized, double-blind and placebo-control trial at clinical center, School of Chinese Medicine, The University of Hong Kong to assess the effectiveness and safety of acupoints herbal patching, as compared with placebo, when added to guidelines-based therapy. The trial was conducted for three times (these three times were 19 July, 29 July and 8 August 2010), and the primary outcome was pulmonary function test. Secondary outcome was self-made questionnaire which were designed based on Traditional Chinese Medicine theory and clinical experience summary. Results Three hundred and twenty three eligible participants were enrolled, they were randomly assigned to acupoints herbal patching group (n = 165), placebo control group (n = 158). There was no significant difference in primary and secondary outcome as compared with placebo group at the end of 3rd treatment and four times follow ups. But sub-analysis of secondary outcome in four times follow ups showed that acupoints herbal patching significantly reduced the proportion of participants who didn’t need medical treatment when they had a small rise in asthma-related symptoms increased from 6–15 % at 1st follow up and 0–7 % at 3rd follow up (P