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With the increasing incidence of ulcerative colitis (UC) in China, Chinese medicinal herbs or relatively active compounds are widely applied in treating UC. These medicines may be combined with other therapeutic agents such as vitamin D3. Nevertheless, the efficacy of these combinations for UC is unclear. Geniposide is an active component in many Chinese herbal medicines. It could ameliorate dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)–induced colitis in mice. This study was designed to determine the efficacy and mechanism of the single use and combination of geniposide and vitamin D3 on a mouse model of acute colitis. Data showed that a single administration of geniposide (2 mg/kg) or vitamin D3 (4 IU/day) could significantly improve the symptoms of UC and relieve colon damage. Geniposide and vitamin D could significantly decrease the levels of TNF-α and IL-6 in serum and colon, and increase the level of IL-10 in the colon. However, the combined treatment of geniposide (2 mg/kg) and vitamin D3 (4 IU/day) exerted less beneficial effects on UC in mice, indicating by less improvement of UC symptoms, colon damage, and inflammatory infiltration. The combination only downregulated the level of TNF-α in serum and IL-6 in the colon. Our data further demonstrated that geniposide could inhibit the activation of p38 MAPK and then restrict the vitamin D receptor signaling stimulated by vitamin D3. These results implied that the combination of geniposide and vitamin D3 might not be an ideal combined treatment for acute colitis, and the combination of vitamin D supplementary and geniposide (or herbal medicines rich in geniposide) need more evaluation before being applied to treat UC in clinic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reasonably assessing the efficiency of green regional development is a key to improving environmental management and implementing sustainable development strategies. From the perspectives of environmental pollutant emissions, energy consumption, and production factor cost, the non-radial data envelopment analysis model based on the Malmquist index was applied to measure the green development efficiency and regional differences of 11 cities in Zhejiang from 2007 to 2016 from both static and dynamic aspects. This paper further analyzes the inherent influencing factors through the panel data model. The result shows: (1) The average static efficiency of green development in Zhejiang Province is 0.844. There is still 15.6% of improvement space from the frontier of production. Pollution emission management has the greatest improvement potential. Pure technical efficiency is the main factor restricting the static efficiency. (2) The dynamic efficiency of Zhejiang's green development achieves an average annual rate of 0.26%, with a cumulative growth of 2.33%. The improvement of green development efficiency mainly depends on scale efficiency change. (3) The inherent factors affecting the efficiency of green development in the 11 cities mainly include three factors: the industrial structure, environmental regulation, and the urbanization level. The industrial structure has a positive effect, while environmental regulation and the urbanization level have negative effects. (4) The 11 cities are relatively evenly distributed in the four "static–dynamic efficiency" classification quadrants, and there is no "Matthew effect" of high–high, low–low polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing incidence of ulcerative colitis (UC) in China, Chinese medicinal herbs or relatively active compounds are widely applied in treating UC. These medicines may be combined with other therapeutic agents such as vitamin D 3 . Nevertheless, the efficacy of these combinations for UC is unclear. Geniposide is an active component in many Chinese herbal medicines. It could ameliorate dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced colitis in mice. This study was designed to determine the efficacy and mechanism of the single use and combination of geniposide and vitamin D 3 on a mouse model of acute colitis. Data showed that a single administration of geniposide (2 mg/kg) or vitamin D 3 (4 IU/day) could significantly improve the symptoms of UC and relieve colon damage. Geniposide and vitamin D could significantly decrease the levels of TNF-α and IL-6 in serum and colon, and increase the level of IL-10 in the colon. However, the combined treatment of geniposide (2 mg/kg) and vitamin D 3 (4 IU/day) exerted less beneficial effects on UC in mice, indicating by less improvement of UC symptoms, colon damage, and inflammatory infiltration. The combination only downregulated the level of TNF-α in serum and IL-6 in the colon. Our data further demonstrated that geniposide could inhibit the activation of p38 MAPK and then restrict the vitamin D receptor signaling stimulated by vitamin D 3 . These results implied that the combination of geniposide and vitamin D 3 might not be an ideal combined treatment for acute colitis, and the combination of vitamin D supplementary and geniposide (or herbal medicines rich in geniposide) need more evaluation before being applied to treat UC in clinic., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Lu, Chen, He, Xu, Chen, Gao and Hou.)