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Background Primary traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) health service has been attracting continuously improving attention. However, primary TCM health service system still has problems, which have constrained the development of TCM in China. Objective To analyze the current situation of primary TCM health service system in China and explore the strategies to continuously improve the capacity of primary TCM health service. Methods In December 2022, data were retrieved from the China Health Statistics Yearbook, National Statistics of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the official websites of the National Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases. The index system was constructed from the three levels of health input, service output and health needs, and the combination of rank-sum ratio method and the WHO health system performance module framework was used to comprehensively evaluate the current situation of primary TCM health service. Results In terms of health input, from 2017 to 2021, the number of primary healthcare institutions providing TCM health services except for township health centers has increased, and the number of TCM clinical departments beds in community health service centers (stations), township health centers, and outpatient clinics has shown an increasing trend, but the proportion of TCM clinical departments beds in outpatient clinics to the total number of outpatient departments has decreased; the proportion of TCM practicing (assistant) physicians in community health service centers (stations), township health centers and clinics has increased significantly, while the proportion of TCM practicing (assistant) physicians in village clinics remained stable, and the proportion of TCM practicing (assistant) physicians in outpatient clinics decreased by years; in the past five years, the absolute value of financial input for primary healthcare institutions has steadily increased, while the financial allocation for TCM organizations has fluctuatingly decreased. In terms of service output, from 2017 to 2021, the proportion of TCM consultations to the total consultations in various institutions has steadily increased according to a certain increase (except for TCM outpatient clinics), while the proportion of TCM consultations in village clinics alone has always remained above 30.0%; in addition to township health centers, the per capita burden of consultations of TCM practicing (assistant) physicians in other primary healthcare institutions was generally on a downward trend. The comprehensive evaluation found that 2017, 2018 and 2021 were in a suitable state of resource allocation, while 2019 and 2020 were in an unbalanced state of resource allocation. Conclusion At present, the construction of primary TCM health service system in China has been effectively implemented, but there are still some problems in the process of orderly promotion. Problems such as insufficient resources for primary TCM, unbalanced service and utilization, insufficient advantages of TCM, imperfect personnel training mechanism and low financial input have constrained the development TCM. In order to promote the continuous improvement of the health service capacity of primary TCM health service institutions, it is necessary to consolidate the functions of government, further promote TCM culture, establish incentive mechanism to optimize the training mode of talents, strengthen the close integration of TCM health services with health insurance policies, and build a TCM medical association supported by "information integration".

Two new types of elastic porous silanized melamine sponges (MeS) were prepared by silylation reaction using octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) and N-[3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl]ethylenediamine (ATS), which were respectively designated as OTS@MeS and ATS@MeS. The silanized sponges were used to develop a modified quick, easy, check, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) method that can quickly and efficiently separate interfering matrices from the extract through spontaneous solution infiltration and physical extrusion. In this study, an analytical method using the modified QuEChERS procedure combined with ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was established for the simultaneous determination of 49 antibiotic residues in pork. Samples were extracted with 10 mL of acetonitrile containing 0.1% acetic acid, and then salted out with 2.0 g of Na2SO4 and 0.5 g of NaCl. After centrifugation, a 1 mL aliquot of the supernatant was cleaned up with a mixture of OTS@MeS and ATS@MeS. The chromatographic separation was conducted on an Agilent ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C18 column with gradient elution using a mobile phase comprised of methanol and aqueous solution (methanol/water, 5:95, V/V) containing 0.1% formic acid and 5 mmol/L ammonium acetate. The qualitative and quantitative detection were performed by multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) using an electrospray ionization source in the positive ion mode. The results showed that the correlation coefficients for all analytes were greater than 0.999. The matrix effects (ME) were in the range of −13.5%−10.9%. The limits of detection (LOQ) and quantitation (LOQ) were 0.1–10.0 and 0.3–33.3 μg/kg, respectively. The recoveries at three spiked levels ranged from 65.0% to 112.7%, with intra- and interday relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.3%–11.8% and 2.4%–18.4%, respectively. The developed method was simple, rapid, highly sensitive and accurate, and could be used for the efficient and rapid determination of the 49 antibiotics residues in pork.

The genetic basis and corresponding clinical relevance of prolactinomas remain poorly understood. Here, we perform whole genome sequencing (WGS) on 21 patients with prolactinomas to detect somatic mutations and then validate the mutations with digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of tissue samples from 227 prolactinomas. We identify the same hotspot somatic mutation in splicing factor 3 subunit B1 (SF3B1R625H) in 19.8% of prolactinomas. These patients with mutant prolactinomas display higher prolactin (PRL) levels (p = 0.02) and shorter progression-free survival (PFS) (p = 0.02) compared to patients without the mutation. Moreover, we identify that the SF3B1R625H mutation causes aberrant splicing of estrogen related receptor gamma (ESRRG), which results in stronger binding of pituitary-specific positive transcription factor 1 (Pit-1), leading to excessive PRL secretion. Thus our study validates an important mutation and elucidates a potential mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of prolactinomas that may lead to the development of targeted therapeutics.

Over the past 50 years, the use of mathematical models, derived from physical reasoning, to describe molecular and cellular systems has evolved from an art of the few to a cornerstone of biological inquiry. George Oster stood out as a pioneer of this paradigm shift from descriptive to quantitative biology not only through his numerous research accomplishments, but also through the many students and postdocs he mentored over his long career. Those of us fortunate enough to have worked with George agree that his sharp intellect, physical intuition, and passion for scientific inquiry not only inspired us as scientists but also greatly influenced the way we conduct research. We would like to share a few important lessons we learned from George in honor of his memory and with the hope that they may inspire future generations of scientists.

Many microRNAs (miRNAs) have been identified as being involved in diabetes; however, the question of which ones may be the most promising therapeutical targets still needs more investigation. This study aims to understand the overall development tendency and identify a specific miRNA molecule to attenuate diabetes. We developed a combined analysis method based on bibliometrics and bioinformatics to visualize research institutions, authors, cited references, and keywords to identify a promising target for diabetes. Our data showed that diabetes-related miRNA is receiving continuously increasing attention, with a large number of publications, indicating that this is still a hot topic in diabetes research. Scientists from different institutions are collaborating closely in this field. miR-21, miR-146a, miR-155, and miR-34a are frequently mentioned as high-frequency keywords in the related references. Moreover, among all the above miRNAs, bioinformatics analysis further strengthens the argument that miR-21 is the top significantly upregulated molecule in diabetes patients and plays an important role in the pathogenesis of diabetes. Our study may provide a way to identify targets and promote the clinical translation of miRNA-related therapeutical strategies for diabetes, which could also indicate present and future directions for research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pennes’ bioheat equation is the most widely used thermal model for studying heat transfer in biological systems exposed to radiofrequency energy. In their article, “Effect of Surface Cooling and Blood Flow on the Microwave Heating of Tissue,” Foster et al. published an analytical solution to the one-dimensional (1-D) problem, obtained using the Fourier transform. However, their article did not offer any details of the derivation. In this work, we revisit the 1-D problem and provide a comprehensive mathematical derivation of an analytical solution. Our result corrects an error in Foster’s solution which might be a typo in their article. Unlike Foster et al., we integrate the partial differential equation directly. The expression of solution has several apparent singularities for certain parameter values where the physical problem is not expected to be singular. We show that all these singularities are removable, and we derive alternative non-singular formulas. Finally, we extend our analysis to write out an analytical solution of the 1-D bioheat equation for the case of multiple electromagnetic heating pulses.