Objectives To analyze the effect of improved oven for defluorination in coal-burning endemic fluorosis areas in China, and to provide evidence for the prevention and control of fluorosis. Methods Electronic databases including CNKI, CBM, VIP and CDMD-D (1989 to 2005), were searched. We also checked the reference lists of relevant articles. We selected relevant articles according to the predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. The methodological quality was assessed . Data on room heat preservation and the effect of improved oven for defluorination were collected in the surveillance spots of Three Gorges Reservoir. Correlation analyses were conducted between the improved oven and its effect parameters. Results Twelve articles of low quality met the selection criteria, of which 9 were graded C and 3 were graded D in terms of the methodological quality. A negative correlation was found between the decreasing rate of normal oven use and the decreasing rate of dental fluorosis as well as of urine fluorine (Pearson correlation coefficient r = – 0.87, – 0.63, Plt;0.01, lt;0.05, respectively). Analysis also revealed a positive correlation between room heat preservation and the decreasing rate of dental fluorosis as well as of normal oven use (the two Spearman correlation coefficients and P values were the same: r = –1.00, Plt;0.01). Conclusion High-quality studies on the effect of improved oven for defluorination in China are not available. Based on the current evidence, the improved oven for defluorination and the correct use, maintenance and house rebuilding for heat preservation may help to prevent fluorosis.
Objective To investigate the latest development of tissue engineeredregenerative medicine in industrialization, with the intention to direct work in practical area. Methods A complete insight of regenerative medicine in industrialization was obtained through referring to update publications, visiting related websites, as well as learning from practical experience. Results The aerial view of the future of regenerative medicine was got based on knowledge of four different tissue engineering projects. Conclusion All present efforts should be devoted to regenerative medicine area meeting the industrialized trends.
Abstract: The amniotic fluidderived stem cells (AFSC) possess considerable advantageous characteristics including high proliferation potential, easy availability, low immunogenicity and oncogenicity，and accordance with medical ethnics. Moreover, they do not require the sacrifice of human embryos for their isolation and the cells can differentiate into all three kinds of germs. Accordingly，they initiate a new and very promising field in stem cell research and they will be a potential source of stem cells for therapies related to regeneration medicine of cardiovascular diseases. The research about the AFSC utilization in cardiovascular diseases is just started. Though there were some exciting breakthroughs, there still remain many challenges. In the article，we will discuss AFSC characteristics, influence of amniotic fluid harvesting time on stem cells, isolation and purification, emphasizing mainly on the potential of AFSC differentiation into cardiovascular cells, current situation and problems in this field.
Recent studies have introduced attention models for medical visual question answering (MVQA). In medical research, not only is the modeling of “visual attention” crucial, but the modeling of “question attention” is equally significant. To facilitate bidirectional reasoning in the attention processes involving medical images and questions, a new MVQA architecture, named MCAN, has been proposed. This architecture incorporated a cross-modal co-attention network, FCAF, which identifies key words in questions and principal parts in images. Through a meta-learning channel attention module (MLCA), weights were adaptively assigned to each word and region, reflecting the model’s focus on specific words and regions during reasoning. Additionally, this study specially designed and developed a medical domain-specific word embedding model, Med-GloVe, to further enhance the model’s accuracy and practical value. Experimental results indicated that MCAN proposed in this study improved the accuracy by 7.7% on free-form questions in the Path-VQA dataset, and by 4.4% on closed-form questions in the VQA-RAD dataset, which effectively improves the accuracy of the medical vision question answer.
Objective To review the biochemical characteristics, appl ication progress, and prospects of the adiposederived stem cells (ADSCs). Methods The recent original experimental and cl inical l iterature about ADSCs was extensively reviewed and analyzed. Results ADSCs can be readily harvested in large numbers from adipose tissue with properties of stable prol iferation and potential differentiation in vitro. Significant progress of ADSCs is made in the animal experimentand the cl inical appl ication. It has been widely used in the cl inical treatment of cardiovascular disease, metabol ic disease, encephalopathy, and tissue engineering repair. Conclusion ADSCs have gradually replaced bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and become the focused hot spot of regenerative medicine and stem cells.
Studies of evidence-based medicine have provided much important evidence, clarified problems, and guided the clinical practice in the treatment of renal diseases. As examples, several therapeutic problems in renal hypertension, renal anemia and low protein diet for the patients with chronic kidney disease are discussed in this paper.
The modernization and internationalization of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are the key issues we must face up to. The development of TCM needs to depend on the breakthrough of methods and the innovation of ideology, and the international standardization of scientific research evaluation. The clinical evidence from randomized comtrolled trials (RCT) is valuable and reliable. It has shown that the proportion of RCT identified in TCM journals was less than 30%, and the score of RCT’s quality was less than 3 using Jadad scale. However, the number of systematic reviews on TCM is increasing rapidly after the evidence-based medicine (EBM) was introduced and practiced in China. Until 2004, 43 systematic reviews of TCM were published in China, and the quality of RCT included in those reviews was elevated. It has shown that the efficacy and safety of TCM indicated some advances in treatment of certain kind of diseases. It has been realized that RCT are important in TCM, and improving the quality of RCT is the key step for modernization and internationalization of TCM.