Journal of the Chinese Medical Association : JCMA
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Review
Preventive and therapeutic role of traditional Chinese herbal medicine in hepatocellular carcinoma.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most prevalent malignancies worldwide. The clinical management of HCC remains a substantial challenge. Although surgical resection of tumor tissues seems promising, a high recurrence and/or metastasis rate accounting for disease-related death has led to an urgent need for improved postsurgical preventive/therapeutic clinical intervention. ⋯ Because of their enhanced preventive/therapeutic effects, traditional Chinese herbal medicine (CHM)-derived compounds are considered suitable agents for HCC treatment. The CHM-derived compounds also possess multilevel, multitarget, and coordinated intervention effects, making them ideal candidates for inhibition of tumor progression and HCC metastasis. This article reviews the anticancer activity of various CHMs with the hope of providing a better understanding of how to best use CHM for HCC treatment.
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Paravalvular leaks (PVLs) are a common complication of prosthetic valve replacement. Use of the transcatheter intervention technique is a suitable alternative in high-risk patients who may not tolerate repeat surgery. Common reasons for failure of this demanding intervention include poor imaging quality and unsuitable anatomy. The purpose of this study was to assess the usefulness and the incremental value of real-time three-dimensional (RT 3D) transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) over two-dimensional (2D) TEE findings in the evaluation of the geometry and track of mitral PVLs during transcatheter closure. ⋯ RT 3D TEE can clearly delineate the geometries of defects in their entirety, including shape, size, and location of the defect and track canal. It would also appear that RT 3D TEE is superior to 2D TEE in the process of guiding the wire through the difficult canal anatomy, facilitating the overall procedure. The small mitral PVLs can be completely occluded, but subsequent complications occurred with large defect closures because of embolization or releak. Therefore, transcatheter closure of PVLs seems to be an attractive alternative for these patients, but newer occluder designs that better conform to leak geometry will be required to improve outcomes.
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Light injury to photoreceptor cells and retinal pigment epithelium may lead to oxidative stress and irreversible degeneration of retina, especially degeneration of the high energy-demanded macula. The model of retinal photodamage could be applied to age-related macular degeneration and other degenerative retinal diseases for exploring new treatments. Based on broadly investigated induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) in the field of retinal degeneration, we aimed to clarify further how the interaction progresses between iPSC-conditional medium (CM) and light-damaged retina. ⋯ The conditional medium of iPSCs contains plenty of cytoprotective, immune-modulative and rescue chemicals, contributing to the maintenance of neuronal function and retinal layers in light-damaged retina compared with apoptotic iPSC-CM and PBS. The antiapoptotic effect of iPSC-CM also shows promise in restoring damaged neurons. This result demonstrates that iPSC-CM may serve as an alternative to cell therapy alone to treat retinal light damage and maintain functional and structural integrity of the retina.