Int J Med Sci
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Clinical Trial
Trigeminal nerve block with alcohol for medically intractable classic trigeminal neuralgia: long-term clinical effectiveness on pain.
Trigeminal nerve block (Tnb) with alcohol for trigeminal neuralgia (TN) may not be used widely as a percutaneous procedure for medically intractable TN in recent clinical work, because it has been considered having a limited duration of pain relief, a decrease in success rate and increase in complications on repeated blocks. ⋯ Tnb with alcohol for the pain management of TN can provide considerably long lasting pain relief. Repeated Tnb with alcohol has pain relief duration as long as the first block, and seems to produce less complication as well. Tnb with alcohol is a valuable treatment modality of TN as a percutaneous procedure.
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Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the elderly. Cerebrovascular diseases such as cerebral ischemic lesion (CIL) also commonly occur in elderly adults. However, previous studies on the relationship between PD and cerebrovascular disease have not found consistent results. Therefore, we conducted this study to evaluate whether or not PD is related to an increased prevalence of ischemic cerebrovascular lesions. ⋯ This study demonstrates that PD patients have a significantly higher prevalence of CIL compared to HCs. Therefore, although the present study is not a large-scale study, we cautiously suggest that PD can play an important role as a risk factor in the occurrence of ischemic cerebrovascular disease.
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Objectives: To determine whether the soluble programmed cell death ligand 1 (sPD-L1) levels in patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) are associated with the clinical features of the disease and the efficacy of treatment, including interferon (IFN)-α. Methods: We investigated the sPD-L1 levels in the sera of 80 genotype 1b Japanese patients with CHC who underwent 12 weeks of telaprevir (TVR)- or simeprevir (SMV)-based triple therapy followed by 12 weeks of dual therapy with pegylated IFN-α plus ribavirin. Serum was also obtained from 22 patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and from 10 healthy donors (HC). ⋯ Although immortalized hepatocytes do not express PD-L1, we confirmed that PD-L1 expression was induced after stimulation with IFN-γ. Conclusions: In this study, we first found that sPD-L1 was increased in patients with CHC. Our results indicate that the level of serum sPD-L1 might be associated with the progression of CHC and the generation of hepatocellular carcinoma.
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Background: Ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury is a leading cause of surgical skin flap compromise and organ dysfunction. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is an abundant reserve of various growth factors. Activated platelets play a role in endothelial damage during I/R injury; however, exogenous PRP could inhibit the production of reactive oxygen species. ⋯ Additionally, PRP suppresses monocyte chemotactic protein-1, TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6. Finally, PRP decreased ASK-1 and NF-κB expression in tissues with I/R injury. Conclusion: PRP acts as a protective factor during flap I/R injury by reducing reactive oxygen species level and proinflammatory cytokines via decreased expression of pASK-1 and pNF-κB.
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Objective: To investigate whether mTOR signaling pathway regulate the proliferation and differentiation of CD8+ T cells by transcription factors T-bet and Eomes, and explore the role of IL-12 in this biological procedure. Methods: Aspergillus fumigatus spore suspension nasal inhalation was used to establish the invasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) mouse model. After inoculation, rapamycin (2mg/kg) each day or IL-12 (5ug/kg) every other day was given for 7 days. ⋯ In addition, IL-12 promoted increasing T-bet and down regulating Eomes to make the Tem transformation. The final immune effector was high level of inflammatory cytokines (IL-6) and low level of anti-inflammatory factors (IL-10) and this strengthened immune response to the Aspergillus infection. Conclusions: The biological effects of Tem could significantly affect IPA infection host immune regulation, which depended on the activation of mTOR signaling pathway by IL-12.