Rejected

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common chronic autoimmune disease that contributes to progressive disability, systemic complications, higher mortality, and societal burden. Typical symptoms of RA include symmetrical pain and swelling in multiple joints, morning stiffness, and elevated levels of erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, and rheumatoid factor. The representative treatment for RA is medication, including disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, glucocorticoids, and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. However, these medications are not yet curative nor preventative and are associated with several adverse effects, leading to their discontinuation. Recent articles reported that Simiao Xiaobi decoction (SXD) could relieve the symptoms of RA by clinical trial and experimental study, but an evidence-based review on the effectiveness and safety of SXD on RA has not yet been provided.

The etiology and treatment of interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome are still controversial. The purpose of this study is to determine the key genes and specific regulatory pathways related to it and to find potential drug-active components through integrated bioinformatics.

Plantar fasciitis is the most common cause of heel pain. Pain can be persistent in some patients and interrupt daily activities and sportive activities. There are a lot of treatment options available for plantar fasciitis. We hypothesized that patients with chronic persistent plantar fasciitis can be successfully treated with radiofrequency nerve ablation (RFNA).Two hundred sixty-one patients with plantar fasciitis (378 feet) treated with RFNA from February 2017 to January 2019 were retrospectively assessed. All the patients had plantar heel pain for at least 6months. Based on their body mass index (BMI), the enrolled patients were divided into obese (BMI ≥ 30kg/m2) and non-obese (BMI < 30kg/m2) groups. The patients were asked to complete a questionnaire just before and after the procedure and during the final follow-up. The BNS Radiofrequency Lesion Generator was used during a single session. The patients' information, including their visual analogue scale (VAS) score and American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (AOFAS) score, was assessed. During their final follow-up, the patients were asked to rate the success of their treatment by choosing one of the following options: completely successful, very successful, moderately successful, marginally successful, or not successful.The VAS and AOFAS scores of all the patients were evaluated pre-procedure, in the first month after procedure, and during the final follow-up (8-24 months). There was a statistically significant difference between the pre-procedure and postprocedure VAS scores (P < .001), there was no statistically significant difference between the VAS scores in the first month postprocedure and during the final follow-up.There was a statistically significant difference between the pre-procedure and postprocedure AOFAS scores (P < .001), there was no statistically significant difference between the AOFAS scores in the first month postprocedure and during the final follow-up.RFNA can be used as an alternative method to surgical procedures for treating plantar fasciitis because it is safe and effective. The advantages of RFNA are that patients can quickly return to their work and resume weight-bearing activities.

Nucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydrolases (NTPDases), alkaline phosphatases (APs), and ecto-nucleotide pyrophosphatases/phosphodiesterases (NPPs) are nucleotidases found on the cell surface. It is a promising therapeutic target for a range of disorders, including fibrosis, tumour metastasis, pruritus, inflammation, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune diseases. As a result, therapeutic intervention including selective inhibitors of NPPs is required.

The α2δ-1 protein coded by is dramatically up-regulated in dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons and spinal dorsal horn following sensory nerve injury in various animal models of neuropathic pain. overexpression potentiates presynaptic and postsynaptic NMDAR activity of spinal dorsal horn neurons to cause pain hypersensitivity. The α2δ-1-NMDAR interaction promotes surface trafficking and synaptic targeting of NMDARs in neuropathic pain caused by chemotherapeutic agents and peripheral nerve injury, as well as in other pathological conditions such as in the paraventricular nucleus (PVN) with neurogenic hypertension and in the brain with ischemic stroke. The lentiviral transfection method was used to construct a human embryonic kidney HEK293T cell line that could stably express α2δ-1-NMDAR complex. A stably transfected cell line was observed by florescence microscope, and identified by RT-qPCR and Western blotting. The results showed that the HEK293T cell line was successfully transfected and the genes could be stably expressed. Subsequently, the transfected cell line was successfully developed into a target drug screening system using patch clamp techniques. It provides a promising cell model for further research on the interaction mechanism of α2δ-1-NMDAR complex and drug screening for chronic pain and related diseases with low side effects.

Sex differences have been demonstrated in the acute phase of COVID-19. Women (F) were found to be less prone to develop a severe disease than men (M), but few studies have assessed sex-differences in Long-COVID-19 syndrome. The aim of this prospective/retrospective study was to characterize the long-term consequences of this infection based on sex. For this purpose, we enrolled 223 patients (89 F and 134 M) who were infected by SARS-CoV-2. In the acute phase of the illness, F reported the following symptoms more frequently than M: weakness, dysgeusia, anosmia, thoracic pain, palpitations, diarrhea, and myalgia-all without significant differences in breathlessness, cough, and sleep disturbance. After a mean follow-up time of 5 months after the acute phase, F were significantly more likely than M to report dyspnea, weakness, thoracic pain, palpitations, and sleep disturbance but not myalgia and cough. At the multivariate logistic regression, women were statistically significantly likely to experience persistent symptoms such as dyspnea, fatigue, chest pain, and palpitations. On the contrary, myalgia, cough, and sleep disturbance were not influenced by sex. We demonstrated that F were more symptomatic than M not only in the acute phase but also at follow-up. Sex was found to be an important determinant of Long-COVID-19 syndrome because it is a significant predictor of persistent symptoms in F, such as dyspnea, fatigue, chest pain, and palpitations. Our results suggest the need for long-term follow-up of these patients from a sex perspective to implement early preventive and personalized therapeutic strategies.

Functional dyspepsia is one of the most common functional gastrointestinal disorders with chronic bothersome epigastric pain or postprandial fullness without a definite organic cause. Despite its high clinical burden, the treatment modalities for modulating impaired motor dysfunction and visceral hypersensitivity have been unsatisfactory. Recently, studies demonstrating low-grade inflammation and dysbiosis of the duodenal mucosa as potential triggers of the disease have attracted attention. Observations, such as an increase in the proportion of oral commensal bacteria in the duodenal mucosa, such as Streptococcus species, highlight the importance of bacterial ecology in developing symptoms of functional dyspepsia. In the near future, anti-inflammatory drugs and probiotics that modulate the host-microbiome interaction are expected to emerge to treat functional dyspepsia.

Open-heart surgery is associated with severe postoperative pain. Adequate analgesia after open-heart surgery improves patients' early postoperative recovery, extubation, ambulation and early discharge from hospital. Regional anaesthesia techniques are the new hope for adequate postoperative analgesia after cardiac surgery and are widely used for early pain management in the first six hours.

To systematically investigate the efficacy and safety of dextrose prolotherapy for treating chronic plantar fasciitis.

All fats are not created equal, and despite the extensive literature, the effect of fat intake is the most debated question in obesity, cardiovascular, and cardiorenal research. Cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying cardiac dysfunction and consequent heart failure in the setting of obesity are not well understood. Our understanding of how fats are metabolically transformed after non-reperfused myocardial infarction (MI), in particular, is incomplete. Here, using male C57BL/6J mice (2 months old), we determined the role of omega-6 fatty acids (provided as safflower oil, SO, for 12 weeks) followed by supplementation with docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; n-3 fatty acids) for 8 weeks prior to MI. With SO feeding, inflammation resolution was impaired. Specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPMs) increased in DHA fed-mice to reverse the effects of SO, while prostaglandins and thromboxane B2 reduced in the spleen and amplified multiple resolving mechanisms in heart and kidney post-MI. DHA amplified the number of resolving macrophages and cardiac reparative pathways of the splenocardiac and cardiorenal networks in acute heart failure, with higher T cellsin chronic heart failure with marked expression of Foxp3 in the myocardium. Our findings indicate that surplus ingestion of SO intensified systemic, baseline, non-resolving inflammation, and DHA intake dominates splenocardiac resolving phase with the biosynthesis of SPMs and controlled cardiorenal inflammation in heart failure survivor mice.