No abstract

Due to the decreasing self-repairing ability, elder people are easier to form chronic wounds and suffer from slow and difficult wound healing. It is desirable to develop a novel wound dressing that can accelerate chronic wound healing in elderly subjects to decrease the pain of patients and save medical resources. In this work, Heparin and basic fibroblast growth factor(bFGF) were dissolved in the mixing solution of 4-arm acrylated polyethylene glycol and dithiothreitol to form hydrogel dressing in vitro at room temperature without any catalysts, which is convenient and easy to handle in clinic application. In vitro re-lease test shows the bFGF could be continuously released for at least 7 days, whereas the dressing surface integrity maintained for 3 days degradation in PBS solution. Three groups of treatments including bFGF-Gel, bFGF-Sol and control without any treatment were applied on the full-thickness wound on the 22 months old mice back. The wound closure rate and histological and immunohistochemical staining all illustrated that bFGF-Gel displayed a better wound healing effect than the other two groups. Thus, as-prepared hydrogel dressing seems supe-rior to current clinical treatment and more effective in elderly subjects, which shows promising potential to be applied in the clinic.

Previous case-control studies assessing the association between microsomal epoxide hydrolase 1 (EPHX1) T113C and susceptibility to lung cancer reported conflicting results. Thus, a systemic review and meta-analysis of published studies were performed to assess the possible association. PubMed and Embase databases were searched for all eligible studies. The strength of the association between EPHX1 T113C polymorphism and lung cancer risk was estimated by the pooled odds ratios (ORs) with its 95 % confidence interval. Twenty-four individual case-control studies involving a total of 4,970 lung cancer cases and 8,917 controls were finally included into the meta-analysis. When all 24 studies were included into the meta-analysis, the pooled results suggested that there was no association between EPHX1 T113C polymorphism and lung cancer risk under all four comparison models, and all P values for the pooled ORs were more than 0.05. In the subgroup analysis of Caucasians, the pooled results suggested that EPHX1 T113C polymorphism was associated with decreased risk of lung cancer under all four comparison models, and all P values for the pooled ORs were less than 0.05. However, in the subgroup analysis of Asians, the pooled results suggested that EPHX1 T113C polymorphism was associated with increased risk of lung cancer under three comparison models, and all P values for the pooled ORs were less than 0.05. There was no risk of publication bias. This current meta-analysis suggests that EPHX1 T113C polymorphism is associated with lung cancer risk, and there is an obvious race-specific effect in the association.

Silver nanocrystal arrays had attracted much attention due to the unique plasmonic effect of their ordered nanostructure and the synergy among adjacent nanocrystals. Conventional preparation methods had several limitations, such as high cost, harsh preparation conditions, and complicated influencing factors, which could not be employed to fabricate the nanocrystal arrays in highly controlled fashion. To solve these issues, we reported ordered arrays of different Ag nanocrystals with precise control prepared by utilizing amphiphilic star-like poly(4-vinylpyridine)-block-polystyrene diblock copolymers as nanoreactors synthesized by sequential atom transfer radical polymerization. Moreover, this unimolecular nanoreactor method based on star-like copolymers with stable and predesigned nanostructures was proved to be a universal approach to prepare other nanocrystal arrays. This strategy had low cost, simple process flow, wide applicability, and structural stability that could fabricate nanocrystal array with precise control and continuously prepare more complex nanostructure units in a large scale to meet different functions and applications.

To the Editor: The common femoral artery is the most popular puncture access route for surgical intervention. The distal end of the common femoral artery where the deep femoral artery and the superficial femoral artery bifurcate is difficult to identify, especially when vascular surgeons perform antegrade femoral artery puncture to treat ipsilateral lower extremity artery disease. Many studies have reported methods to anatomically localize the femoral head on the X-ray. Here, we introduce an anatomic landmark, Shenton's line, which refers to the arc line connecting the internal lateral margin of the femur neck and the inferior margin of the pubic bone in a normal anteroposterior radiograph of the pelvis.