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An alarming number of students drop out of junior high school in developing countries. In this study, we examine the impacts of providing a social-emotional learning (SEL) program on the dropout behavior and learning anxiety of students in the first two years of junior high. We do so by analyzing data from a randomized controlled trial involving 70 junior high schools and 7,495 students in rural China. After eight months, the SEL program reduces dropout by 1.6 percentage points and decreases learning anxiety by 2.3 percentage points. Effects are no longer statistically different from zero after 15 months, perhaps due to decreasing student interest in the program. However, we do find that the program reduces dropout among students at high risk of dropping out (older students and students with friends who have already dropped out), both after eight and 15 months of exposure to the SEL program.
A simple, efficient and accurate liquid chromatographic method was established to determine five flavonoid aglycones, 7-hydroxy flavonone, pinocembrin, 2′,4′-dihydroxy chalcone, 2′-hydroxy-4′-methoxy chalcone and pinostrobin in the whole plant powder of <i>Oxytropis falcata</i> Bunge. These five compounds were separated on an Agilent Zorbax Eclipse XDB-C<sub>8</sub> column (150 × 4.6 mm, 5 μm). Mobile phases were composed of water containing 0.1% <i>v/v</i> formic acid and acetonitrile using gradient elution. The established method was validated for linearity, accuracy, precision, limit of detection and quantitation, repeatability and stability.
Objective: This study aimed to investigate effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on anxiety, depression and quality of life in patients with intrauterine adhesion. Methods: Patients who received therapy for intrauterine adhesion (IUA) were recruited and randomized into MBSR group and Wait-List group (WL group). 71 women who received routine physical examination were recruited as healthy controls. Patients in MBSR group received MBSR training for 8 weeks. Results: There were 76 patients in MBSR group, 75 patients in WL group and 71 subjects in control group. When compared with control group, the scores of anxiety and depression increased significantly and the score of quality of life reduced significantly before intervention. In patients, the scores of quality of life in all the domains were negatively related to the scores of anxiety and depression (P<0.05). After MBSR for 8 weeks, there was a significant time and group interaction for the anxiety score (F=55.168, P<0.001) and depression score (F=252.485, P<0.001). The MBSR group showed a decrease in the anxiety and depression score, while the WL group did not. The quality of life (except for bodily pain) in the MBSR group was also significantly improved. The recurrence rate in the MBSR group was 18.4%, which was significantly lower than that in WL group (34.7%; P=0.024). Conclusion: IUA patients have evident anxiety and depression, which significantly reduces the life quality of patients. MBSR may improve the anxiety and depression of IUA patients during therapy, promote the post-operative recovery and improve their quality of life.
Objective: This study aimed to investigate effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on anxiety, depression and quality of life in patients with intrauterine adhesion. Methods: Patients who received therapy for intrauterine adhesion (IUA) were recruited and randomized into MBSR group and Wait-List group (WL group). 71 women who received routine physical examination were recruited as healthy controls. Patients in MBSR group received MBSR training for 8 weeks. Results: There were 76 patients in MBSR group, 75 patients in WL group and 71 subjects in control group. When compared with control group, the scores of anxiety and depression increased significantly and the score of quality of life reduced significantly before intervention. In patients, the scores of quality of life in all the domains were negatively related to the scores of anxiety and depression (P<0.05). After MBSR for 8 weeks, there was a significant time and group interaction for the anxiety score (F=55.168, P<0.001) and depression score (F=252.485, P<0.001). The MBSR group showed a decrease in the anxiety and depression score, while the WL group did not. The quality of life (except for bodily pain) in the MBSR group was also significantly improved. The recurrence rate in the MBSR group was 18.4%, which was significantly lower than that in WL group (34.7%; P=0.024). Conclusion: IUA patients have evident anxiety and depression, which significantly reduces the life quality of patients. MBSR may improve the anxiety and depression of IUA patients during therapy, promote the post-operative recovery and improve their quality of life.
Objective: This study aimed to investigate effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on anxiety, depression and quality of life in patients with intrauterine adhesion. Methods: Patients who received therapy for intrauterine adhesion (IUA) were recruited and randomized into MBSR group and Wait-List group (WL group). 71 women who received routine physical examination were recruited as healthy controls. Patients in MBSR group received MBSR training for 8 weeks. Results: There were 76 patients in MBSR group, 75 patients in WL group and 71 subjects in control group. When compared with control group, the scores of anxiety and depression increased significantly and the score of quality of life reduced significantly before intervention. In patients, the scores of quality of life in all the domains were negatively related to the scores of anxiety and depression (P<0.05). After MBSR for 8 weeks, there was a significant time and group interaction for the anxiety score (F=55.168, P<0.001) and depression score (F=252.485, P<0.001). The MBSR group showed a decrease in the anxiety and depression score, while the WL group did not. The quality of life (except for bodily pain) in the MBSR group was also significantly improved. The recurrence rate in the MBSR group was 18.4%, which was significantly lower than that in WL group (34.7%; P=0.024). Conclusion: IUA patients have evident anxiety and depression, which significantly reduces the life quality of patients. MBSR may improve the anxiety and depression of IUA patients during therapy, promote the post-operative recovery and improve their quality of life.
PURPOSE: Breast cancer is the most common female cancer. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of yoga on lymphedema in breast cancer survivors.DESIGN: Repeated measures before and after the intervention. We enrolled 15 women with breast cancer who had not previously worn elastic clothing to treat lymphedema.
METHODS: The program was led by a certified trainer and consisted of 60-minute sessions, three times a week for 12 weeks. The volumes of the affected and normal limbs were measured. A self-assessed edema score was also recorded.
FINDINGS: Fifteen patients completed the program, none of whom suffered from complications related to exercise. There was no significant edema after exercise. No significant differences were noted in subgroup analysis by age or the affected arm.
CONCLUSIONS: Yoga does not induce lymphedema.
CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Lymphedema is usually treated with uncomfortable elastic clothing, and high-resistance exercise may induce edema. Yoga may be suitable for these patients.
Fecal Tibetan medicines have a long history of application in China, with a good clinical efficacy. In order to promote the development and modernization of these medicines, we consulted ancient and modern Tibetan medicine literatures to collect and summarize the names, original species, natures, flavor, functions and processing methods of fecal Tibetan medicines. A total of 35 fecal Tibetan medicines were collected, such as Jiufen, Heibingpian, Langfen, Mafen, Goufen, Gezifen. The most commonly used medicines were Jiufen and Heibingpian. Both were mainly used for the treatment of indigestion, food abdominal distension, gastric ulcer, and other gastrointestinal diseases. At present, there are only a few studies on the active ingredients, pharmacodynamics and mechanism of action of these medicines. Therefore, further study shall be conducted. The regulation of gut microbiota may be a new way to evaluate the effectiveness of fecal Tibetan medicines and their mechanism of action.
To achieve a high yield of tropane alkaloids (TA) and exploit the alpine plant sustainably, an optimized protocol for induction and establishment of hairy roots culture of <i>Prezwalskia tangutica</i> Maxim was developed through selection of appropriate <i>Agrobacterium</i> strain and the explant type. The hypocotyl is more readily facile to induce the HR than the cotyledon is when infected with the three different agrobacterium strains. MUS440 has an efficiency (of up to 20%), whereas the ATCC10060 (A4) can induce HR on both types of explants with the highest frequency (33.33%), root length (21.17 ± 2.84 cm), and root number (10.83 ± 1.43) per explant than the other strains. The highest HR production resulted from using hypocotyl as explants. Independent transformed HR was able to grow vigorously and to propagate on a no-hormone 1/2MS liquid medium. The presence of pRi <i>rol</i>B gene in transformation of HR was confirmed by PCR amplification. In the liquid medium, the HR growth curve appeared to be “S” shaped, and ADB had increased to 4.633 g/l. Moreover, HPLC analysis showed that HR lines have an extraordinary ability to produce atropine (229.88 mg/100 g), anisodine (4.09 mg/100 g), anisodamine (12.85 mg/100 g), and scopolamine (10.69 mg/100 g), which were all more significant than the control roots. In conclusion, our study optimized the culture condition and established a feasible genetics reactor for <i>P. tangutica</i> green exploration and biological study in the alpine region.
Liver disease is one of the most risk factors threatening human health. It is of great significance to find drugs that can treat liver diseases, especially for acute and chronic hepatitis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and liver cancer. The search for drugs with good efficacy from traditional natural medicines has attracted more and more attention. Tibetan medicine, one of the China's traditional medical systems, has been widely used by the Tibetan people for the prevention and treatment of liver diseases for hundreds of years. The present paper summarized the natural Tibetan medicines that have been used in Tibetan traditional system of medicine to treat liver diseases by bibliographic investigation of 22 Tibetan medicine monographs and drug standards. One hundred and ninety three species including 181 plants, 7 animals, and 5 minerals were found to treat liver diseases in traditional Tibetan medicine system. The most frequently used species are Carthamus tinctorius, Brag-zhun, Swertia chirayita, Swertia mussotii, Halenia elliptica, Herpetospermum pedunculosum, and Phyllanthus emblica. Their names, families, medicinal parts, traditional uses, phytochemicals information, and pharmacological activities were described in detail. These natural medicines might be a valuable gift from the old Tibetan medicine to the world, and would be potential drug candidates for the treatment of liver diseases. Further studies are needed to prove their medicinal values in liver diseases treatment, identify bioactive compounds, elucidate the underlying mechanism of action, and clarify their side effects or toxicity with the help of modern phytochemical, pharmacological, metabonomics, and/or clinical trial methods.
Gentiana straminea is a popular Tibetan medicine that has been used for thousands of years in China to treat various diseases and conditions. Although it has multiple pharmaceutical purposes and important economic plant resource in China, transcriptome and molecular base still known limited. In flowering season, samples were collected from different tissues, using the NGS Illumina. Solexa platform, about 58.85 million sequencing reads were generated and assembled de novo, yielding 78,764 high quality unigenes with an average length of 1090bp. Gene Ontology (GO), KEGG pathway mapping showed that 49,033 of these were identified as putative homologs of annotated sequences in the protein databases. Among them, candidate genes associated with iridoid, flavonoid and anthocyanin were identified. Further the key enzymes involved to iridoid and flavonoid synthesis pathway were analyzed by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) on different tissues, the flower and root had the higher expression than leaves. In addition, 7591 SSR markers were identified from the unigenes of the G. straminea transcriptome. The foundation of G. straminea provided the important resource for facilitating to study molecular and functional genomics of it and related this species on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
The herbs used as the material for traditional Chinese medicine are mostly planted at mountain areas where there is appropriate weather condition. Due to the complex terrain condition in mountain area, the planting at such places is always associated with a scattered pattern, which inevitably bring difficulty to the work of accurate measurement for the planting area. Advanced research about monitoring the planting area for medicine-herb under complex environmental condition is so critical and meaningful for developing the medicine-herb planting to a large scale and an industry. Therefore, this research, taking the planting of Herpetospermum pedunculosum in Luding county as an example, utilizes RS&GIS: using the image data from TM and ETM datum as the remote sensing information source, integrating GPS data from quadrat survey on the spots, and analyzing on a GIS platform, to extract the planting area of H. pedunculosum in Luding county. The results indicate that: (1) the method and technology used to estimate the planting area of H. pedunculosum are feasible and can be applied to monitoring the planting area of medicine-herb at mountain area under complex environmental conditions: (2) the planting area of H. pedunculosum in Luding county is estimated to be 857. 246 acres by the methods utilized in this research, which is closed to the value from local statistical data with an error range less than 5%; (3) in consideration of those inevitable errorrs generating from the procedures such as remote sensing data acquisition, data preprocessing, data interpretation, and so on, and the fact that the classification of remote sensing data, which must be implemented by those above procedures, was used directly to extract the herb type, the accuracy of area estimation for the herb is significantly influenced by the accuracy of classification for herb type, and the estimated area is inevitably associated with some error.
2′,4′-Dihydroxychalcone (TFC), one of the main components in Herba Oxytropis, belongs to the flavonoid group, which is known to have anti-tumor activity in vitro. In this study, the authors examined the effects of TFC on cell proliferation and apoptosis in human gastric cancer MGC-803 cells. The MTT assay results showed that TFC was able to induce cytotoxicity in MGC-803 cells in a concentration- and time-dependent manner. Acridine orange/ethidium bromide (AO/EB) staining analysis indicated that the cytotoxicity induced by TFC was mediated by apoptosis, and flow cytometry analysis indicated an increase in apoptotic cells after treatment with TFC. Furthermore, typical apoptotic morphology such as condensed chromatin, irregular nuclei, vacuoles, and dispersed granular material in the nuclear compartment were also observed using a transmission electron microscope. These results suggested that TFC can inhibit the growth of MGC-803 cells and induce apoptosis. However, further studies are necessary to investigate the possible mechanism.
This study sought to establish a more reliable method of identifying the "monarch" or principal drug Radix inulae and its active component alantolactone (AL) in the Tibetan medicine Manuxitang. Radix inulae and AL in Manuxitang were effectively identified by thin layer chromatography (TLC). AL was quantitatively determined using gas chromatography in the range of 0.1-1.0 mug/mL (r = 0.9998). The precision was 1.20% (n = 6) with an average RSD of 1.74%. Recovery was in the range of 93.5-98.5% with RSD value of 1.85%. The methods established were simple, accurate, and specific and could be used for quality control of Manuxitang.
Traditional Chinese medicine inheritance support system (TCMISS, V2.5) was used in this study to analyze the common medicines, frequency of medicine combination, core herbal combinations and new prescriptions for the treatment of plateau disease from the Four-Volume Medical Code, Mannose Herbal Mirror and other related books. TCMISS V2.5 software was used to construct the database of drug treatment for plateau disease. The frequency analysis and association rules apriori algorithm, improved mutual information method and other data mining methods were used to explore the law of drug compatibility. After the analysis of 531 prescriptions for plateau disease, 20 common symptoms of plateau disease were summarized such as insomnia and tinnitus. There were 539 kinds of herbs in the plateau disease prescriptions, including 33 kinds of herbs whose medicinal frequency>=50, such as Terminalia chebula and Myristica fragrans, and T. chebula had the highest medicinal frequency; 14 commonly used herbal combinations, and "Aucklandia lappa-T. chebula" had the highest frequency; 13 core herbal combinations were obtained after entropy clustering analysis, including 8 combinations of three herbs such as "Allium sativum-Carum carvi-Ferula sinkiangensis" and 5 combinations of four herbs such as "A. lappa-Aquilaria sinensis-Ewgewia caryophyllata-Myristica fragrans", and 5 new prescriptions such as "A. sativum-C. carvi-F. sinkiangensis-A. lappa-Choerospondia axillaris-A. sinensis-M. fragrans". The main symptom of "insomnia" was chosen to analyze the treatment of insomnia, and the core herbal combinations mainly including A. sinensis, T. chebula, and C. axillaris as well as the new prescriptions mainly containing Carthamus tinctorius, Meconopsis horridnla, and Punica granatum were obtained. The prescriptions for the treatment of plateau disease were clarified by TCM inheritance system, and the clinical prescription regularity and characteristics of the combination of common medicines were summarized, to provide reference and new ideas for its clinical application and development of new drug research.; Copyright© by the Chinese Pharmaceutical Association.
Background. The circadian clock is involved in drug metabolism, efficacy and toxicity. Drugs could in turn affect the biological clock as a mechanism of their actions. Zuotai is an essential component of many popular Tibetan medicines for sedation, tranquil and "detoxification," and is mainly composed of metacinnabar (β-HgS). The pharmacological and/or toxicological basis of its action is unknown. This study aimed to examine the effect of Zuotai on biological clock gene expression in the liver of mice. Materials and methods. Mice were orally given Zuotai (10 mg/kg, 1.5-fold of clinical dose) daily for 7 days, and livers were collected every 4 h during the 24 h period. Total RNA was extracted and subjected to real-time RT-PCR analysis of circadian clock gene expression. Results. Zuotai decreased the oscillation amplitude of the clock core gene Clock, neuronal PAS domain protein 2 (Npas2), Brain and muscle Arnt-like protein-1 (Bmal1) at 10:00. For the clock feedback negative control genes, Zuotai had no effect on the oscillation of the clock gene Cryptochrome (Cry1) and Period genes (Per1-3). For the clock-driven target genes, Zuotai increased the oscillation amplitude of the PAR-bZip family member D-box-binding protein (Dbp), decreased nuclear factor interleukin 3 (Nfil3) at 10:00, but had no effect on thyrotroph embryonic factor (Tef); Zuotai increased the expression of nuclear receptor Rev-Erbα (Nr1d1) at 18:00, but had little influence on the nuclear receptor Rev-Erbβ (Nr1d2) and RORα. Conclusion. The Tibetan medicine Zuotai could influence the expression of clock genes, which could contribute to pharmacological and/or toxicological effects of Zuotai.
Oxidative stress has been suggested to play a causative role in the development of obesity-induced insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. Given the antioxidant potency of previously reported xanthones isolated from <i>Swertia mussotii</i>. These natural products were further evaluated against other targets in diabetes, aldose reductase and α-glucosidase, in order to identify novel multitarget-directed antidiabetic agents. Among the 14 xanthones screened, 1,3,7,8-tetrahydroxyxanthone (<b>6</b>), 1,3,5,8-tetrahydroxyxanthone (<b>7</b>), and 2,3,6,8-tetrahydroxyxanthone-7C-(β-D-glucoside) (<b>12</b>) were confirmed as good antioxidants and α-glucosidase inhibitors. Xanthone <b>7</b> was also confirmed as a potent inhibitor of aldose reductase (ALR2). Xanthone <b>7</b> was the most active α-glucosidase and ALR2 inhibitor, with IC<sub>50</sub> values of 5.2±0.3 μM and 88.6±1.6 nM, respectively, while compound <b>12</b> was shown to be the most active antioxidant. Given the overall profile, xanthone <b>7</b> is considered to be the most promising multitarget antidiabetic agent, and may have potential for the treatment of both diabetes and diabetic complications.<br><b>Nature′s medicine cabinet:</b> Xanthones isolated from <i>Swertia mussotii</i> were evaluated as multitarget antidiabetic agents. 1,3,5,8-Tetrahydroxylxanthone was identified as a good antioxidant, and also exhibited potent inhibition of α-glucosidase and aldose reductase, proven targets in the treatment of diabetes.