Search

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a common disorder with troublesome symptoms caused by reflux of gastric contents into the esophagus, has adverse impact on quality of life. A variety of medications have been used in GERD treatment, and acid suppression therapy is the mainstay of treatment for GERD. Although proton pump inhibitor is the most potent acid suppressant and provides good efficacy in esophagitis healing and symptom relief, about one-third of patients with GERD still have persistent symptoms with poor response to standard dose PPI. Antacids, alginate, histamine type-2 receptor antagonists, and prokinetic agents are usually used as add-on therapy to PPI in clinical practice. Development of novel therapeutic agents has focused on the underlying mechanisms of GERD, such as transient lower esophageal sphincter relaxation, motility disorder, mucosal protection, and esophageal hypersensitivity. Newer formulations of PPI with faster and longer duration of action and potassium-competitive acid blocker, a newer acid suppressant, have also been investigated in clinical trials. In this review, we summarize the current and developing therapeutic agents for GERD treatment.

This paper investigates the feedback control for networked discrete-time finite-distributed delays with quantization and packet dropout, and systems induce theH∞control problem. The compensation scheme occurs in a random way. The quantization of system state or output signal is in front of being communicated. It is shown that the design of both a state feedback controller and an observer-based output feedback controller can be achieved, which ensure the asymptotical stability as well as a prescribedH∞performance of the resulting closed-loop system satisfying dependence on the size of the discrete and distributed delays. Numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness and applicability of the design method in this paper.

Objective. This study was designed to compare the effect ofHelicobacter pylori(H. pylori) infection treatment on serum zinc, copper, and selenium levels.Patients and Methods. We measured the serum zinc, copper, and selenium levels inH. pylori-positive andH. pylori-negative patients. We also evaluated the serum levels of these trace elements afterH. pylorieradication. These serum copper, zinc, and selenium levels were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.Results. Sixty-threeH. pylori-positive patients and thirtyH. pylori-negative patients were studied. Serum copper, zinc, and selenium levels had no significant difference betweenH. pylori-positive andH. pylori-negative groups. There were 49 patients with successfulH. pylorieradication. The serum selenium levels were lower after successfulH. pylorieradication, but not significantly (P=0.06). There were 14 patients with failedH. pylorieradication. In this failed group, the serum selenium level afterH. pylorieradication therapy was significantly lower than that beforeH. pylorieradication therapy (P<0.05). The serum zinc and copper levels had no significant difference between before and afterH. pylorieradication therapies.Conclusion.H pylorieradication regimen appears to influence the serum selenium concentration (IRB number: KMUH-IRB-20120327).

Background. It is urgent to find alternative agents due to increasing failure rate ofHelicobacter pylori (H. pylori) eradication. The study surveyed the long-term effect of silver nanoparticles (AgNP) onH. pyloribased on Mongolian gerbil’s model.Materials and Methods. Fifty gerbils were randomly allocated to six groups (A–F). Group (Gr) A: the gerbils were fed with broth; Gr B and D: the gerbils were fed with AgNP/clay complex (0.1% of weight); Gr C and E: the gerbils were fed with AgNP/clay complex(1% of weight); and Gr D, E, and F: the gerbils were inoculated withH. pylori. At the 20th experimental week, the gerbils were sacrificed. Histology was evaluated according to the classification of the Sydney system.P<0.05was considered to be statistically significant.Results. The AgNP/clay has more obvious inhibitory effect onH. pyloriin vitro. There was a trend of higher concentrations of AgNP with stronger inhibitory effect onH. pylorigrowth(P=0.071). There were no significant differences of inflammation among groups D, E, and F(P=0.688).Conclusion. AgNP/clay would be a potential and safe agent for inhibitingH. pylori. It should be helpful for eradication ofH. pyloriinfection.

The determination of the critical path (CP) in stochastic networks is difficult. It is partly due to the randomness of path durations and partly due to the probability issue of the selection of the critical path in the network. What we are confronted with is not only the complexity among random variables but also the problem of path dependence of the network. Besides, we found that CP is not necessarily the longest (or shortest) path in the network, which was a conventional assumption in use. The Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) and Critical Path Index (CPI) approaches are not able to deal with this problem efficiently. In this study, we give a new definition on the CP in stochastic network and propose a modified label-correcting tracing algorithm (M-LCTA) to solve it. Based on the numerical results, compared with Monte Carlo simulation (MCS), the proposed approach can accurately determine the CP in stochastic networks.