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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most malignant diseases worldwide. The unfavorable clinical outcome and poor prognosis are due to high rates of recurrence and metastasis after treatments. Some scholars of traditional Chinese medicine suggested that endogenous wind-evil had played an important role in metastasis of malignant tumor. Therefore, the drug of dispelling wind-evil could be used to prevent cancer metastasis and improve the poor prognosis. So we wondered whether Scorpion, one of the most important wind calming drugs, has antitumor effect especially in epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) and metastasis of HCC in this research. We found that Scorpion-medicated serum could inhibit proliferation, induce apoptosis, and decrease migration and invasion capacity of Hepa1-6 cells in vitro. Meanwhile, we observed that water decoction of Scorpion restrained tumor growth and metastasis in nude mouse of HCC metastasis models. Further experiments showed that Scorpion could suppress EMT, which is characterized by increased epithelial marker E-cadherin expression and decreased mesenchymal markers N-cadherin and Snail expression following Scorpion treatment both in vitro and in vivo. These results suggested that the Scorpion could inhibit Hepa1-6 cells’ invasion and metastasis in part by reversing EMT and providing a possible potential approach for preventing HCC metastasis. Impact statement The unfavorable clinical outcome and poor prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are due to high rates of recurrence and metastasis after treatments. Here we found Scorpion, one of the most important wind calming drugs, has antitumor effect. Scorpion-medicated serum inhibited the proliferation, induced apoptosis, and decreased migration and invasion capacity of Hepa1-6 cells in vitro. Water decoction of Scorpion restrained tumor growth and metastasis in nude mouse of HCC metastasis models. Further experiments showed that Scorpion could suppress EMT of HCC both in vitro and in vivo. Our results suggested that the Scorpion could inhibit Hepa1-6 cells’ invasion and metastasis in part by reversing EMT and providing a possible potential approach for preventing HCC metastasis.

On the background of high morbidity and mortality of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and rapid development of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement to assess the clinical effectiveness and safety of traditional insect Chinese medicine and related preparation for non-surgical HCC. RCTs were searched based on standardized searching rules in mainstream medical databases from the inception up to May 2016. Ultimately, a total of 57 articles with 4,651 patients enrolled in this meta-analysis. We found that traditional insect Chinese medicine and related preparation combined chemotherapy show significantly effectiveness and safety in objective response rate (P P P P P P P P P = 0.04); gastrointestinal adverse reactions (P

The collaborative filtering (CF) technique has been widely used recently in recommendation systems. It needs historical data to give predictions. However, the data sparsity problem still exists. We propose a new item-based restricted Boltzmann machine (RBM) approach for CF and use the deep multilayer RBM network structure, which alleviates the data sparsity problem and has excellent ability to extract features. Each item is treated as a single RBM, and different items share the same weights and biases. The parameters are learned layer by layer in the deep network. The batch gradient descent algorithm with minibatch is used to increase the convergence speed. The new feature vector discovered by the multilayer RBM network structure is very effective in predicting a rating and achieves a better result. Experimental results on the data set of MovieLens show that the item-based multilayer RBM approach achieves the best performance, with a mean absolute error of 0.6424 and a root-mean-square error of 0.7843.

Most classic network entity sorting algorithms are implemented in a homogeneous network, and they are not applicable to a heterogeneous network. Registered patent history data denotes the innovations and the achievements in different research fields. In this paper, we present an iteration algorithm called inventor-ranking, to sort the influences of patent inventors in heterogeneous networks constructed based on their patent data. This approach is a flexible rule-based method, making full use of the features of network topology. We sort the inventors and patents by a set of rules, and the algorithm iterates continuously until it meets a certain convergence condition. We also give a detailed analysis of influential inventor’s interesting topics using a latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model. Compared with the traditional methods such as PageRank, our approach takes full advantage of the information in the heterogeneous network, including the relationship between inventors and the relationship between the inventor and the patent. Experimental results show that our method can effectively identify the inventors with high influence in patent data, and that it converges faster than PageRank.

Background. Atopic dermatitis (AD) has become a common skin disease that requires systematic and comprehensive treatment to achieve adequate clinical control. Traditional Chinese medicines and related treatments have shown clinical effects for AD in many studies. But the systematic reviews and meta-analyses for them are lacking. Objective. The systematic review and meta-analysis based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement were conducted to evaluate the efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese medicines and related treatments for AD treatment. Methods. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were searched based on standardized searching rules in eight medical databases from the inception up to December 2016 and a total of 24 articles with 1,618 patients were enrolled in this meta-analysis. Results. The results revealed that traditional Chinese medicines and related treatments did not show statistical differences in clinical effectiveness, SCORAD amelioration, and SSRI amelioration for AD treatment compared with control group. However, EASI amelioration of traditional Chinese medicines and related treatments for AD was superior to control group. Conclusion. We need to make conclusion cautiously for the efficacy and safety of traditional Chinese medicine and related treatment on AD therapy. More standard, multicenter, double-blind randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of traditional Chinese medicine and related treatment for AD were required to be conducted for more clinical evidences providing in the future.

Many applications today need to manage uncertain data, such as information extraction (IE), data integration, sensor RFID networks, and scientific experiments. Top-k queries are often natural and useful in analyzing uncertain data in those applications. In this paper, we study the problem of answering top-k queries in a probabilistic framework from a state-of-the-art statistical IE model-semi-conditional random fields (CRFs)-in the setting of probabilistic databases that treat statistical models as first-class data objects. We investigate the problem of ranking the answers to probabilistic database queries. We present an efficient algorithm for finding the best approximating parameters in such a framework for efficiently retrieving the top-k ranked results. An empirical study using real data sets demonstrates the effectiveness of probabilistic top-k queries and the efficiency of our method.

Saikosaponin a (SSa), a main constituent of the Chinese herbBupleurum chinenseDC., has been demonstrated to have antiepileptic activity. Recent studies have shown that SSa could inhibit NMDA receptor current and persistent sodium current. However, the effects of SSa on potassium (K+) currents remain unclear. In this study, we tested the effect of SSa on 4AP-induced epileptiform discharges and K+currents in CA1 neurons of rat hippocampal slices. We found that SSa significantly inhibited epileptiform discharges frequency and duration in hippocampal CA1 neurons in the 4AP seizure model in a dose-dependent manner with anIC50of 0.7 μM. SSa effectively increased the amplitude ofITotalandIA, significantly negative-shifted the activation curve, and positive-shifted steady-state curve ofIA. However, SSa induced no significant changes in the amplitude and activation curve ofIK. In addition, SSa significantly increased the amplitude of 4AP-sensitive K+current, while there was no significant change in the amplitude of TEA-sensitive K+current. Together, our data indicate that SSa inhibits epileptiform discharges induced by 4AP in a dose-dependent manner and that SSa exerts selectively enhancing effects onIA. These increases inIAmay contribute to the anticonvulsant mechanisms of SSa.

To study the role of cholecystokinin octapeptide (CCK-8),beta endorphin (beta EP), and gastrin in an anorexic infantile rat model and no subsequent regulation of nose peptides by the Yunpi complex prescription ErBao Granule.We fed infantile rats with special prepared forage. A liquid extract of ErBao Granule was administered to the rats daily for 3 weeks, CCK-8, beta-EP, and gastrin concentrations in hypothalamus, gastric antrum, and plasma of the rats were measured by radioimmunoassay, and were compared with controls.Treatment of rats with ErBao Granule inhibited CCK-8 secretion and increased beta-EP and gastrin secretion. CCK-8 concentration in hypothalamus and plasma of model control group increased significantly and correlated negatively with food intake of models, respectively. beta-EP concentration in gastric antrum and plasma of model control group decreased significantly and showed a positive correlation with food intake of models, respectively. Hypothalamus concentration of beta-EP was similar in models and controls. Gastrin concentration in gastric antrum of models was lower than in the blank control group, and correlated positively to food intake of models. Finally, CCK-8 concentrations in plasma of rats showed a positive correlation with plasma beta-EP (r=-0.68, P0.05).The increased plasma and hypothalamus concentration of CCK-8, decreased gastric antrum and plasma level of beta-EP, and decreased gastric antrum concentration of gastrin are associated significantly with the anorexia of infantile anorexic rat models produced by special for-age. ErBao Granule can reverse these changes, which may be the major mechanisms of ErBao Granule simulating feeding.