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Background To systematically review and assess the efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for treating primary Sjogren’s syndrome (pSS). Methods Five electronic databases (Pubmed, EMBASE, Web of science, Ovid, Cochrane Library) were searched for randomized controlled trials and retrospective or prospective studies published in English that reported the effect of HCQ on pSS. The subjective symptoms ( sicca symptoms, fatigue and pain) and the objective indexes (erythrocyte sedimentation rate and Schirmer test) were assessed as main outcome measures. A meta-analysis and descriptive study on the efficacy and safety of HCQ were conducted. The estimate of the effect of HCQ treatment was expressed as a proportion together with 95% confidence interval, and plotted on a forest plot. Results Four trials with totals of 215 SS patients, including two randomized controlled trials, one double blind crossover trial and one retrospective open-label study, were analyzed in this review. For dry mouth and dry eyes, the effectiveness of HCQ treatment was essentially the same as placebo treatment. For fatigue, the effectiveness of HCQ was lower than placebo. The efficacy of HCQ in treating pain associated with pSS was superior to that of the placebo. There was no significant difference between HCQ-treated groups and controls in terms of Schirmer test results, but HCQ could reduce the erythrocyte sedimentation rate compare with placebo. A descriptive safety assessment showed that gastrointestinal adverse effects were the most common adverse effects associated with HCQ. Conclusions This systematic review showed that there is no significant difference between HCQ and placebo in the treatment of dry mouth and dry eye in pSS. Well-designed, randomized, controlled trials are needed to provide higher-quality evidence to confirm our findings, and future studies should focus on some other i n dex or extraglandular measures, such as cutaneous manifestations, to further explore the therapeutic effect of HCQ in pSS. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12891-017-1543-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

We explored the applicability of Facescan three-dimensional (3D) facial reconstruction technology for adjunctive diagnosis and therapeutic evaluation of cheilitis granulomatosa (CG) in 33 patients with CG and 29 healthy controls at the Dept. of Oral Medicine, Peking University, School and Hospital of Stomatology (PKUSS), from January 2015 to May 2016. The Facescan structured-light 3D facial reconstruction scanner was used to scan the scope of lips in both groups, in order to acquire 3D morphological data of the lips. The lengths of six characteristic line segments were measured from the 3D lip model of the two groups, and the acquired data were compared. The results showed that the distance between the labiale superius and labiale inferius, and the lengths of the upper and lower vermilion borders showed significant differences between the CG and control groups, by using the 3D lip model. Thus, Facescan 3D facial reconstruction technology showed good reproducibility in the evaluation of lip swelling in CG patients, and it can be used to analyse the degree of lip swelling and evaluate the therapeutic efficacy of different treatments for CG.

To investigate the corrosion state of subsea pipeline under cathodic protection, the surface potential distribution of the pipeline has to be measured exactly, but it’s very difficult to measure directly in actually. On base of boundary element methods (BEM), a 2D model about pipe’s cathodic protection under sea water was established, and then software to calculate the electric field distribution on pipe surface in even media (seawater) was developed by way of Matlab. The developed software was verified through an experiment in lab. The result shows that numerical calculation based on BEM by Matlab is feasible for cathodic protection electric field of pipe in marine environment.

The behaviour, failure types, torsional strength and the relationship between shear and torsional strength, have been studied in this paper by means of experiments on 28 reinforced keramzite concrete members. Based on these experiments and theoretical analysis, practical methods to calculate the strength of members under combined bending, shear and torsion are advanced.