Levels of trace elements, methylmercury and polybrominated diphenyl ethers in foraging green turtles in the South China region and their conservation implications.

Sea turtles are globally endangered and face daily anthropogenic threats, including pollution. However, there is a lack of ecotoxicological information on sea turtles, especially in the Asia-Pacific region. This study aims to determine pollutant levels of foraging green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in South China, including Hong Kong, Guangdong and Taiwan, as a basis for their conservation.

[Review for sedative and hypnotic mechanism of sedative traditional Chinese medicine and relative active components on neurotransmitters].

The sedative traditional Chinese medicine has a long history of clinical experience in treating insomnia. The main pharmacological effects of sedative agents are sedation, hypnosis, antianxiety and antidepression which might be related to certain neurotransmitters and cytokines and so on. This review summarized the mechanism of sedative traditional Chinese medicine and its active monomers based on neurotransmitters, including GABA, Glu, 5-HT, DA, NE and their metabolites 5-HIAA, HVA, DOPAC.

[Application of cell co-culture techniques in central nervous system diseases].

The study of central nervous system disease is dependent on in vitro culture of neuronal cells. However, it is hard to determine the interaction between cells in culture of single type of neuronal cells. The co-culture system is able to mimic the cell-cell interaction in the brain and to facilitate investigation into the interaction between different types of cells, as well as cell-environment interaction.

[Neuroprotection of herbs promoting EPO on cerebral ischemia].

Amounts of researches show that EPO is characterized with neurotrophic and neuroprotective manner, especially in brain stroke, which attracts a large numbers of researchers to study it. With the accumulating researches on its neuroprotection, many related mechanisms were revealed, such as antioxidant, anti-apoptosis, angiogenesis, anti-inflammatory, which suggests a multiple targets role of EPO on brain stroke. However, because of the high risk of thromboembolism in clinical administration of rhEPO and its analogs, the herbs are potential to be a replacer for its less side effects.

[Effect of Jiawei Foshou San and its compatibility on hepatic P450 enzyme activity and hepatocyte morphology in rats].

To investigate the effect of Jiawei Foshou San and its various combined administration on hepatic P450 enzyme activity and hepatocyte morphology in rats. Rats were orally administered with drugs for four weeks and then sacrificed to prepare liver microsomes. The liver microsomes were incubated with the cocktail method; The metabolites were determined with the rapid liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to investigate the hepatocyte P450 enzyme activity.