Efficacy and safety of acupuncture for vocal nodules: A systematic review and meta-analysis with trial sequential analysis.

In this study, we aim to evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture for vocal nodules, concerning qualitive overall efficacy and quantitative improvement on quality of voice. Four English and four Chinese databases were searched up to December 10th, 2022. Risk of bias among the included trials were evaluated by the Cochrane ROB tool.

Driving forces of the complex formation between highly charged disordered proteins.

Highly disordered complexes between oppositely charged intrinsically disordered proteins present a new paradigm of biomolecular interactions. Here, we investigate the driving forces of such interactions for the example of the highly positively charged linker histone H1 and its highly negatively charged chaperone, prothymosin α (ProTα). Temperature-dependent single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) experiments and isothermal titration calorimetry reveal ProTα-H1 binding to be enthalpically unfavorable, and salt-dependent affinity measurements suggest counterion release entropy to be an important thermodynamic driving force.

Total aglycones from Marsdenia tenacissima increases antitumor efficacy of paclitaxel in nude mice.

Marsdeniae tenacissimae Caulis (MTC) is a Chinese herbal medicine used mainly for treatment of cancer, whose pharmacologically active constituents responsible for its in vivo activity and clinical efficacy have not been clearly elucidated. In this study, total aglycones of MTC (ETA) showed the ability to sensitize KB-3-1, HeLa, HepG2 and K562 cells to paclitaxel treatment. More inspiringly, ETA markedly enhanced the antitumor activity of paclitaxel in nude mice bearing HeLa or KB-3-1 xenografts.