Early complementary acupuncture improves the clinical prognosis of traumatic brain edema: A randomized controlled trial.

Background: Traumatic brain edema occurs commonly brain injury, and most manifests as pericontusional edema of brain contusions. On the basis of evidence-based medicine, apart from recommending craniotomy and mannitol, there are few particularly effective measures to prevent and treat traumatic brain edema. It is uncertain whether an early complementary acupuncture treatment would improve long-term outcomes of patients with traumatic brain edema.

[Randomized clinical trials of early acupuncture treatment of limb paralysis in traumatic brain injury patients and its mechanism].

Objective: To observe the clinical effect of early acupuncture treatment of limb paralysis in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and changes of serum interleukin-6 (IL-6), brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and nerve growth factor (NGF) levels, so as to explore its mechanism underlying improvement of TBI.

Methods: A total of 70 TBI inpatients were equally divided into a medication group and an acupuncture plus medication group according to a random number table. The medication contained intravenous drip of Mannitol Injection (125 mL, once every 8 h ) and Oxiracetam Injection (4 g, once a day).

Screening of a high growth influenza B virus strain in Vero cells.

Due to the insufficient supply of embryonated chicken eggs, the preparation of large quantities of inactivated influenza vaccines will require an alternative virus culture system after the emergence or reemergence of a pandemic influenza virus. The Vero cell is one of the ideal options since it was used for producing many kinds of human vaccines. However, most of the influenza viruses can not grow well in Vero cells.