Efficacy and safety of acupuncture combined with auricular acupressure for smoking cessation: A study protocol of a multicentre, randomized, controlled clinical trial.

Background: Nicotine dependence is an addictive behavioral disease facilitated by habitually smoking cigarettes. In many countries, acupuncture and auricular acupressure have attracted growing attention as complementary or alternative treatments for smoking cessation; however, there is a lack of rigorous randomized, controlled studies evaluating the combination of these two interventions specifically for smoking cessation. The aim of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of using acupuncture combined with auricular acupressure (A&AA) to increase the rates of smoking cessation and ultimately reduce the rates of relapse.

Antitumor effects of a purified polysaccharide from Rhodiola rosea and its action mechanism.

In the last three decades, numerous polysaccharides and polysaccharide-protein complexes have been isolated from plant or animal and used as a promising source of therapeutic agents for cancer. In this study, we prepared a homogeneous polysaccharide (RRP-ws) from Rhodiola rosea and tested its immunomodulation and anti-cancer activity in vitro and in vivo experiments using Sarcoma 180 (S-180) cells. Preliminary physicochemical analysis identified that RRP-ws was composed of Glc, Gal, Man and Rha with a relative molar ratio of 4.

Anti-tumor and immunomodulating activities of a polysaccharide from the root of Sanguisorba officinalis L.

A water-soluble polysaccharide, named as SOWP, was extracted and fractioned from the roots of Sanguisorba officinalis L. by DEAE-Sepharose anion exchange and Sepharose 6 Fast Flow column chromatography. The monosaccharide composition of SOWP determined by gas chromatography (GC) identified it was composed of glucose (68.