Bone Toothbrush Handles in Chinese Tang Dynasty Ash Pits.

China has been recognized as an important birthplace of dentistry in the world. The bone toothbrush from ash pits in the museum of the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine confirms that the Chinese had the awareness of cleaning their teeth and the tools to do for over 1000 years. These findings help to promotes the study of the historical development of dentistry in China.

Pathogen identification in culture-negative cerebrospinal fluid specimens of patients with purulent meningitis using next-generation sequencing technology.

Antimicrobial therapy necessitates fast and accurate detection of pathogens in purulent meningitis (PM) diagnosis. Although considered a gold standard, the traditional bacterial detection and identification methods based on routine bacterial culture are time-consuming and show low sensitivity and specificity. In order to reduce PM-related deaths and improve the treatment efficiency, we employed trace DNA extraction technology and combined it with Next-Generation Sequencing technology for bacteria identification.

Ginsenoside Rk1 inhibits cell proliferation and promotes apoptosis in lung squamous cell carcinoma by calcium signaling pathway.

Ginsenoside Rk1 (Rk1) is a rare saponin extracted from Sun Ginseng (SG) and has been shown to have an anti-tumor effect; however, the potential role of its in lung squamous cell carcinoma remains elusive. In this study, we investigated the anti-proliferative activity and involved mechanism of Rk1 against lung squamous cell carcinoma and . First, MTT assay, cell colony formation assay and cell cycle assay showed that Rk1 effectively inhibited cell proliferation and colony formation, and induced cell arrest at G1 phase.