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Kai-Xin-San (KXS) is a traditional Chinese medicinal formula composed of Ginseng Radix et Rhizoma, Polygalae Radix, Acori Tatarinowii Rhizoma, and Poria for relieving major depressive disorder and Alzheimer’s disease in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) clinics. Previous studies on the antidepressant mechanism of KXS mainly focused on neurotransmitter and neurotrophic factor regulation, but few reports exist on neuronal inflammation regulation. In the current study, we found that KXS exerted antidepressant effects in chronic unpredictable mild stress-induced depression-like mice according to the results of behavioral tests. Meanwhile, KXS also inhibited the activation of microglia and significantly reduced the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β, IL−2, and TNF-α in the hippocampus of mice. In mice BV2 microglia cell lines, KXS extract reduced the expression of inflammatory factors in BV2 cells induced by lipopolysaccharide via inhibiting TLR4/IKK/NF-κB pathways, which was also validated by the treatment of signaling pathway inhibitors such as TAK-242 and JSH-23. T0hese data implied that the regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines in microglia might account for the antidepressant effect of KXS, thereby providing more scientific information for the development of KXS as an alternative therapy for major depressive disorder.

Elaphuri Davidiani Cornu (EDC) is the natural shedding horn of Elaphurus davidiauus Millne-Edwards that was used by people in ancient China for maintaining physical and mental health. We evaluated the antidepressant effect of EDC using depression-like animal models and explored possible mechanisms in mouse primary astrocyte cultures. We found that aqueous extracts of EDC significantly improved depression-like behavior in a mouse model of depression. The extracts enhanced expression of nerve growth factor and brain-derived neurotrophic factor neurotrophic factors in mouse prefrontal cortex and hippocampus tissues. In the mouse primary astrocyte cultures, the EDC aqueous extracts significantly increased the neurotrophic factor expression both at the transcriptional and protein levels. EDC extracts might exhibit these functions by regulating matrix metalloprotein-9 of the nerve growth factor and brain-derived neurotrophic factor metabolic pathways and might enhance expression of neurotrophic factors via the cAMP- and ERK-dependent pathways. We confirmed this possibility by showing the effects of related inhibitors, providing scientific evidence that supports the utility of EDC in the development of drugs to treat major depressive disorders.

In this invited paper, a novel elliptical-core few-mode fiber (EFMF) with low loss and low Crosstalk is proposed for multiple input multiple output free (MIMO-FREE) applications. The EFMF, which adopts pure silica elliptical core with a step refractive index profile and trench refractive index, can be used in MIMO-FREE operation. The result using a full-vector finite element method shows that the proposed EFMF breaks the mode degeneracy and achieves modes maintaining function. The EFMF performs five non-degenerate modes operations with the modes LP01, LP11a, LP11b, LP21b, and LP21a for the MIMO-FREE applications. The mode crosstalk of the EFMF is effectively reduced using the optimized ellipticity and the large effective refractive index difference between the modes. If the data rate or capacity is conventionally set to a multiple of 2, the transmission system can be upgraded using the EFMF with four modes operations where the effective refractive index difference between any two modes is more than 2 × 10−3. A pure silica core is employed to effectively reduce intrinsic loss. The low bending loss is realized by using the trench refractive index at the cladding. The EFMF can be applied to the good transmission of mode division multiplexing in MIMO-FREE applications while eliminating the difficulty and complexity of the MIMO digital signal processing.

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