Background:Short-stem (SS) prostheses require less resection of the femoral neck, produce a more physiological load pattern in the proximal femur, reduce stress shielding, and aid bone conservation and are, therefore, beneficial for young patients. Conventional cementless implants in total hip arthroplasty (THA) have shown excellent clinical results; however, it is unclear whether SS prostheses can obtain the same clinical and radiological outcomes. We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate whether SS prostheses are superior to conventional implants after primary THA.Methods:We reviewed the literature published up to June 2016 from PubMed, Web of Science, and the Cochrane Library to find relevant RCTs comparing SSs and conventional stems in primary THA. Quality assessment was performed by 2 independent reviewers. The RevMan 5.3 software program of the Cochrane Collaboration was used to analyze the data. Random- or fixed-effect models were used to calculate standardized mean differences (SMDs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for each comparison.Results:Six RCTs involving 552 patients with 572 hips were identified. Strong evidence indicated that SS prostheses were more effective for reducing thigh pain than conventional implants (I 2 = 46%, P = 0.002; risk ratio [RR], 95% CI 0.15, 0.04–0.49). However, there were no significant differences between the 2 groups in Harris Hip Scores (I 2 = 0%, P = 0.84; SMD, 95% CI 0.02, −0.15–0.18), Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index Scores (I 2 = 0%, P = 0.35; SMD, 95% CI 0.09, −0.10–0.27), femoral offset of stem (I 2 = 0%, P = 0.57; SMD, 95% CI 0.06, −0.16–0.29), and leg-length discrepancy (I 2 = 79%, P = 0.88; SMD, 95% CI 0.04, −0.44–0.51).Conclusion:SS prostheses achieve the same clinical and radiological outcomes as conventional implants, and were superior in terms of reducing thigh pain. But whether the postoperative thigh pain applied in 2nd-generation cementless prosthesis still needs further large-scale multicenter studies with longer follow-up to confirm.

Spectra-structure interrelationship is still the weakness of NIR spectral assignment. In this paper, a comprehensive investigation from chemical structural property to natural chemical compounds was carried out for NIR spectral assignment. Surprisingly, we discovered that NIR absorption frequency of the skeleton structure with sp 2 hybridization is higher than one with sp 3 hybridization. Specifically, substituent was another vital factor to be explored, the first theory discovery demonstrated that the absorption intensity of methyl substituted benzene at 2330 nm has a linear relationship with the number of substituted methyl C-H. The greater the number of electrons given to the substituents, the larger the displacement distance of absorption bands is. In addition, the steric hindrance caused by the substituent could regularly reduce the intensity of NIR absorption bands. Furthermore, the characteristic bands and group attribution of 29 natural chemical compounds from 4 types have been systematic assigned. These meaningful discoveries provide guidance for NIR spectral assignment from chemical structural property to natural chemical compounds.

The present study aimed to investigate the effect of co‑culture of fibroblast‑like synoviocytes (FLS) with human umbilical cord‑mesenchymal stem cells (UC‑MSCs) on rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to understand the mechanisms that mediate the induced changes. FLS and UC‑MSCs were isolated and cultured individually, FLS were then cultured with or without UC‑MSCs. The phenotype of UC‑MSCs was analyzed prior to co‑culture. The UC‑MSCs were successfully isolated and expanded, and exhibited a fibroblast‑like morphology. Enzyme‑linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and reverse transcription‑quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT‑qPCR) were performed to determine the expression levels of interleukin (IL)‑1β, IL‑6, and chemokine (C‑C motif) ligand (CCL)‑2. The cell apoptosis rate was determined by flow cytometry. Furthermore, the RNAs of aggrecan and collagen type II were isolated and assessed in a chondrogenesis assay following co‑culture for 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. Protein expression levels of apoptosis‑related proteins, including B‑cell lymphoma (Bcl‑2), Bcl‑2‑associated X protein, p53 and phospho (p)‑AKT, and growth differentiation factor‑5 were analyzed by western blotting. ELISA and qRT‑PCR demonstrated that compared with FLS cultured alone, co‑culture with UC‑MSCs significantly downregulates the expression levels of IL‑1β, IL‑6 and CCL‑2. Additionally, the percentage of apoptotic cells was significantly increased in the co‑cultured cells (P<0.05), and the relative RNAs levels of aggrecan and collagen type II were increased compared with FLS alone. Furthermore, the expression levels of Bcl‑2 (P<0.05) and p‑AKT (P<0.05) were significantly decreased, whereas, p53 (P=0.001), Bax (P<0.01) and GDF‑5 (P<0.01) were increased by co‑culture of FLS with UC‑MSCs compared with FLS alone. In conclusion, co‑culture of FLS with UC‑MSCs may be important and clinically useful for the treatment of RA by inhibiting the expression of pro‑inflammatory mediators, inducing apoptosis and promoting chondrogenesis.

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near infrared spectra (niR) technology is a widespread detection method with high signal to noise ratio (SnR) while has poor modeling interpretation due to the overlapped features. Alternatively, midinfrared spectra (MiR) technology demonstrates more chemical features and gives a better explanation of the model. Yet, it has the defects of low SnR. With the purpose of developing a model with plenty of characteristics as well as with higher SnR, niR and MiR technologies are combined to perform highlevel fusion strategy for quantitative analysis. A novel chemometrical method named as Mahalanobis distance weighted (MDW) is proposed to integrate niR and MiR techniques comprehensively. Mahalanobis distance (MD) based on the principle of spectral similarity is obtained to calculate the weight of each sample. Specifically, the weight is assigned to the inverse ratio of the corresponding MD. Besides, the proposed MDW method is applied to niR and MiR spectra of active ingredients in deltamethrin and emamectin benzoate formulations for quantitative analysis. As a consequence, the overall results show that the MDW method is promising with noticeable improvement of predictive performance than individual methods when executing high-level fusion for quantitative analysis. Gas chromatography 1 , high-performance liquid chromatography 2 , thin-layer chromatography 3 , gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry 4,5 are frequently-used techniques to detect the concentration of active ingredients in pesticides. While they may come across some inconveniences such as time-consuming, expensive lab-cost and complex pre-treatment. Admittedly, vibrational spectroscopic techniques respond fast and require no pre-treatment which are especially suitable for real-time measurement and rapid analysis 6,7. NIR and MIR techniques have been widely used to determine the active ingredients and illegal added component in pesticide formulations 8-12. The two commonly used techniques of NIR and MIR are generated by the transition of vibrational energy levels. The transition occurs only when it absorbs a certain wavelength. To be concrete, as for MIR, it mainly absorb the fundamental vibrations of C-H, N-H and O-H, whereas, NIR contains a wealthy information of the combinations and overtones of the fundamental vibrations of C-H, N-H and O-H. Data fusion is a tool to combine the data originated from different sources comprehensively. To a certain degree, a single technique can only perceive limited partial information, therefore multiple techniques are expected to provide sufficient information from different viewpoints. Data fusion techniques 13-15 have been extensively employed with the purpose of getting a more well-rounded result. Generally, data fusion strategies can be basically classified into three levels, i.e., low-level, mid-level and high-level data fusion 16. When executing high-level fusion, individual models for each data source are developed first, and afterwards the final results are obtained by combinin...