Purpose Qigong is a modality of traditional Chinese mind-body medicine that has been used to prevent and cure ailments, to improve health in China for thousands of years. Wuqinxi, a Chinese traditional Qigong that focuses on mind-body integration, is thought to be an effective exercise in promoting physical and mental wellbeing. Thus, we summarized the evidence and aim to unravel effects of Wuqinxi on health outcomes. Methods We performed a systematic review of Wuqinxi studies published in English or Chinese since 1979. Relevant English and Chinese language electronic data bases were used for literature search. The selection of studies, data extraction, and validation were performed independently by two reviewers. Results A total of 28 eligible studies were included in this review, among which three are 3 in English and 25 in Chinese. The studies included in this review involve three different experimental designs: (1) 16 RCTs; (2) 2 historical cohort studies; and (3) 10 pretest and posttest studies (PPS). Participants in this review are categorized as either healthy or clinical populations. The results from this systematic review support the notion that Wuqinxi may be effective as an adjunctive rehabilitation method for improving psychological and physiological wellbeing among different age of healthy populations in addition to alleviating and treating diseases among various clinical populations. Conclusion The results indicated that Wuqinxi has been thought to be beneficial to improve health and treat chronic diseases. However, the methodological problems in the majority of included studies make it difficult to draw firm conclusive statements. More methodologically rigorous designed large-scale RCTs with a long-term follow-up assessment should be further conducted to examine the effects of Wuqixi on health-related parameters and disease-specific measures in different health conditions. This systematic review lends insight for future studies on Wuqinxi and its potential application in preventive and rehabilitation medicine.

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Background and PurposeRecombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rtPA) is the only effective drug approved by US FDA to treat ischemic stroke, and it contains pleiotropic effects besides thrombolysis. We performed a meta-analysis to clarify effect of tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) on cerebral infarction besides its thrombolysis property in mechanical animal stroke.MethodsRelevant studies were identified by two reviewers after searching online databases, including Pubmed, Embase, and ScienceDirect, from 1979 to 2016. We identified 6, 65, 17, 12, 16, 12 and 13 comparisons reporting effect of endogenous tPA on infarction volume and effects of rtPA on infarction volume, blood-brain barrier, brain edema, intracerebral hemorrhage, neurological function and mortality rate in all 47 included studies. Standardized mean differences for continuous measures and risk ratio for dichotomous measures were calculated to assess the effects of endogenous tPA and rtPA on cerebral infarction in animals. The quality of included studies was assessed using the Stroke Therapy Academic Industry Roundtable score. Subgroup analysis, meta-regression and sensitivity analysis were performed to explore sources of heterogeneity. Funnel plot, Trim and Fill method and Egger’s test were obtained to detect publication bias.ResultsWe found that both endogenous tPA and rtPA had not enlarged infarction volume, or deteriorated neurological function. However, rtPA would disrupt blood-brain barrier, aggravate brain edema, induce intracerebral hemorrhage and increase mortality rate.ConclusionsThis meta-analysis reveals rtPA can lead to neurological side effects besides thrombolysis in mechanical animal stroke, which may account for clinical exacerbation for stroke patients that do not achieve vascular recanalization with rtPA.

Depression is a severe and chronic mental disorder, affecting about 322 million individuals worldwide. A recent study showed that diterpene ginkgolides (DG) have antidepressant-like effects on baseline behaviours in mice. Here, we examined the effects of DG and venlafaxine (VLX) in a chronic social defeat stress model of depression. Both DG and VLX attenuated stress-induced social deficits, despair behaviour and exploratory behaviour. To elucidate the metabolic changes underlying the antidepressive effects of DG and VLX, we investigated candidate functional pathways in the prefrontal cortex using a GC-MS-based metabolomics approach. Metabolic functions and pathways analysis revealed that DG and VLX affect protein biosynthesis and nucleotide metabolism to enhance cell proliferation, with DG having a weaker impact than VLX. Glutamate and aspartate metabolism played important roles in the antidepressant effects of DG and VLX. Tyrosine degradation and cell-to-cell signaling and interaction helped discriminate the two antidepressants. L-glutamic acid was negatively correlated, while hypoxanthine was positively correlated, with the social interaction ratio. Understanding the metabolic changes produced by DG and VLX should provide insight into the mechanisms of action of these drugs and aid in the development of novel therapies for depression.