Hudson's optimized chemical processing method is the most commonly used chemical method to prepare acellular nerve scaffolds for the reconstruction of large peripheral nerve defects. However, residual myelin attached to the basal laminar tube has been observed in acellular nerve scaffolds prepared using Hudson's method. Here, we describe a novel method of producing acellular nerve scaffolds that eliminates residual myelin more effectively than Hudson's method through the use of various detergent combinations of sulfobetaine-10, sulfobetaine-16, Triton X-200, sodium deoxycholate, and peracetic acid. In addition, the efficacy of this new scaffold in repairing a 1.5 cm defect in the sciatic nerve of rats was examined. The modified method produced a higher degree of demyelination than Hudson's method, resulting in a minor host immune response in vivo and providing an improved environment for nerve regeneration and, consequently, better functional recovery. A morphological study showed that the number of regenerated axons in the modified group and Hudson group did not differ. However, the autograft and modified groups were more similar in myelin sheath regeneration than the autograft and Hudson groups. These results suggest that the modified method for producing a demyelinated acellular scaffold may aid functional recovery in general after nerve defects.

Background: miR-126-5p plays an important role in promoting endothelial cell (EC) proliferation. We thus explored whether miR-126-5p can promote EC proliferation and angiogenesis in chronically ischemic brains (CIBs). Results: Improved revascularization in moyamoya patients was correlated with upregulated miR-126-5p expression in the TM and DM. In vitro experiments showed that miR-126-5p promoted EC proliferation through the PI3K/Akt pathway. CIBs from the agomir group exhibited significantly higher p-Akt, VEGF, CD31 and eNOS expression compared with the control CIBs. The ICBP and the RCF were significantly better in the agomir compared with the control group. Conclusion: Increasing miR-126-5p expression in the TM can promote EC proliferation and angiogenesis in CIBs of 2VO+EMS rats through the PI3K/Akt pathway. Methods: We assessed the correlation between revascularization and miR-126-5p expression in the temporal muscle (TM) and dura mater (DM) of moyamoya patients. The effect of miR-126-5p on EC proliferation and downstream signaling pathways was explored in vitro. We established an animal model of two-vessel occlusion plus encephalo-myo-synangiosis (2VO+EMS), transfected the TM with miR-126-5p agomir/antagomir, compared the expression of miR-126-5p and relevant downstream cytokines in brain tissue among different groups, and investigated the improvement in cerebral blood perfusion (ICBP) and the recovery of cognitive function (RCF).

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The mortality and disability rate of patients with ruptured anterior communicating artery (AComA) aneurysm after bleeding is high. Even with the most advanced treatment methods, the incidence of complications remains high. The purpose of the present study was to determine the efficacy of microsurgery via supraorbital eyebrow keyhole approach (SOEK) in clipping ruptured AComA aneurysms. Between September 2010 and October 2018, 543 patients with intracranial aneurysms were admitted to the Department of Neurosurgery of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University (Guangzhou, China). Among them, 85 patients with ruptured AComA aneurysm and subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) underwent microsurgical clipping via the SOEK approach. In those patients, the clipping rate, complications and clinical efficacy of treatment were evaluated. The average age of the patients was 52.69±9.94 years (range, 28-78 years). The proportions of small, medium and large aneurysms were 83.5, 15.3 and 1.2%, respectively. Procedural complications occurred in 9 cases (10.5%). The occlusion rate of the aneurysms was 98.8%. The average follow-up period was 37.9 (±24.5) months. A total of 81.2% of the patients with SAH had a good clinical prognosisat 1 year (modified Rankin scale score, ≤2). In conclusion, for a skilled and experienced surgeon, SOEK was indicated to be a safe procedure for the treatment of ruptured AComA aneurysms; it provided sufficient intra-operative exposure and a high clipping rate.

Visual semantic segmentation is a key technology to realize scene understanding for autonomous driving and its accuracy is affected by the light changes in images. This paper proposes a novel multi-exposure fusion approach to visual semantic enhancement of autonomous driving. Firstly, a multi-exposure image sequence is aligned to construct a stable image input. Secondly, high contrast regions of multi-exposure image sequences are evaluated by context aggregation network (CAN) to predict image weight map. Finally, the high-quality image is generated by weighted fusion of multi-exposure image sequences. The proposed approach is validated by using Cityscapes’ HDR dataset and real environment data. The experimental results show that the proposed method effectively restores lost features in the light changing images and enhances accuracy of subsequent semantic segmentation.