Objective: To compare the different methods of pain control intervention during fixed orthodontic appliance therapy. Materials and Methods: A computerized literature search was performed in MEDLINE , The Cochrane Library (Issue 4, 2009), EMBASE (1984), and CNKI (1994) to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for pain reduction during orthodontic treatment. Data were independently extracted by two reviewers and a quality assessment was carried out. The Cochrane Collaboration's RevMan5 software was used for data analysis. The Cochrane Oral Health Group's statistical guidelines were followed. Results: Twenty-six RCTs were identified and six trials including 388 subjects were included. Meta-analysis showed that ibuprofen had a pain control effect at 6 hours and at 24 hours after archwire placement compared with the placebo group. The standard mean difference was 20.47 and 20.48, respectively. There was no difference in pain control between ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and aspirin. Other analgesics such as tenoxicam and valdecoxib had relatively lower visual analog scale (VAS) scores in pain perception. Low-level laser therapy (LLLT) was also an effective approach for pain relief with VAS scores of 3.30 in the LLLT group and 7.25 in the control group. Conclusions: Analgesics are still the main treatment modality to reduce orthodontic pain despite their side effects. Some long-acting nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and cyclooxygenase enzyme (COX-2) inhibitors are recommended for their comparatively lesser side effects. Their preemptive use is promising. Other approaches such as LLLT have aroused researchers' attention. (Angle Orthod. 2010;80:925-932.)

Metformin, a widely used antidiabetic drug, has numerous effects on human metabolism. Based on emerging cellular, animal, and epidemiological studies, we hypothesized that metformin leads to cerebral metabolic changes in diabetic patients. To explore metabolism-influenced foci of brain, we used 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography for type 2 diabetic patients taking metformin (MET, n = 18), withdrawing from metformin (wdMET, n = 13), and not taking metformin (noMET, n = 9). Compared with the noMET group, statistical parametric mapping showed that the MET group had clusters with significantly higher metabolism in right temporal, right frontal, and left occipital lobe white matter and lower metabolism in the left parahippocampal gyrus, left fusiform gyrus, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In volume of interest (VOI-) based group comparisons, the normalized FDG uptake values of both hypermetabolic and hypometabolic clusters were significantly different between groups. The VOI-based correlation analysis across the MET and wdMET groups showed a significant negative correlation between normalized FDG uptake values of hypermetabolic clusters and metformin withdrawal durations and a positive but nonsignificant correlation in the turn of hypometabolic clusters. Conclusively, metformin affects cerebral metabolism in some white matter and semantic memory related sites in patients with type 2 diabetes.

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High exposure to NP might inhibit neuronal development and differentiation as indicated by the reduction of the neurotrophic factor GAP-43.

This study was to investigate whether various region-of-interest (ROI) methods for measuring dopamine transporter (DAT) availabilities by single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) are statistically different, whether results of medical research are thereby influenced, and causes of these differences. Eighty-four healthy adults with 99mTc-TRODAT-1 SPECT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were included. Six major analysis approaches were compared: (1) ROI drawn on the coregistered MRI; (2) ROIs drawn on the SPECT images; (3) standard ROI templates; (4) threshold-ROIs; (5) atlas-based mappings with coregistered MRI; and (6) atlas-based mappings with SPECT images. Using the atlas-based approaches we assessed the influence of striatum ROIs by slice-wise and voxel-wise comparisons. In (5) and (6), three partial-volume correction (PVC) methods were also explored. The results showed that DAT availabilities obtained from different methods were closely related but quite different and leaded to significant differences in determining the declines of DAT availability per decade (range: 5.95–11.99%). Use of 3D whole-striatum or more transverse slices could avoid biases in measuring the striatal DAT declines per decade. Atlas-based methods with PVC may be the preferable methods for medical research.