Po-Ching Chou

The role played by central 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) in acupuncture analgesia (AA) has been studied in rats with the tail-flick response as the antinociceptive test. The analgesic effect of acupuncture can be enhanced or lowered by the increment or the decrement of the 5-HT level in the CNS. Furthermore, the turnover rate of 5-HT in the CNS has been found to be greatly facilitated during the period of acupuncture. The results imply that 5-HT in the CNS may be one of the most important neurochemical agents mediating AA.

" principle of HBP monitoring should be applied in clinical settings, including confirmation of hypertension diagnosis, 2 weeks after adjustment of antihypertensive medications, and at least every 3 months in well-controlled hypertensive patients. A good reproducibility of HBP monitoring could be achieved by individuals carefully following the instructions before and during HBP measurement, by using validated BP devices with an upper arm cuff. Corresponding to office BP thresholds of 140/90 and 130/80 mmHg, the thresholds (or targets) of HBP are 135/85 and 130/80 mmHg, respectively. HBP-based hypertension management strategies including bedtime dosing (for uncontrolled morning hypertension), shifting to drugs with longer-acting antihypertensive effect (for uncontrolled evening hypertension), and adding another antihypertensive drug (for uncontrolled morning and evening hypertension) should be considered. Only with the support from medical caregivers, paramedical team, or tele- monitoring, HBP monitoring could reliably improve the control of hypertension.

BACKGROUND: Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is the most common hereditary muscular dystrophy and caused by DMD gene mutation. In addition to progressive proximal muscle weakness, respiratory, orthopedic, and gastrointestinal complications are often observed in DMD. The natural history of patients with DMD in Taiwan has not been reported thus far. METHODS: Medical records of 39 patients who received a diagnosis of DMD between 1999 and 2016 at Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital were reviewed. The diagnosis of DMD was confirmed through muscle biopsy or DMD genetic analysis. RESULTS: The mean onset age and mean follow-up period were 2.75 years and 6.76 years, respectively. Seventeen patients (43.5%) had a family history of DMD. The mean full intelligence quotient of the patients was 71.08, and the mean age of walking ability loss was 9.7 years (25 patients). The mean onset age of respiratory insufficiency was 10.64 years with a decline rate of 5.18% per year (25 patients). The mean onset age of cardiomyopathy was 14.69 years (seven patients). The mean onset age of scoliosis was 13.29 years with a progression rate of 11.48° per year (14 patients). Eleven (28.2%) and eight (20.5%) patients had deletions and duplications of DMD, respectively. Fourteen patients (35.9%) had point mutations or small deletions or insertions. Five patients received only multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MLPA) analysis and exhibited neither deletion nor duplication. No mutation was identified in one patient through both MLPA and exon sequencing. CONCLUSION: The clinical phenotypes and disease course in our cohort were consistent with that reported in previous studies. However, the proportion of point mutations or small deletions or insertions in our study was considerably higher than that in reports from other populations. Cardiac ejection fraction was found not a reliable biomarker for identifying cardiac problems, discovering a better parameter is necessary.

Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) was adopted to grow zinc oxide (ZnO) film on sapphire substrate and improve the quality of ZnO thin film epitaxy using a magnesium oxide (MgO) buffer layer and a two-segment temperature scheme for ZnO thin film growth. The influence of thermal annealing of different layers on the optical and crystalline features, stress expression, as well as surface morphology of ZnO thin film was examined. SEM images showed smooth surfaces were formed, and these surfaces allowed the low-temperature ZnO buffer layer to have better epitaxial environment at the very beginning. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed that a lower thermal annealing temperature more effectively released the stress of materials. The thermally annealed MgO buffer layer had 26% less strain than the purely thermally annealed, high-temperature-grown ZnO (HT-ZnO), and 33% less strain than the unannealed samples. Atomic force microscopy results showed that the root-mean-square of surface roughness of thermally annealed MgO was 0.255 nm, which was 80% lower than that of thermally annealed HT-ZnO (1.241 nm). Photoluminescence measurement showed that the thermally annealed MgO buffer layer had the highest strength for near-band-edge emission because of improved crystalline quality. HRTEM results showed that the stress caused by the mismatch between the sapphire lattice was effectively released because the MgO buffer layer was annealed at a high temperature. The surface of the MgO buffer layer became smooth and the stress mismatching with the ZnO lattice did not obviously extend upwards. When MBE was used to grow ZnO thin film, a lower thermal annealing temperature for the MgO buffer layer more effectively controlled stress accumulation and produced high-quality ZnO thin film.