scholarly journals A Comparative Study on “Mai” and “Blood Vessels” in Early Chinese and Western Medicine: Based on Hippocratic Corpus and Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Chang Huang ◽  
Jiankang Liang ◽  
Qicheng Zhang ◽  
Tao Lu

This study compared the theory describing the “four pairs of blood vessels” in the Hippocratic Corpus with the description of vessels (Mai, 脉) in the Cauterization Canon of the Eleven Vessels of the Foot and Forearm. The two theories are comparable because of the time period in which they were written, the similarities between the descriptions of the Mai and blood vessels, and the treatment methods for symptoms corresponding to their dysfunctions. We discovered that the Mai theory and the blood vessel theory in the Hippocratic Corpus were conceived with similar motivations. They had a lot of coinciding information with regard to the route of flow, but they proposed opposite cyclic directions. Interestingly, neither of them had established that a definitive relationship exists between the vessels and the heart, but other internal organs, such as the liver, were considered to have connections with the Mai and blood vessels in the two literatures. Furthermore, there were similarities among the descriptions of symptoms, and the ancient Western treatments for these symptoms were largely the same as those recorded in the ancient Chinese medical literature, especially the treatment for backache. The comparisons put forward in this study not only reflect the consistencies between the understanding of the human body and the way diseases were treated in Chinese and Western medicine in the early days, but also demonstrate that the two types of medicine had finally embarked on different developmental paths because of the differences in the philosophies and cultural backgrounds in their respective regions.

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Gonzalez ◽  
Daniel Rivera ◽  
Alam Marcelino ◽  
Gabriela Agront ◽  
Rafael Rodriguez ◽  
...  

An aneurysm is the result of a widening or ballooning of a portion of a blood vessel. The rupture of an aneurysm occurs when the mechanical stress acting on the inner wall exceeds the failure strength of the blood vessel. We propose an innovative approach to prevent the rupture of an aneurysm based on the use of nanotechnology to improve the strength of the blood vessel. We present results on the effect of silver nanofibers on the resistance toward deformation of blood vessels. The silver nanofibers are grown on the surface of the blood vessels. The nanofibers are120±30 nm in diameter and2.7±0.8 μm in length. The deformation per applied force of blood vessels was found to decrease from 0.15 m/N in control blood vessels to 0.003 m/N in blood vessels treated with the nanofibers. This represents an increase in the resistance towards deformation of a factor of 50. The increase in the resistance towards deformation is clinically significant since blood pressure increases by factors slightly larger than one in the human body. Treatment of blood vessels with silver nanofibers is a potential translational clinical tool for preventing rupture of aneurysms in a clinical setting.


2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivien Shaw

The objectives of this research are, first, to establish if the extraordinary acupuncture meridian known as Chōng $$ Penetrating Vessel or Sea of Blood, is in essence a description of certain macroscopic parts of the underlying vascular system and, second, by extension, to show that it is likely that cadaveric dissection would have been used as a tool to arrive at this understanding. Generally accepted scholarly opinion holds that the ancient Chinese rarely used dissection in order to explore the anatomy of the human body, and that the meridians are therefore invisible metaphysical structures corresponding to lines drawn on the body. However, the seminal text, ‘The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine’, describes using palpation to examine the living and dissection to examine the dead. This implies that the original authors of these texts were observing physical structures visible to the naked eye. Dissection has therefore been used to compare the descriptions of the Chōng meridian in ‘The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine’ with the vascular anatomy of the human body. Fifteen acupuncture points located on various different ordinary meridians but bearing the same name, Chōng $$ were also examined to see if they bore any relationship to the vascular system. The dissections clearly show that the Chōng meridian correlates to certain main blood vessels in the body, in particular the vena cava. Similarly, most Chōng acupuncture points have a strong correspondence with blood vessels, marking terminal arteries on the hands, feet and forehead and anastomoses on the face, body and feet. These findings strongly suggest that the ancient Chinese texts relating to this meridian are likely to have been a ‘description’ of the vascular system. Furthermore, the ancient Chinese apparently had a high degree of anatomical skill in the practice of dissection and acute powers of observation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
DR.MATHEW GEORGE ◽  
DR.LINCY JOSEPH ◽  
MRS.DEEPTHI MATHEW ◽  
ALISHA MARIA SHAJI ◽  
BIJI JOSEPH ◽  
...  

Blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against blood vessel walls as the heart pumps out blood, and high blood pressure, also called hypertension, is an increase in the amount of force that blood places on blood vessels as it moves through the body. Factors that can increase this force include higher blood volume due to extra fluid in the blood and blood vessels that are narrow, stiff, or clogged(1). High blood pressure can damage blood vessels in the kidneys, reducing their ability to work properly. When the force of blood flow is high, blood vessels stretch so blood flows more easily. Eventually, this stretching scars and weakens blood vessels throughout the body, including those in the kidneys.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.T. Akhmetov ◽  
A.A. Valiev ◽  
A.A. Rakhimov ◽  
S.P. Sametov ◽  
R.R. Habibullina

It is mentioned in the paper that hydrodynamic conditions of a flow in blood vessels with the stenosis are abnormal in relation to the total hemodynamic conditions of blood flow in a vascular system of a human body. A microfluidic device developed with a stepped narrowing for studying of the blood flow at abnormal conditions allowed to reveal blood structure in microchannels simulating the stenosis. Microstructure change is observed during the flow of both native and diluted blood through the narrowing. The study of hemorheological properties allowed us to determine an increasing contribution of the hydraulic resistance of the healthy part of the vessel during the stenosis formation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Yuliang Ma ◽  
Xue Li ◽  
Xiaopeng Duan ◽  
Yun Peng ◽  
Yingchun Zhang

Purpose. Retinal blood vessel image segmentation is an important step in ophthalmological analysis. However, it is difficult to segment small vessels accurately because of low contrast and complex feature information of blood vessels. The objective of this study is to develop an improved retinal blood vessel segmentation structure (WA-Net) to overcome these challenges. Methods. This paper mainly focuses on the width of deep learning. The channels of the ResNet block were broadened to propagate more low-level features, and the identity mapping pathway was slimmed to maintain parameter complexity. A residual atrous spatial pyramid module was used to capture the retinal vessels at various scales. We applied weight normalization to eliminate the impacts of the mini-batch and improve segmentation accuracy. The experiments were performed on the DRIVE and STARE datasets. To show the generalizability of WA-Net, we performed cross-training between datasets. Results. The global accuracy and specificity within datasets were 95.66% and 96.45% and 98.13% and 98.71%, respectively. The accuracy and area under the curve of the interdataset diverged only by 1%∼2% compared with the performance of the corresponding intradataset. Conclusion. All the results show that WA-Net extracts more detailed blood vessels and shows superior performance on retinal blood vessel segmentation tasks.


Small Methods ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 2170036
Author(s):  
Muhammad Asri Abdul Sisak ◽  
Fiona Louis ◽  
Ichio Aoki ◽  
Sun Hyeok Lee ◽  
Young‐Tae Chang ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yohei Tsukada ◽  
Fumitaka Muramatsu ◽  
Yumiko Hayashi ◽  
Chiaki Inagaki ◽  
Hang Su ◽  
...  

AbstractAngiogenesis contributes to numerous pathological conditions. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of angiogenesis will offer new therapeutic opportunities. Several experimental in vivo models that better represent the pathological conditions have been generated for this purpose in mice, but it is difficult to translate results from mouse to human blood vessels. To understand human vascular biology and translate findings into human research, we need human blood vessel models to replicate human vascular physiology. Here, we show that human tumor tissue transplantation into a cranial window enables engraftment of human blood vessels in mice. An in vivo imaging technique using two-photon microscopy allows continuous observation of human blood vessels until at least 49 days after tumor transplantation. These human blood vessels make connections with mouse blood vessels as shown by the finding that lectin injected into the mouse tail vein reaches the human blood vessels. Finally, this model revealed that formation and/or maintenance of human blood vessels depends on VEGFR2 signaling. This approach represents a useful tool to study molecular mechanisms of human blood vessel formation and to test effects of drugs that target human blood vessels in vivo to show proof of concept in a preclinical model.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Tellechea ◽  
Antonios Kafanas ◽  
Ermelindo C. Leal ◽  
Francesco Tecilazich ◽  
Sarada Kuchibhotla ◽  
...  

Systemic inflammation is associated with impaired wound healing in diabetes mellitus (DM) patients. Using immunohistochemistry techniques, the authors investigated changes in skin inflammation and skin blood vessels in human and experimental diabetes. Comparing to the non-DM human subjects, the total number of inflammatory cells per biopsy and the number of inflammatory cells around blood vessels, a strong indication of inflammation, were higher in DM subjects irrespective of their risk for developing diabetic foot ulcer. Inflammatory cell infiltration was robustly increased in all DM animal models compared with their non-DM controls. The number and density of blood vessels and CD31 positive proliferating endothelial cells around preexisting skin vessels was also higher in the DM patients. However, there were no differences in the skin blood flow between the non-DM and DM subjects. The number of skin blood vessels was also increased in the DM animals; however, these differences were less obvious than the ones observed for inflammatory cells. We conclude that skin inflammation and skin blood vessel density is increased in diabetic human subjects and in rodent and rabbit models of diabetes.


2007 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andres A. Roma ◽  
Cristina Magi-Galluzzi ◽  
Ming Zhou

Abstract Context.—Renal angiomyolipoma is a tumor composed of varying amounts of fat, smooth muscle, and blood vessels. Characteristically, tumor cells express melanocytic markers such as HMB-45 and Melan-A. Recently, several other markers have been described as having excellent diagnostic sensitivity in cutaneous melanocytic lesions. Objectives.—To compare the sensitivities of 5 melanocytic markers in renal angiomyolipoma and to study the expression patterns of these markers in the 3 different components of angiomyolipoma. Design.—A tissue microarray of 20 renal angiomyolipomas was constructed. For each case, 3 cores containing fat, blood vessels, and smooth muscle were taken. The tissue microarray was then stained for HMB-45, Melan-A, tyrosinase, NK1-C3, and CD117. Results.—HMB-45 was positive in 95%, Melan-A in 85%, NK1-C3 in 70%, tyrosinase in 50%, and CD117 in 40% of the cases. All (20/20) were positive for HMB-45 and Melan-A combined. These 5 markers had different sensitivities in the 3 components. HMB-45 was positive in 90%, 85%, and 80% of fat, smooth muscle, and blood vessel components, respectively; Melan-A in 70%, 60%, and 40%; NK1-C3 in 55%, 55%, and 45%; tyrosinase in 30%, 40%, and 10%; and CD117 in 20%, 40%, and 10%, respectively, of these 3 components. Conclusions.—HMB-45 and Melan-A combined were positive in 100% of the renal angiomyolipomas. We recommend the use of these 2 markers in the workup of this entity, including those with predominantly 1 component. Other melanocytic markers are of limited use. A tissue block comprising predominantly fat or smooth muscle components should be used when performing melanocytic marker immunostain.


Author(s):  
S Martel

In the field of medical nanorobotics, nanometre-scale components and phenomena are exploited within the context of robotics to provide new medical diagnostic and interventional procedures, or at least to enhance the existing ones. The best route for such miniature robots to access various regions inside the human body is certainly the vascular network. Such a network is made of nearly 100 000 km of blood vessels varying in diameters from a few millimetres in the arteries down to ∼ 4 μm in the capillaries with respective important variations in blood flow velocities. When injected in the blood circulatory network using existing modern techniques such as catheterization, such robots must travel from larger-diameter vessels before reaching much tinier capillaries. As such, the use of a single type of microscale robots capable of travelling in various environments and conditions related to such different blood vessels while being trackable by an external system seems, at the present time, inconceivable. Therefore, as explained in this article, an approach based on the use of several types of microscale robots with complementary methods of propulsion and steering capable of operating in a collective manner is more likely to achieve better results. This is especially true for interventions such as direct tumour targeting where the tiniest blood vessels such as the ones found in the angiogenesis network must be travelled.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document