• Journal of Acupuncture Research
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.71-81
• /
• 2005

Objective : Dear antler (Cervus korean TEMMINCK var. mantchuricus Swinhoe) used for traditional immunosuppressive and immuno-activating action. The effect of deer antler herbal-acupuncture(DAH) solution, prepared by water extract method, on cathepsin activities in bone tissues (cartilage and synovial) cells from mouse rheumatoid arthritis (RA) model was studied. The cysteine endoprotease cathepsin mediates degradation of the MHC class II invariant chain (Ii) in human and mouse antigen-presenting cells. The studies described here examine the functional significance of cathepsin inhibition on autoantigen presentation and organ-specific autoimmune diseases in a murine model for RA. Methods : An animal model for RA in BALB/c mice thymectomized 3 days after birth (3d-Tx) was constructed All 3d-Tx BALB/c mice developed autoimmune lesions in the bone tissue cells, starting at 3 weeks of age, and the disease mediated by CD4+ T cells was chronic and progressive. Significant inhibitory effects of DAH solution on cathepsin S and L were observed in each organ in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, we confirmed that cathepsin S and L activity in each organ were clearly inhibited by DAB solution. When we examined the inhibitory effects of DAH solution against autoantigen-specific T cell responses in vitro, in regional lymph node cells, but not in spleens, from model mice, a significant inhibitory effect of DAB solution was observed in a dose-dependent manner. DAH solution do not block T cell proliferation to Con A, indicated that the dose of DAB solution 10 to $20\;{\mu}g/m{\ell}$ was sufficient to inactivate the autoantigen-specific T cell responses in vitro. In vivo therapeutic effects of DAB solution were examined in a murine model for RA, autoantigen-specific (C-II-specific) T cell response were significantly inhibited in LNCs from DAH solution-treated mice. Results : Iinhibition of cathepsin S and L in vivo alters autoantigen presentation and development of organ-specific autoimmunity in RA model. Conclusion : These data identify selective inhibition of cysteine protease cathepsin S and L as a potential therapeutic strategy for autoimmune disease process such RA. Thus, DAH solution will served as a potent anti-inflammatory and anti-arthritic agents for treatment of human RA.

• Imaging Science in Dentistry
• /
• v.50 no.2
• /
• pp.169-174
• /
• 2020

Purpose: Periodontal disease causes tooth loss and is associated with cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis. The present study proposes using a deep learning-based object detection method to identify periodontally compromised teeth on digital panoramic radiographs. A faster regional convolutional neural network (faster R-CNN) which is a state-of-the-art deep detection network, was adapted from the natural image domain using a small annotated clinical data- set. Materials and Methods: In total, 100 digital panoramic radiographs of periodontally compromised patients were retrospectively collected from our hospital's information system and augmented. The periodontally compromised teeth found in each image were annotated by experts in periodontology to obtain the ground truth. The Keras library, which is written in Python, was used to train and test the model on a single NVidia 1080Ti GPU. The faster R-CNN model used a pretrained ResNet architecture. Results: The average precision rate of 0.81 demonstrated that there was a significant region of overlap between the predicted regions and the ground truth. The average recall rate of 0.80 showed that the periodontally compromised teeth regions generated by the detection method excluded healthiest teeth areas. In addition, the model achieved a sensitivity of 0.84, a specificity of 0.88 and an F-measure of 0.81. Conclusion: The faster R-CNN trained on a limited amount of labeled imaging data performed satisfactorily in detecting periodontally compromised teeth. The application of a faster R-CNN to assist in the detection of periodontally compromised teeth may reduce diagnostic effort by saving assessment time and allowing automated screening documentation.