Salvia miltiorrhiza (SM) has been used in oriental medicine for its neuroprotective effects against cardiovascular diseases and ischemic stroke. In this study, we investigated the therapeutic mechanism underlying the effects of SM on stroke using a transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO) mouse model. Our results showed that SM administration significantly attenuated acute brain injury, including brain infarction and neurological deficits, 3 days after tMCAO. This was confirmed by our magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study, which revealed a reduction in brain infarction with SM administration, as well as our magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) study, which demonstrated the restoration of brain metabolites, including taurine, total creatine, and glutamate. The neuroprotective effects of SM were associated with the reduction in gliosis and upregulation of inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and Tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), along with the upregulation of phosphorylated STAT3 in post-ischemic brains. SM also reduced the levels of 4-Hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) and malondialdehyde (MDA), which are markers of lipid peroxidation, induced by oxidative stress upregulation in the penumbra of the tMCAO mouse brain. SM administration attenuated ischemic neuronal injury by inhibiting ferroptosis. Additionally, post-ischemic brain synaptic loss and neuronal loss were alleviated by SM administration, as demonstrated by Western blot and Nissl staining. Moreover, daily administration of SM for 28 days after tMCAO significantly reduced neurological deficits and improved survival rates in tMCAO mice. SM administration also resulted in improvement in post-stroke cognitive impairment, as measured by the novel object recognition and passive avoidance tests in tMCAO mice. Our findings suggest that SM provides neuroprotection against ischemic stroke and has potential as a therapeutic agent.

Changes in brain morphometry have been extensively reported in various studies examining the effects of chronic alcohol use in alcohol-dependent patients. Such studies were able to confirm the association between chronic alcohol use and volumetric reductions in subcortical structures using FSL (FMRIB software library). However, each study that utilized FSL had different sets of subcortical structures that showed significant volumetric reduction. First, we aimed to investigate the reproducibility of using FSL to assess volumetric differences of subcortical structures between alcohol-dependent patients and control subjects. Second, we aimed to use Vertex analysis, a less utilized program, to visually inspect 3D meshes of subcortical structures and observe significant shape abnormalities that occurred in each subcortical structure. Vertex analysis results from the hippocampus and thalamus were overlaid on top of their respective subregional atlases to further pinpoint the subregional locations where shape abnormalities occurred. We analyzed the volumes of 14 subcortical structures (bilateral thalamus, caudate, putamen, globus pallidus, hippocampus, amygdala, nucleus accumbens) in 21 alcohol-dependent subjects and 21 healthy controls using images acquired with 3T MRI. The images were run through various programs found in FSL, such as SIENAX, FIRST, and Vertex analysis. We found that in alcohol-dependent patients, the bilateral thalamus (left: p < 0.01, right: p = 0.01), bilateral putamen (left: p = 0.02, right: p < 0.01), right globus pallidus (p < 0.01), bilateral hippocampus (left: p = 0.05, right: p = 0.03) and bilateral nucleus accumbens (left: p = 0.05, right: p = 0.03) were significantly reduced compared to the corresponding subcortical structures of healthy controls. With vertex analysis, we observed surface reductions of the following hippocampal subfields: Presubiculum, hippocampal tail, hippocampal molecular layer, hippocampal fissure, fimbria, and CA3. We reproduced the assessment made in previous studies that reductions in subcortical volume were negatively associated with alcohol dependence by using the FMRIB Software Library. In addition, we identified the subfields of the thalamus and hippocampus that showed volumetric reduction.

The aim of this study was to find useful metabolites to predict lymph node (LN) metastasis in patients with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC) through a metabolomics approach and investigate the potential role of metabolites as a novel prognostic marker. Fifty-two consecutive patients (median age: 41.5 years, range 15–74 years) were enrolled who underwent total thyroidectomy and central LN dissection with or without lateral LN dissection in Severance Hospital between October 2013 and July 2015. The study specimens were provided by the Severance Hospital Gene Bank, and consisted of PTC from each patient. The specimens were prepared for proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H-NMR) spectroscopy. Spectral data by ¹H-NMR spectroscopy were acquired, processed, and analyzed. Patients were grouped in three ways, according to the presence of LN metastasis, central LN metastasis and lateral LN metastasis. Chi-square test and the student t-test were used to analyze categorical variables and continuous variables, respectively. The Mann-Whitney U test was used for univariate analysis of metabolites. Orthogonal projections to latent structure discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) was used for multivariate analysis to discriminate metabolic differences between the two groups. Among 52 patients, 32 had central LN metastasis and 19 had lateral LN metastasis. No clinical or histopathological characteristic was significantly different for all comparisons. On univariate analysis, no metabolite showed significant difference for all comparisons. On multivariate analysis, OPLS-DA did not discriminate the presence and absence of LN metastasis. Lactate was found to be the most promising metabolite. No metabolite could discriminate the presence of LN metastasis. However, lactate was found to be the most promising metabolite for discrimination. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to elucidate significant metabolites which can indicate the presence of LN metastasis in patients with PTC.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by cardinal motor symptoms and other non-motor symptoms. Studies have investigated various brain areas in PD by detecting white matter alterations using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging processing techniques, which can produce diffusion metrics such as fractional anisotropy and quantitative anisotropy. In this study, we compared the quantitative anisotropy of whole brain regions throughout the subcortical and cortical areas between newly diagnosed PD patients and healthy controls. Additionally, we evaluated the correlations between the quantitative anisotropy of each region and respective neuropsychological test scores to identify the areas most affected by each neuropsychological dysfunction in PD. We found significant quantitative anisotropy differences in several subcortical structures such as the basal ganglia, limbic system, and brain stem as well as in cortical structures such as the temporal lobe, occipital lobe, and insular lobe. Additionally, we found that quantitative anisotropy of some subcortical structures such as the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and brain stem showed the highest correlations with motor dysfunction, whereas cortical structures such as the temporal lobe and occipital lobe showed the highest correlations with olfactory dysfunction in PD. Our study also showed evidence regarding potential neural compensation by revealing higher diffusion metric values in early-stage PD than in healthy controls. We anticipate that our results will improve our understanding of PD’s pathophysiology.