Gestational diabetes mellitus is the most common metabolic disorder during pregnancy with health consequences for both lives during and after pregnancy. Studies found that many pregnant women turn to complementary and alternative medicine for health maintenance or symptom relief, such as herbal medicine and acupuncture from traditional Chinese medicine. With the growing popularity of traditional Chinese medicine, we conducted a systemic search in PubMed, Web of Science, and Embase databases on research studies that investigated traditional Chinese medicine during pregnancy. The resultant hits were further searched in relation to all diabetes mellitus. In total, we found three major herbal medicine/herbal products that were associated with glycemic control in gestational diabetes, including Zuo Gui Wan, red raspberry leaves, and Orthosiphon stamineus. We further reviewed them and their relatives in relation to type 2 diabetes mellitus and found more evidence of metabolic benefits. None of the herbal medicine and products examined reported toxicity in the experimental models. Overall, treatments of gestational diabetes by western or alternative interventions are grossly understudied. It is critical to have a standardized protocol when evaluating efficacy of herbal medicine and produce quality results for women and their health-care providers to make informed treatment decisions.

The worldwide prevalence of obesity has doubled during the last 50 years, and according to the World Obesity Federation, one third of the people on Earth will be obese by the year 2025. Obesity is described as a chronic, relapsing and multifactorial disease that causes metabolic, biomechanical, and psychosocial health consequences. Growing evidence suggests that obesity is a risk factor for multiple cancer types and rivals smoking as the leading preventable cause for cancer incidence and mortality. The epidemic of obesity will likely generate a new wave of obesity-related cancers with high aggressiveness and shortened latency. Observational studies have shown that from cancer risk to disease prognosis, an individual with obesity is consistently ranked worse compared to their lean counterpart. Mechanistic studies identified similar sets of abnormalities under obesity that may lead to cancer development, including ectopic fat storage, altered adipokine profiles, hormone fluctuations and meta-inflammation, but could not explain how these common mechanisms produce over 13 different cancer types. A major hurdle in the mechanistic underpinning of obesity-related cancer is the lack of suitable pre-clinical models that spontaneously develop obesity-linked cancers like humans. Current approaches and animal models fall short when discerning the confounders that often coexist in obesity. In this mini-review, we will briefly survey advances in the different obesity-linked cancers and discuss the challenges and limitations in the rodent models employed to study their relationship. We will also provide our perspectives on the future of obesity-linked cancer research.

Bone cancer pain is a common symptom in cancer patients with bone metastases and the underlying mechanisms are largely unknown. The aim of this study is to explore the endogenous analgesic mechanisms to develop new therapeutic strategies for bone‐cancer induced pain (BCIP) as a result of metastases.MRMT‐1 tumor cells were injected into bilateral tibia of rats and X‐rays showed that the area suffered from bone destruction, accompanied by an increase in osteoclast numbers. In addition, rats with bone cancer showed apparent mechanical and thermal hyperalgesia at day 28 after intratibialMRMT‐1 inoculation. However, intrathecal injection of morphine or lentivirus‐mediated glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factorRNAi (Lvs‐siGDNF) significantly attenuated mechanical and thermal hyperalgesia, as shown by increases in paw withdrawal thresholds and tail‐flick latencies, respectively. Furthermore, Lvs‐siGDNFinterference not only substantially downregulatedGDNFprotein levels, but also reduced substance P immunoreactivity and downregulated the ratio ofpERK/ERK, where its activation is crucial for pain signaling, in the spinal dorsal horn of this model of bone‐cancer induced pain. In this study, Lvs‐siGDNFgene therapy appeared to be a beneficial method for the treatment of bone cancer pain. As the effect of Lvs‐siGDNFto relieve pain was similar to morphine, but it is not a narcotic, the use ofGDNF RNAinterference may be considered as a new therapeutic strategy for the treatment of bone cancer pain in the future.

Adipocytes and macrophages, the two major constituents of adipose tissue, exhibit sex differences and work in synergy in adipose tissue physiology and pathophysiology, including obesity-linked insulin resistance and metabolic dysregulation. Sex steroid hormones play a major role in sex differences in adipose tissue biology. However, our knowledge of the molecules that mediate these effects in adipose tissue remains limited. Consequently, it remains unclear whether these effector molecules in different adipose and immune cell types are distinct or if there are also pleiotropic effectors. Recently, a protein named prohibitin (PHB) with cell compartment- and tissue-specific functions has been found to play a role in sex differences in adipose and immune functions. Transgenic (Tg) mouse models overexpressing PHB (PHB-Tg) and a phospho-mutant PHB (mPHB-Tg) from the fatty acid binding protein-4 (Fabp-4) gene promoter display sex-neutral obesity; however, obesity-related insulin resistance and metabolic dysregulation are male-specific. Intriguingly, with aging, the male PHB-Tg mice developed hepatic steatosis and subsequently liver tumors whereas the male mPHB-Tg mice developed lymph node tumors and splenomegaly. Unlike the male transgenic mice, the female PHB-Tg and mPHB-Tg mice remain protected from obesity-related metabolic dysregulation and tumor development. In conclusion, the sex-dimorphic metabolic and immune phenotypes of PHB-Tg and mPHB-Tg mice have revealed PHB as a pleiotropic effector of sex differences in adipose and immune functions. In this mini-review, we will discuss the pleiotropic attributes of PHB and potential mechanisms that may have contributed to the sex-dimorphic metabolic phenotypes in PHB-Tg and mPHB-Tg mice, which warrant future research. We propose that PHB is a prime candidate for a pleiotropic mediator of sex differences in adipose and immune functions in both physiology and pathophysiology, including obesity, insulin resistance, and metabolic dysregulation.