Melatonin has been shown to diminish edema in rats. Melatonin can be used to treat spinal cord injury. This study presumed that melatonin could relieve spinal cord edema and examined how it might act. Our experiments found that melatonin (100 mg/kg, i.p.) could reduce the water content of the spinal cord, and suppress the expression of aquaporin-4 and glial ifbrillary acidic protein after spinal cord injury. This suggests that the mechanism by which melatonin alleviates the damage to the spinal cord by edema might be related to the expression of aquaporin-4 and glial ifbrillary acidic protein.

Objective: To evaluate the therapeutic effect of acupoint sticking with Chinese herbs for edema due to chronic cardiac failure.
Methods: One hundred and seventy patients in conformity with the diagnostic criteria of edema due to chronic cardiac failure were randomly divided into two groups, 85 cases in each group. The observation group was treated by oral administration of diuretics plus acupoint sticking with Chinese herbs. The control group was treated just by oral administration of diuretics same as the observation group. The therapeutic effects were evaluated after continuous intervention for 14 d.
Results: The total effective rate was 90.6% in the observation group, remarkably higher than 67.1% in the control group. The difference of overall therapeutic effect between the two groups was statistically significant (P<0.01).
Conclusion: The therapeutic effect of acupoint sticking with Chinese herbs plus oral administration of diuretics is better than simple oral administration of diuretics in treatment of edema due to chronic cardiac failure.

Brain edema leading to an expansion of brain volume has a crucial impact on morbidity and mortal-ity following traumatic brain injury as it increases intracra-nial pressure, impairs cerebral perfusion and oxygenation,and contributes to additional ischemic injuries.Classically,two major types of traumatic brain edema exist: "vasogenic"and "cytotoxic/cellular".However, the cellular and molecu-lar mechanisms contributing to the development/resolution of traumatic brain edema are poorly understood and no ef-fective drugs can be used now.Aquaporin-4 (AQP4) is a water-channel protein expressed strongly in the brain, pre-dominantly in astrocyte foot processes at the borders be-tween the brain parenchyma and major fluid compartments, including cerebrospinal fluid and blood.This distribution suggests that AQP4 controls water fluxes into and out of the brain parenchyma.In cytotoxic edema, AQP4 deletion slows the rate of water entry into brain, whereas in vasogenic edema, AQP4 deletion reduces the rate of water outflow from brain parenchyma.AQP4 has been proposed as a novel drug target in brain edema.These findings sug-gest that modulation of AQP4 expression or function may be beneficial in traumatic brain edema.