The necessity and superiority of the surgical operation on children with floating knee injury and the fracture union and complications were investigated. Twenty-eight children with floating knee injury were subjected to open reduction and internal fixation or external fixator. The patients were followed up for 18 months to 7 years. The curative effectiveness was scored by Karlstrom criteria. The results showed that no nonunion or deformity was found. The affected limb was 1.2 cm to 1.5 cm longer in 2 cases, 0.8 to 1.2 cm shorter in 3 cases than the contralateral. No severe dysfunction of knee joint occurred. The excellent-good rate was 92.8% and the curative rate 71.4% respectively. So for children whose age is older than 5 years, it's a good way to treat the fractures of femur and tibia with open reduction and internal fixation or external fixator. The method can be advantageous for the nursing care, early function recovery, shortening of the hospital stay and avoidance of severe complications.

The relationship between tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) gene polymorphism and inhibitory effects of triptolide on TNF-_α production from perlpheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) of healthy humans was investigated. Genomic DNA from 41 healthy people was typed for TNF-_α—308 polymorphism by allele-specific polymorphism chain reaction (AS-PCR). The TNF-_α concentration in the supernatant was measured by ELISA. The results showed that the production of TNF-_α from TNF-_α—308 non-G/G genotype PBMC was higher than that from TNF-_α—308 G/G genotype PBMC after stimulated by LPS. Triptolide could lower the production of TNF-_α from G/G genotype PBMC, but had no effect on the level of TNF-_α from non-G/G genotype PBMC. It was concluded that TNF-_α gene polymorphism was related to the TNF-_α production from triptolide-inhibited PBMC culture in healthy humans.