Publications by authors named "Aikawa H"

This study involved a 73-year-old man who underwent thalamotomy via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided, focused ultrasound surgery, in which the left thalamic ventral intermediate nucleus is targeted, as a treatment for action tremor of the right-hand fingers caused by essential tremor. Following treatment, the action tremor of the right-hand fingers mostly disappeared, but new symptoms of paresis and sensory impairment were evident in the left upper and lower limbs. Head MRI exhibited a hyperintense lesion on diffusion-weighted imaging and a decreased apparent diffusion coefficient in a region of the right thalamus following the anterior choroidal artery, medial posterior choroidal artery, and thalamogeniculate artery territory.

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  • Acute autoimmune pericarditis (AAP) is a rare condition with varied causes, and this study aimed to understand its diagnosis and outcomes compared to acute idiopathic pericarditis (AIP).
  • Out of 20,469 patients analyzed, 170 had AAP with diagnoses including systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis, while 1.8% of AAP patients died during hospitalization and 8.8% experienced cardiac tamponade.
  • The research found that AAP patients had a higher risk of cardiac tamponade compared to AIP patients, but both groups had similar rates of rehospitalization, highlighting the diagnostic diversity in AAP.
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  • A study reviews the complications associated with flow-diverter stents (FDSs) in treating unruptured middle cerebral artery (MCA) aneurysms, highlighting concerns about ischemic events during the procedures.
  • Among 8 patients, 37.5% experienced in-stent thrombus occlusion, with rapid treatment using argatroban improving blood flow for those affected.
  • Only one patient suffered a postoperative symptomatic stroke, but they had a favorable recovery and neurological outcome, emphasizing the importance of managing ischemic complications with appropriate interventions.
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  • Left ventricular (LV) thrombus can lead to serious complications like embolic stroke, and this study investigates the risks between two types of cardiomyopathy: ischemic (ICM) and nonischemic (NICM).
  • The analysis involved 1,037 patients from a larger database, revealing no significant difference in embolic events between ICM (5.8%) and NICM (7.6%), although different subtypes of NICM (like dilated cardiomyopathy) showed varying levels of risk.
  • The study concluded that while both types have similar overall risk for embolic stroke, dilated cardiomyopathy is associated with a higher risk than ischemic cardiomyopathy, highlighting the need to tailor management strategies
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  • A study was conducted to see if the remaining volume of an aneurysm six months after flow diverter stent treatment can predict its closure at one year.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 101 patients with unruptured cerebral aneurysms, focusing on the percentage of residual volume at the six-month mark.
  • Results indicated that a residual volume of 35.2% or more strongly correlated with poor aneurysm obliteration, showing potential for using this measurement as a predictive tool.
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Low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) levels are recommended according to the patient's risk factors based on guidelines. In patients achieving low LDL-C levels, the need for statins is uncertain, and the plaque characteristics of patients not treated with statins are unclear. In addition, the difference in plaque characteristics with and without statins is unclear in similarly high LDL levels.

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Vasospastic angina can sometimes induce acute myocardial infarction in pregnant women, potentially endangering the lives of mother and child. We describe a case of a young woman with suspected vasospastic angina who wished to become pregnant. Vasospasm provocation testing revealed severe vasospasm, and subsequent appropriate management resulted in successful delivery.

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Methionine restriction (MetR) extends lifespan in various organisms, but its mechanistic understanding remains incomplete. Whether MetR during a specific period of adulthood increases lifespan is not known. In Drosophila, MetR is reported to extend lifespan only when amino acid levels are low.

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  • Persistent primitive hypoglossal artery (PPHA) is a rare vascular condition, and this study discusses the use of a CASPER stent with an embolic protection device (Spider FX) in a patient with internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis and PPHA.
  • The procedure involved placing a 9Fr sheath in the femoral artery, deploying the Spider FX, and inserting a CASPER stent without any postoperative complications.
  • The findings suggest that using the CASPER stent in conjunction with the Spider FX is a viable treatment for ICA stenosis related to PPHA, but careful selection of tools is crucial due to the unique anatomy involved.
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Background: A carotid web is a shelf-like structure on the posterior wall of the origin of the internal carotid artery, and it is believed to cause cerebral infarction due to thrombus formed by turbulent flow with stagnation of blood flow. Recently, it has been suggested that recurrent cerebral infarction cannot be prevented in patients with a symptomatic carotid web by conventional medical management alone. However, there is still no consensus on the treatment of carotid webs.

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Dynamic coronary roadmap (DCR) is a novel technology that creates a real-time overlay of the coronary arteries in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and has the potential to reduce the contrast volume. However, the efficacy of DCR in terms of clinical outcomes in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) remains to be fully elucidated.This single center retrospective study enrolled 275 patients with CKD who underwent PCI, and divided them into a DCR group (n = 124) and Non-DCR group (n = 151).

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Background And Aims: Underwater endoscopic submucosal dissection (U-ESD) is a recently developed procedure that has the potential to prevent post-ESD coagulation syndrome (PECS) owing to its heat-sink effect. We aimed to clarify whether U-ESD decreases the incidence of PECS compared with conventional ESD (C-ESD).

Methods: A total of 205 patients who underwent colorectal ESD (C-ESD: 125; U-ESD: 80) were analyzed.

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Background: Acute pericarditis occasionally requires invasive treatment, and may recur after discharge. However, there are no studies on acute pericarditis in Japan, and its clinical characteristics and prognosis are unknown.

Methods: This was a single-center, retrospective cohort study of clinical characteristics, invasive procedures, mortality, and recurrence in patients with acute pericarditis hospitalized from 2010 to 2022.

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We describe a three-step, simple binostril approach to endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal surgery in cases of sellar/parasellar lesions. In the first step, the mucosa of the lower third of the ethmoid bulla on the outside was coagulated with monopolar microdissection needle and opened to create space on the outside of the middle turbinate. The middle turbinate was moved outward using this space, and the natural ostium of the sphenoid sinus could be confirmed easily.

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Background: There is no established adequate treatment for thrombosed aneurysm of the basilar artery with obstructive hydrocephalus. We conducted coil embolization and peritoneal shunting followed by placement of a stent expected to exert flow diversion (FD) effects to treat 2 patients with giant thrombosed aneurysms of the basilar artery with associated obstructive hydrocephalus, with good results.

Methods: From April 2019 to March 2021, consecutive two cases of symptomatic hydrocephalus due to giant thrombosed aneurysms in the posterior cranial fossa at our hospital were treated.

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A hexanucleotide repeat expansion in intron 1 of the gene is the most common genetic cause of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia, or c9ALS/FTD. The RNA transcribed from the expansion, r(GC), causes various pathologies, including intron retention, aberrant translation that produces toxic dipeptide repeat proteins (DPRs), and sequestration of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) in RNA foci. Here, we describe a small molecule that potently and selectively interacts with r(GC) and mitigates disease pathologies in spinal neurons differentiated from c9ALS patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and in two c9ALS/FTD mouse models.

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A solid-phase DNA-encoded library (DEL) was studied for binding the RNA repeat expansion r(), the causative agent of the most common form of adult-onset muscular dystrophy, myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1). A variety of uncharged and novel RNA binders were identified to selectively bind r() by using a two-color flow cytometry screen. The cellular activity of one binder was augmented by attaching it with a module that directly cleaves r().

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The cardiac prognosis of patients with frailty and malnutrition remains poorly investigated. This study aimed to investigate the impact of frailty and malnutrition on cardiac prognosis by combining the clinical frailty scale (CFS) and the geriatric nutritional risk index (GNRI) in patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). In this study, 608 patients who underwent PCI for stable angina pectoris between January 2018 and December 2020 were included.

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Lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)] is a reliable lipid marker for atherosclerosis. However, the clinical relevance of Lp(a) to lower-extremity peripheral artery disease (LE-PAD) and coronary artery disease (CAD) in the same patient has not been investigated. Patients who received primary percutaneous coronary intervention for the acute coronary syndrome (ACS) were enrolled.

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Introduction: We are going to discuss about usefulness and problems of Y-stent and T-stent assisted coiling for unruptured cerebral aneurysms.

Methods: A retrospective review was performed to identify patients who were treated using Y-stent or T-stent assisted coiling (Y-SAC, T-SAC) for 25 unruptured cerebral aneurysms from April 2017 to September 2021. Fifteen cases were treated using Y-SAC, 10 were done using T-SAC.

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The intake of dietary protein regulates growth, metabolism, fecundity and lifespan across various species, which makes amino acid (AA)-sensing vital for adaptation to the nutritional environment. The general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2)-activating transcription factor 4 (ATF4) pathway and the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) pathway are involved in AA-sensing. However, it is not fully understood which AAs regulate these two pathways in living animals and how they coordinate responses to protein restriction.

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Background: Aneurysms of the distal superior cerebellar artery (SCA) account for only a small proportion of all cerebral aneurysms. Reports of the use of flow diverters (FDs) started to appear in 2013. We obtained good results from placement of a low-profile visualized intraluminal support device (LVIS) to treat unruptured distal aneurysm of the SCA at a vascular bifurcation.

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