Publications by authors named "Ando N"

Objective: This study investigated the efficacy and safety of electrocautery ablation for high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSILs) in men who have sex with men (MSM) including people with human immunodeficiency virus, using comprehensive biopsy with high-resolution anoscopy (HRA).

Methods: This single-arm, open-label pilot study included 20 MSM with HSIL who were treated with electrocautery ablation. The participants were recruited from the National Center for Global Health and Medicine and followed up using HRA with a comprehensive biopsy approach at 3- and 6-months post-ablation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Thoracic descending aortic perforation with overlap syndrome (systemic sclerosis and dermatomyositis) is a rare, unreported vascular pathology. We describe the case of a 75-year-old woman who presented with chest tightness, back pain, and dyspnea. Computed tomography revealed a pinhole rupture in the descending aorta.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The chestnut tiger butterfly, , can undertake long-distance migrations. They flap their wings for power flight and hold the wings for gliding; such repertoires of wing movements may be the key to explaining their excellent flight abilities. Measuring flight muscle activity using the electromyogram (EMG) is the first step toward understanding the neuromuscular mechanism of active flight control.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Discovered nearly 70 years ago, the allosteric regulation of aspartate transcarbamoylase (ATCase) is discussed in every biochemistry textbook. ATCase catalyzes the first step in pyrimidine biosynthesis. Despite extensive research, the mechanism by which this enzyme is regulated by pyrimidine and purine nucleotides has remained elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * A study in Tokyo tested a 21-day combination therapy of sitafloxacin and doxycycline on patients with drug-resistant M. genitalium, showing a 77.8% overall cure rate.
  • * The combination therapy was particularly effective for strains with certain genetic mutations, and future research is needed to optimize treatment duration and monitor resistance risk.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As Japan faces a growing crisis of vacant housing, this study investigates the underexplored relationship between vacant house distribution and neighbourhood characteristics in Toda City, a satellite city of the Tokyo metropolis located in Saitama Prefecture. We selected 10 community features, including living convenience, housing supply, and policy support, to explore their influence on vacancy rates. Using a comprehensive dataset primarily derived from the PLATEAU data, we employed a two-step method combining global and local Moran's I analyses to assess the spatial distribution normality of vacant houses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Parasitic leiomyoma (PL) are uterine fibroids that grow outside the uterus in areas like the peritoneum, often complicating diagnosis due to varied imaging results, especially after procedures like laparoscopic myomectomies.
  • A 29-year-old woman, who previously underwent laparoscopic myomectomy, was diagnosed with a mesenteric tumor through imaging that initially suggested it could be schwannoma, highlighting the ambiguity of PL identification in such cases.
  • The case concludes that PL should be considered in mesenteric tumor diagnoses following laparoscopic myomectomy, regardless of whether typical imaging features of uterine fibroids are present, due to its potential to mimic other tumors like schwannomas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Perampanel belongs to a novel class of antiseizure medications (ASMs). Studies examining the effect of hemodialysis on perampanel serum levels in clinical settings are lacking. We aimed to evaluate the changes in serum perampanel levels during hemodialysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate (PI(4,5)P2) is generated by phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate 5-kinases (PIP5Ks) from phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P). Structurally diverse and selective inhibitors against PIP5Ks are required to further elucidate the therapeutic potential for PIP5K inhibition, although the effects of PIP5K inhibition on various diseases and their symptoms, such as cancer and chronic pain, have been reported. Our medicinal chemistry efforts led to novel and potent PIP5K1C inhibitors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Diffuse scattering is a promising method to gain additional insight into protein dynamics from macromolecular crystallography experiments. Bragg intensities yield the average electron density, while the diffuse scattering can be processed to obtain a three-dimensional reciprocal-space map that is further analyzed to determine correlated motion. To make diffuse scattering techniques more accessible, software for data processing called mdx2 has been created that is both convenient to use and simple to extend and modify.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Superficial siderosis is a disease in which hemosiderin is deposited under the leptomeninges and subpial layers of hindbrain structures, e.g., the cerebellum, brainstem, and eighth cranial nerve.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Efficient and high-accuracy filtering of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) micrographs is an emerging challenge with the growing speed of data collection and sizes of datasets. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are machine learning models that have been proven successful in many computer vision tasks, and have been previously applied to cryo-EM micrograph filtering. In this work, we demonstrate that two strategies, fine-tuning models from pretrained weights and including the power spectrum of micrographs as input, can greatly improve the attainable prediction accuracy of CNN models.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Efficient and high-accuracy filtering of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) micrographs is an emerging challenge with the growing speed of data collection and sizes of datasets. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are machine learning models that have been proven successful in many computer vision tasks, and have been previously applied to cryo-EM micrograph filtering. In this work, we demonstrate that two strategies, fine-tuning models from pretrained weights and including the power spectrum of micrographs as input, can greatly improve the attainable prediction accuracy of CNN models.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • HIV-associated Kaposi's sarcoma (HIV-KS) is a tumor linked to HHV-8 infection, typically treatable with antiretroviral therapy (ART) and chemotherapy, though some cases resist treatment.
  • A 58-year-old man with refractory HIV-KS faced complications after chemotherapy, which caused painful lesions that affected his ability to walk.
  • Localized radiotherapy was used to treat his condition after ruling out metastases, leading to significant improvements in both appearance and mobility, suggesting a promising alternative for patients not responding to standard treatments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in mandibular position during midface distraction. Midface distraction was performed in patients with syndromic craniosynostosis to increase upper airway volume. Although this treatment resulted in changes in occlusion, the concomitant changes in mandibular position were poorly understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chemotherapy is the standard therapy for unresectable intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma(ICC), but chemotherapy is not efficacious. Proton beam therapy(PBT)has been covered by Japanese health insurance for ICC since 2022, and the number of cases is expected to increase. In some cases, irradiation is difficult due to the close proximity of the gastrointestinal tract to the tumor.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Diffuse scattering is a promising method to gain additional insight into protein dynamics from macromolecular crystallography (MX) experiments. Bragg intensities yield the average electron density, while the diffuse scattering can be processed to obtain a three-dimensional reciprocal space map, that is further analyzed to determine correlated motion. To make diffuse scattering techniques more accessible, we have created software for data processing called that is both convenient to use and simple to extend and modify.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) employing a single active layer potentially offer a number of benefits compared to multilayer devices; reduced number of materials and deposition steps, potential for solution processing, and reduced operating voltage due to the absence of heterojunctions. However, for single-layer OLEDs to achieve efficiencies approaching those of multilayer devices, balanced charge transport is a prerequisite. This requirement excludes many efficient emitters based on thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) that exhibit electron trapping, such as the green-emitting bis(4-(9,9-dimethylacridin-10(9H)-yl)phenyl)methanone (DMAC-BP).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Despite effective antiretroviral therapy, patients with human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV) suffer from a high frequency of malignancies, but related risk factors remain elusive. Here, we focused on blood-circulating viral protein R (Vpr) of HIV, which induces proinflammatory cytokine production and genotoxicity by exogenous functions.

Methods And Findings: A total 404 blood samples of HIV patients comprising of 126 patients with malignancies (tumor group) and 278 patients without malignancies (non-tumor group), each of 96 samples was first selected by one-to-one propensity score matching.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Many peptide-derived natural products are produced by non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs) in an assembly-line fashion. Each amino acid is coupled to a designated peptidyl carrier protein (PCP) through two distinct reactions catalysed sequentially by the single active site of the adenylation domain (A-domain). Accumulating evidence suggests that large-amplitude structural changes occur in different NRPS states; yet how these molecular machines orchestrate such biochemical sequences has remained elusive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs) have attracted considerable attention for preventing or improving obesity, which is a recognized risk factor for lifestyle-related diseases. Medium- and long-chain triglycerides (MLCTs) are expected to improve the metabolism of ingested long-chain triglycerides (LCTs). However, previous studies have reported mixed results.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hemoproteins have recently emerged as promising biocatalysts for new-to-nature carbene transfer reactions. However, mechanistic understanding of the interplay between productive and unproductive pathways in these processes is limited. Using spectroscopic, structural, and computational methods, we investigate the mechanism of a myoglobin-catalyzed cyclopropanation reaction with diazoketones.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Mycoplasma genitalium is an emerging sexually transmitted pathogen associated with increasing antibiotic resistance. The current treatment guidelines recommend moxifloxacin-sequential therapy for macrolide-resistant Mgenitalium or strains with unknown resistance profiles. However, it is unclear whether sitafloxacin, a 4th-generation fluoroquinolone antibiotic, is effective against resistant strains.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF