Background: The ulcerative colitis intestinal ultrasound (UC-IUS) index (UII) has been reported as a sonographic scoring system correlating with the Mayo endoscopic subscore (MES). Endoscopic improvement (EI) of UC (MES ≤ 1) is a crucial therapeutic target in clinical practice. However, the cutoff value for estimating EI using the UII has not been established.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aims: Predicting the efficacy of molecular-targeted drugs (MTDs) is an unmet need in the treatment of ulcerative colitis (UC). Intestinal ultrasound (IUS) can be used to safely and repeatedly assess UC activity.
Methods: Thirty-eight patients who started MTD therapy for active UC and underwent IUS at baseline and 3 months after starting therapy were analyzed.
In forensic cases, detailed identification of pneumonia is important. Our objective was to statistically determine the applicability of three interstitial lung disease (ILD) markers for forensic diagnosis using serum collected from dead bodies with various postmortem intervals (PMIs). We retrospectively analyzed the levels of postmortem serum Krebs von den Lungen-6 (KL-6) and pulmonary surfactant-associated proteins A and D (SP-A and SP-D) using 221 samples obtained during forensic autopsy at our facility from 2019 to 2023.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Endoscopic improvement (EI; a Mayo endoscopic subscore of 0 or 1) is considered a therapeutic target in ulcerative colitis (UC) treatment. The potential to estimate EI non-invasively is an advantage of intestinal ultrasound (IUS). In a previous study, we developed a new sonographic parameter, the submucosa index (SMI), calculated as the ratio of the submucosal thickness to bowel wall thickness (BWT), and reported that combining BWT and SMI results in a practical and promising criterion for estimating EI without color Doppler assessment.
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