A comparative study to elucidate factors explaining willingness to use home-care robots in Japan, Ireland, and Finland.

The implementation of home-care robots is sometimes unsuccessful. This study aimed to explore factors explaining people's willingness to use home-care robots, particularly among care recipients and caregivers. Surveys were conducted in Japan, Ireland, and Finland.

Primary Health Care and Tuberculosis Detection during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Crucial Actions for Intensifying Efforts.

Background: Tuberculosis has been considered a global emergency since 1993, and controlling it has become even more challenging since 2020 due to the health and social crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to identify the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tuberculosis case detection activities within primary health Care in the largest city in Brazil.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional and analytical study on the provision of tuberculosis detection actions in primary healthcare units during the pandemic period.

Gene expression analysis of Arc mRNA as a neuronal cell activity marker in the hippocampus and amygdala in two-way active avoidance test in rats.

Introduction: Immediate early genes are widely used as neuronal cell activity markers in neuroscience. The present study investigated the relationship between their expression and abnormality in context fear conditioning.

Methods: The learning test (two-way active avoidance test) was conducted in male rats administered with nonselective muscarinic antagonist scopolamine or selective dopamine D1-like receptor antagonist SCH 23390 at a dose level of 2.

A Simple Algorithm for Predicting Bacteremia Using Food Consumption and Shaking Chills: A Prospective Observational Study.

Background: Predicting the presence of true bacteremia based on clinical examination is unreliable.

Objective: We aimed to construct a simple algorithm for predicting true bacteremia by using food consumption and shaking chills.

Design: A prospective multicenter observational study.

Comparison of Nutritional Risk Scores for Predicting Mortality in Japanese Chronic Hemodialysis Patients.

Objective: Protein energy wasting (PEW) is consistently associated with poor prognosis in hemodialysis (HD) patients. We compared the predictability of PEW as diagnosed by The International Society of Renal Nutrition and Metabolism criteria (PEW) and geriatric nutritional risk index (GNRI) for all-cause mortality in Japanese HD patients. As cut-off values for body mass index (BMI) for PEW have not been established in PEW for Asian populations, these were also investigated.

The domestic cat as a natural animal model of Alzheimer's disease.

Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most dominant neurodegenerative disorder that causes dementia, and no effective treatments are available. To study its pathogenesis and develop therapeutics, animal models representing its pathologies are needed. Although many animal species develop senile plaques (SP) composed of amyloid-β (Aβ) proteins that are identical to those found in humans, none of them exhibit neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) and subsequent neurodegeneration, which are integral parts of the pathology of AD.

Senile plaques and cerebral amyloid angiopathy in an aged California sea lion (Zalophus californianus).

Senile plaques (SPs) and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) consisting of β-amyloid (Aβ) are major features in the brain of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and elderly humans and animals. In this study, we report the finding of SPs and CAA in an aged sea lion (30 years), which is the first demonstration of AD-related pathological changes in a marine animal. Histologically, SPs were observed at the cerebral cortex, most frequently at the frontal lobe, with two morphologically different types: the small round type and the large granular type.

Event-related potentials in the frontal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum during a temporal discrimination task in rats.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the roles of the frontal cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum in timing and time perception using event-related potentials (ERPs) in rats. Rats were trained to discriminate between 2-s and 8-s auditory signal durations using a choice procedure. A simple reaction-time task using only the 2-s signal served as the control condition.