Accuracy of the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis Test in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Its Clinical Implications.

Background And Aims: The diagnostic performance of the Fibrosis-4 (FIB-4) index and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) fibrosis score (NFS) is poor in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). We determined the usefulness of the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) test in patients with T2DM.

Methods: A total of 1228 patients with biopsy-proven NAFLD were enrolled.

SWOT analysis of noninvasive tests for diagnosing NAFLD with severe fibrosis: an expert review by the JANIT Forum.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common chronic liver disease. Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is an advanced form of NAFLD can progress to liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Recently, the prognosis of NAFLD/NASH has been reported to be dependent on liver fibrosis degree.

Accuracy of the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis test, and combination of the Enhanced Liver Fibrosis and non-invasive tests for the diagnosis of advanced liver fibrosis in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Aim: The Enhanced Liver Fibrosis (ELF) test comprises a logarithmic algorithm combining three serum markers of hepatic extracellular matrix metabolism. We aimed to evaluate the performance of ELF for the diagnosis of liver fibrosis and to compare it with that of liver stiffness measurement (LSM) by FibroScan in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Methods: ELF cut-off values for the diagnosis of advanced fibrosis were obtained using receiver operating characteristic analysis in patients with biopsy-confirmed non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (training set; n = 200).

Relationship Between Physical Fitness at the End of Preseason and the Inseason Game Performance in Japanese Female Professional Baseball Players.

Watanabe, Y, Yamada, Y, Yoshida, T, Matsui, T, Seo, K, Azuma, Y, Hiramoto, M, Miura, Y, Fukushima, H, Shimazu, A, Eto, T, Saotome, H, Kida, N, and Morihara, T. Relationship between physical fitness at the end of preseason and the inseason game performance in Japanese female professional baseball players. J Strength Cond Res 33(6): 1580-1588, 2019-This study examined anthropometric and fitness profiles of Japanese female professional baseball players and investigated the relationship between players' physical fitness and inseason game performance.

Three-dimensional Scapular Kinematics During Arm Elevation in Massive Rotator Cuff Tear Patients.

Objective: Rotator cuff tears can influence shoulder kinematics and severely impair function. However, there have been no studies on three-dimensional (3D) shoulder kinematics in massive rotator cuff tear (MRCT) patients. Hypothesizing that MRCT patients could demonstrate significantly changed scapular kinematics during arm elevation in the scapular plane, we compared 3D scapular kinematics in the scapular plane between MRCT patients and healthy elderly subjects.

Identification of distinctive interdomain interactions among ZP-N, ZP-C and other domains of zona pellucida glycoproteins underlying association of chicken egg-coat matrix.

The vertebrate egg coat, including mammalian zona pellucida, is an oocyte-specific extracellular matrix comprising two to six zona pellucida (ZP) glycoproteins. The egg coat plays important roles in fertilization, especially in species-specific interactions with sperm to induce the sperm acrosome reaction and to form the block to polyspermy. It is suggested that the physiological functions of the egg coat are mediated and/or regulated coordinately by peptide and carbohydrate moieties of the ZP glycoproteins that are spatially arranged in the egg coat, whereas a comprehensive understanding of the architecture of vertebrate egg-coat matrix remains elusive.

Diverse lectin-binding specificity of four ZP3 glycoprotein isoforms with a discrete isoelectric point in chicken egg coat.

The vertebrate egg coat corresponding to mammalian zona pellucida is a filamentous matrix composed of highly and heterogeneously glycosylated proteins designated ZP glycoproteins including ZP1 to 4, ZPD and ZPAX, and play important roles in species-specific egg-sperm interactions. Recent advance in structural biology of chicken ZP3 provided new insights into molecular mechanisms of the egg-coat function involving its carbohydrate moieties. In this study, chicken ZP3 was separated into four major and distinct isoforms with different pI in 2D-PAGE.