Ankle-Brachial Index is a Predictor of Future Incident Chronic Kidney Disease in a General Japanese Population.

Aims: The ankle-brachial index (ABI) can be a prognostic marker for chronic kidney disease (CKD) in Western populations. Since there is little relevant evidence for Asian populations, we investigated the relationship between ABI and the risk of incident CKD in a general Japanese population.

Methods: The cohort included 5,072 participants aged 30-79 without a history of renal disease or cerebro-cardiovascular disease.

Validation of the palliative prognostic index and palliative prognostic score in a palliative care consultation team setting for patients with advanced cancers in an acute care hospital in Japan.

This study aims to clarify the predictive value of two prognostic prediction tools, the palliative prognostic index (PPI) and the palliative prognostic score (PaPS), in a setting of general hospital palliative care team for patients with advanced cancers in an acute care hospital in Japan. The retrospective observational study includes 247 patients for the PPI analysis and 187 patients for the PaPS analysis, all patients are older than 18 years, hospitalized with an advanced cancer, and referred to the palliative care team in an acute care hospital in Japan. The study successfully show that both the PPI and PaPS have an ability to divide patients into three groups, each with significantly different survival length (p<0.

Noninvasively measuring respiratory activity of rat primary hepatocyte spheroids by scanning electrochemical microscopy.

Construction of an in vitro drug screening method for evaluating drug metabolism and toxicity by using cells is required instead of the conventional in vivo one that uses animals. In order to realize the in vitro study, analyzing the cellular activity or viability noninvasively in advance of the screening is essential. The aim of the current study is to establish a method that can evaluate the cellular activity depending on spheroid sizes by means of oxygen consumption and to determine the valid diameter of hepatocyte spheroids.

Formation of hepatocyte spheroids with structural polarity and functional bile canaliculi using nanopillar sheets.

We developed a method for controlling the spheroid formation of adult rat primary hepatocytes simply by optimizing the pillar diameters and patterns of nanopillar sheets. To investigate the effects of the pillar parameters on the spheroid formation, rat primary hepatocytes were cultured on nanopillar sheets with pillars that had one of five different diameters and that had been precoated with a solution containing one of two different concentrations of type I collagen. Spheroids with a compact morphology that were adhesive to the substratum and had an optimal size (50 to 100 microm) were obtained using a sheet with a pillar diameter of 2.

A new approach for syntheses of 2',3'-dideoxy-2',3'-dehydronucleosides using 2,2-difluoro-1,3-dimethylimidazolidine (DFI) as a dehydrating reagent.

We found that 2,2-difluoro-1,3-dimethylimidazolidine (DFI) is useful for not only fluorination but also dehydrating reactions. This dehydrating ability of DFI was applied to the syntheses of dihydrofurans (2) that are possible starting materials for various anticancer or antiviral drugs.

2,2-Difluoro-1,3-dimethylimidazolidine (DFI). A new fluorinating agent.

2,2-Difluoro-1,3-dimethylimidazolidine (DFI) is a new deoxo-fluorinating agent that is useful for the conversion of alcohols to monofluorides, and aldehydes/ketones to gemdifluorides under mild conditions.