Wearing a face mask during controlled-intensity exercise is not a risk factor for exertional heatstroke: A pilot study.

Aim: This study aimed to measure the influence of wearing face masks on individuals' physical status in a hot and humid environment.

Methods: Each participant experienced different physical situations: (i) not wearing a mask (control), (ii) wearing a surgical mask, (iii) wearing a sport mask. An ingestible capsule thermometer was used to measure internal core body temperature during different exercises (standing, walking, and running, each for 20 min) in an artificial weather room with the internal wet-bulb globe temperature set at 28°C.

Midbrain volume increase in patients with panic disorder.

Aim: Although recent studies suggest abnormalities of the cerebral cortex, limbic structures, and brain stem regions in panic disorder (PD), the extent to which the midbrain is associated with PD pathophysiology is unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate structural abnormalities of the midbrain using magnetic resonance imaging and to determine if there is a clinical correlation between midbrain volume and clinical measurements in patients with PD.

Methods: Thirty-eight patients with PD (PD group) and 38 healthy controls (HC group) participated in this study.

Promomycin, a polyether promoting antibiotic production in Streptomyces spp.

Widespread interspecific stimulation of antibiotic production occurs in strains of Streptomyces owing to the activity of diffusible substances, as previously determined in our investigations of the cross-feeding effect. In this study, we newly isolated a substance produced by a Streptomyces strain closely related to Streptomyces scabrisporus, based on the observation that this substance induced the production of an unknown antibiotic in another strain related to Streptomyces griseorubiginosus. This substance, named promomycin, is a polyether structurally related to lonomycin.

[Progressive structural abnormalities in the brain of the schizophrenic].

One hundred years ago, Kraepelin hypothesized that cerebral damage might cause dementia praecox. Many patients with schizophrenia show progressive clinical deterioration, although the evidence has remained unclear for the organic brain damage. Recently, brain abnormalities have been suggested, including enlargement of the lateral ventricles and reduction of the frontal and temporal lobes, due to the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Psychomotor retardation correlates with frontal hypoperfusion and the Modified Stroop Test in patients under 60-years-old with major depression.

Frontal hypoperfusion and frontal dysfunction have been reported in patients with major depression. It was also found that frontal hypoperfusion correlated with frontal dysfunction evaluated by neuropsychological tests in depressive patients aged 60 or over. These findings suggested that depression may cause frontal dysfunction and frontal hypoperfusion, and that these pathophysiological changes are manifested as psychomotor retardation.

[A case with late-onset MELAS with hallucination and delusion].

We report a 53-year-old male patient with late onset mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis and stroke-like episodes(MELAS) with hallucination and delusion. The patient manifested various neurological symptoms including perceptive deafness, muscle weakness of limbs with loss of consciousness, sensory abnormalities in hands, feet and a face, abnormal sense of taste, tremor, palsy of upward eye movement and weak deep tendon reflexes prior to the psychotic episode. He was diagnosed as MELAS, because of high serum lactic acid and pyruvic acid, and the point mutation in the mitochondrial DNA 3243.