Expert Rev Clin Immunol
November 2008
Evaluation of: Haworth O, Cernadas M, Yong R, Serhan CN, Levy BD. Resolvin E1 regulates interleukin 23, interferon-gamma and lipoxin A(4) to promote the resolution of allergic airway inflammation. Nat.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) and recommended dose (RD) of S-1 in combination with cisplatin and thoracic radiotherapy in patients with unresectable Stage III non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Methods And Materials: S-1 was administered orally twice daily for 14 days and cisplatin on Days 1 and 8 of each cycle; this was repeated every 3 weeks. Doses of each drug were planned as follows: level 0, 50/40; level 1, 60/40; level 2, 70/40; level 3, 80/40 (S-1 [mg/m(-2)/day(-1)]/cisplatin [mg/m(-2)/day(-1)]).
The patient was an 86-year-old female who suffered from advanced non-small cell-lung cancer (cT4N3M1, Stage IV). She was treated with combined chemotherapy of gemcitabine and S-1 as first-line therapy. This regimen was performed as a phase I trial for elderly patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA-73-year-old man, a heavy smoker, was admitted to our hospital for pain in the right lower quadrant of the abdomen. The patient had no complaint of respiratory symptoms. But he had noted a skin lesion on his right hip.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA 72-year-old woman with primary biliary cirrhosis complained of dry cough and wheezing. Chest computed tomography showed a tumor arising from the posterior wall of the trachea. Bronchoscopic examination revealed that the tumor was cauliflower-like, with two small polypoid tumors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNihon Kokyuki Gakkai Zasshi
July 2008
A 60-year-old female smoker presented with bloody sputum and back pain. A computed tomographic (CT) scan of the chest revealed a mass lesion in S(1+2) of the left lung and hilarmediastinal lymphadenopathy. TBLB revealed small cell carcinoma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe conducted a phase I study to determine the maximum tolerated dose, the recommended dose and the safety profile of S-1 and gemcitabine combination regimen in the treatment of elderly patients (> or = 70 years) with advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Chemotherapy-naive patients with advanced NSCLC were treated with S-1 and gemcitabine. S-1 was administered orally twice daily for 14 days and gemcitabine on days 1 and 15 of each cycle, and this was repeated every 4 weeks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmino acid transport systems play an important role in cellular proliferation. L-type amino acid transporter 1 (LAT1) has been associated with tumor growth, and is highly expressed in the established tumor cell lines and primary human neoplasms. In this study, we investigated the expression of LAT1 to evaluate the malignant potential and prognostic significance in neuroendocrine (NE) tumors of the lung.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSynovial sarcoma is the third most common histological type of extremity soft tissue sarcoma. However, primary mediastinal synovial sarcoma is extremely rare. We present 2 cases of unresectable primary mediastinal synovial sarcoma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Oxidative stress plays an important role in the pathogenesis of asthma. Interestingly, a low airway pH and a high concentration of 8-isoprostane, a marker of oxidative stress, has been reported to cause inflammatory airway diseases. However, the relationship between these 2 markers and pulmonary function has not been determined in mild asthma patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChurg-Strauss syndrome (CSS) is characterized by asthma and/or a history of allergy, eosinophilia and an often life-threatening systemic necrotizing vasculitis. We describe a patient with CSS and hypoxemia with a high alveolar-arterial oxygen gradient (AaDO2), but no pulmonary parenchymal involvement. The patient also had a low diffusion capacity with normal lung volume and a high level of serum thrombomodulin, a marker of endothelial cell injury.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol
May 2008
Previous studies suggested that the reconstruction or maintenance of physiological blood flow paths in the heart is important to obtain a good outcome following cardiac surgery, but this concept has no established theoretical foundation. We developed a multiscale, multiphysics heart simulator, based on the finite element method, and compared the hemodynamics of ventricles with physiological and nonphysiological flow paths. We found that the physiological flow path did not have an energy-saving effect but facilitated the separation of the outflow and inflow paths, so avoiding any mixing of the blood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: To investigate the mechanisms underlying the increased prevalence of ventricular fibrillation (VF) in the mechanically compromised heart, we developed a fully coupled electromechanical model of the human ventricular myocardium.
Methods And Results: The model formulated the biophysics of specific ionic currents, excitation-contraction coupling, anisotropic nonlinear deformation of the myocardium, and mechanoelectric feedback (MEF) through stretch-activated channels. Our model suggests that sustained stretches shorten the action potential duration (APD) and flatten the electrical restitution curve, whereas stretches applied at the wavefront prolong the APD.
The clinical significance of L-type amino acid transporter 1 (LAT1) expression remains unclear, whereas many experimental studies have demonstrated that LAT1 is associated with the proliferation of cancer cells. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of LAT1 in patients with nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). A total of 321 consecutive patients with completely resected pathologic stage I-III NSCLC were retrospectively reviewed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiochem Biophys Res Commun
March 2008
Resolvin E1 (RvE1; 5S, 12R, 18R-trihydroxyeicosapentaenoic acid) is an anti-inflammatory lipid mediator derived from the omega-3 fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). It has been recently shown that RvE1 is involved in the resolution of inflammation. However, it is not known whether RvE1 is involved in the resolution of asthmatic inflammation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPseudomesotheliomatous adenocarcinoma is an uncommon variant of peripheral lung cancer. This condition mimics a malignant mesothelioma in terms of its clinical presentation and its gross and microscopic appearance. An immunohistochemical investigation is important when it is difficult to determine whether diffuse carcinomatous involvement of the pleura is secondary to metastasis, lung cancer, or mesothelioma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDry powder inhalers (DPIs) of fluticasone propionate (FP) are the most commonly prescribed inhaled glucocorticosteroid (ICS) devices in Japan because of their ease of use. FP has the strongest anti-inflammatory effects in vitro among ICS, and it has few systemic adverse effects because of its <1% oral bioavailability. However, local adverse effects, especially hoarseness or dysphonia (hoarseness/dysphonia), appear to be frequent.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Immunopathol Pharmacol
December 2007
Information about the impacts of disasters on health is useful for establishing hazard prediction maps and action plans of disaster management. This study aims at learning effective asthma management from the volcano disaster of Mount Asama eruption in Japan on September 1, 2004. We conducted a cross-sectional study to assess the acute impact of volcanic ash on asthma symptoms and their treatment changes by using a questionnaire completed by 236 adult asthmatic patients and their physicians.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: L-[3-(18)F]-alpha-methyltyrosine ([(18)F]FMT) is an amino acid tracer for positron emission tomography (PET). We evaluated the diagnostic usefulness of [(18)F]FMT PET in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Tumor uptake of [(18)F]FMT was compared with that of 2-[(18)F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose ([(18)F]FDG) and correlated with L-type amino acid transporter 1 (LAT1) expression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIncreased tumor uptake of (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) measured by positron emission tomography (PET) reflects glucose metabolism and proliferative activity of tumor cells. We conducted a study to assess the usefulness of FDG-PET for early prediction of the response to gefitinib, an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Five NSCLC patients underwent FDG-PET to evaluate changes in FDG uptake at day 2 and 4 weeks after the initiation of gefitinib therapy compared with FDG-PET prior to therapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvasive pulmonary aspergillosis (IPA) and pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (PCP) are life-threatening opportunistic infections that occur in immunocompromised hosts. Early diagnosis and treatment of these opportunistic infections is essential to the survival of immunocompromised patients. We report a 60-year-old man undergoing short-term steroid therapy after surgical resection of a brain tumor infected with combined invasive pulmonary aspergillosis and pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia diagnosed by bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage.
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