Effects of late evening snack on diurnal plasma glucose profile in patients with chronic viral liver disease.

Aim:   Glycemic control is important to improve the prognosis in cirrhotic patients with complications from diabetes. A late evening snack (LES) has been recommended for cirrhotic patients. We investigated the effects of LES on diurnal plasma glucose levels.

Proton pump inhibitors and recurrent bleeding in peptic ulcer disease.

Peptic ulcer disease (PUD) is one of the main lesions responsible for upper gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding, as well as esophageal varices and Mallory-Weiss tear. Helicobacter pylori and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)/aspirin are the major responsible causes. In cases of upper GI bleeding, urgent endoscopy is performed after stabilization of vital signs.

Measurement of serum branched-chain amino acids to tyrosine ratio level is useful in a prediction of a change of serum albumin level in chronic liver disease.

Aim: In patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV)-associated chronic liver diseases, especially in those with liver cirrhosis, accurate evaluation of their protein nutrition status is very important to improve their quality of life. Whereas the serum albumin level is commonly used to evaluate patients' protein nutrition status, in the present study, the serum amino acid levels were measured, as they also provide valuable information.

Methods: Serum albumin levels and branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) to tyrosine ratio (BTR) were determined in 447 patients with HCV-associated chronic liver diseases (313 with chronic hepatitis and 134 with liver cirrhosis).

Effect of symptomatic gastroesophageal reflux disease on quality of life of patients with chronic liver disease.

Aim: Reflux esophagitis is becoming increasingly more prevalent in Japan. It has been noted that symptomatic gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and chronic liver disease may adversely affect patients' quality of life.

Methods: In the present study, 238 chronic liver disease patients (151 patients with chronic hepatitis and 87 patients with liver cirrhosis) were enrolled.

[PPI-test].

GERD (gastro esophageal reflux disease) is defined as a condition that develops when the reflux of stomach contents causes troublesome symptoms and/or complications. Endoscopic-positive GERD can be easily diagnosed with endoscopy, while endoscopic-negative GERD cannot be. PPI test, which reveals the disorders by judging symptom-relief after PPI administration, is an effective tool for diagnosis of NERD, and extraesophageal GERD such as LPRD and bronchial asthma.

View-independent reconstruction algorithms for cone beam CT with general saddle trajectory.

In Yang et al (2006 Phys. Med. Biol.

Exact cone beam reconstruction for a saddle trajectory.

We propose an exact shift-invariant filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithm for inversion of cone beam (CB) data in the case where the source trajectory is a saddle. The algorithm allows for axial truncation of the cone beam data. The algorithm involves only one family of filtering lines on the detector plane, and it does not depend on the existence of pi-lines.