Publications by authors named "Mai Kimura"

Saw palmetto extract (SPE) is the most commonly used supplement for the treatment of lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), but most evidence is for those with LUTS, and little data is verifying its effectiveness for those who do not have the disease but are troubled by symptoms. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of SPE on the improvement of urinary frequency problems that present stress due to urinary urgency in daily life, among healthy Japanese adults aged ≥50 years who are not diagnosed with benign prostatic hyperplasia or overactive bladder. They were randomly assigned to the SPE group or placebo group (34 participants per group) using a computerized random number generator.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Images obtained from single-photon emission computed tomography for myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI SPECT) contain noises and artifacts, making cardiovascular disease diagnosis difficult. We developed a deep learning-based diagnosis support system using MPI SPECT images. Single-center datasets of MPI SPECT images (n = 5443) were obtained and labeled as healthy or coronary artery disease based on diagnosis reports.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Sarcopenia and osteoporosis substantially influence health and lifespan. However, the variables affecting skeletal muscle mass (SMM) or bone mineral density (BMD) remain unknown.

Design And Methods: From August 1, 2018 to July 31, 2019, we conducted a single-center, observational cohort study with 291 Japanese adult patients on maintenance hemodialysis due to end-stage kidney disease, who had their femoral neck BMD measured using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Atrial septal defect (ASD) is often underdiagnosed due to subtle symptoms, but a new screening approach using convolutional neural networks (CNN) can enhance early detection through analysis of electrocardiography (ECG) data.
  • The study analyzed 671,201 ECGs from patients at three hospitals to train a CNN model, achieving a strong area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of 0.85-0.90 for ASD detection.
  • The proposed screening method significantly improved sensitivity from 80.6% to 93.7%, demonstrating its effectiveness across various patient subgroups while maintaining specific criteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: There is no consensus on the adjustment of home oxygen therapy (HOT) and pulmonary hypertension (PH)-specific medications after balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA) in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). We aimed to examine the status of de-escalation and discontinuation of HOT and PH-specific medications post-BPA and clarify its effect on hemodynamics, biomarkers, and long-term outcomes.

Methods: From November 2012 to May 2018, 135 consecutive patients with CTEPH who underwent BPA at a single university hospital were enrolled (age, 63.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The number of patients with heart failure and related deaths is rapidly increasing worldwide, making it a major problem. Cardiac hypertrophy is a crucial preliminary step in heart failure, but its treatment has not yet been fully successful. In this study, we established a system to evaluate cardiomyocyte hypertrophy using a deep learning-based high-throughput screening system and identified drugs that inhibit it.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Failure of the right ventricle plays a critical role in any type of heart failure. However, the mechanism remains unclear, and there is no specific therapy. Here, we show that the right ventricle predominantly expresses alternative complement pathway-related genes, including Cfd and C3aR1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * After CA, a significant reduction in ASD size was found in 16 patients, suggesting that the procedure may help in managing ASD.
  • * Factors like younger age and lower pressures in the heart were linked to greater reductions in ASD size, which can help shape approaches for closing the defect with less invasive methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The goal of this study is to assess the oncologic outcomes of elderly patients who underwent hysterectomy for endometrial cancer across three variables: hysterectomy approach, lymph node resection, and adjuvant therapy.

Methods: Hospital records of patients aged ≥ 70 years who underwent hysterectomy for endometrial cancer were obtained from 19 institutions. Patients were categorized into three risk groups: low, intermediate, and high.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Pathogens including autoantigens all failed to induce systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). We, instead, studied the integrity of host's immune response that recognized pathogen. By stimulating TCR with an antigen repeatedly to levels that surpass host's steady-state response, self-organized criticality, SLE was induced in mice normally not prone to autoimmunity, wherein T follicular helper (Tfh) cells expressing the guanine nucleotide exchange factor DOCK8 on the cell surface were newly generated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: New-onset atrial tachyarrhythmia (ATA) often develops after atrial septal defect (ASD) closure. Its development raises some potential concerns such as stroke and bleeding complications caused by anticoagulant therapy and limited access to the left atrium for catheter ablation. Although it is essential to identify the risk factors of new-onset ATA, few studies have examined these factors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives And Design: Endometriosis-related pain can be caused by anatomical distortions as well as environmental factors such as inflammation and oxidative stress. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the severity of dysmenorrhea in patients with ovarian endometrioma (OMA) and cyst fluid (CF) concentrations of irons, including total iron, heme iron, and free iron.

Method: Eighty-three patients who were histologically diagnosed with OMA were enrolled in the Department of Gynecology, Nara Medical University Hospital, between 2013 and 2019.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Cellular senescence is linked to aging and diseases, making it a key target for therapies, with specific markers and unique cell morphologies used to identify senescent cells.
  • * The developed Deep-SeSMo system utilizes CNN to assess senescent cells and has successfully identified four drugs that inhibit senescence by targeting inflammatory responses, proving effective for drug screening.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Endometriosis is an estrogen-dependent gynecologic disease. Endometriotic cells survive in oxidative stress and hypoxic environments. The aim of this review is to reconsider new therapeutic strategies for endometriosis by focusing on estrogen signaling, ROS production and scavenging, and mitochondrial metabolism.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The aim of this review is to investigate the oxidant/antioxidant status and its regulatory mechanisms in patients with endometriosis and to summarize the antioxidant therapy as an alternative to hormonal therapy for endometriosis. Each keyword alone or in combination was used to search from PubMed and Embase by applying the filters of the title and the publication years between January 2000 and March 2020. Endometriosis is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by repeated episodes of hemorrhage.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Riociguat is a soluble guanylate cyclase stimulator that improves hemodynamics in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH). Accumulating evidence implicates the additional effect of riociguat on the increase in cardiac output. However, its mechanisms have not been fully understood.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Detail morphological evaluation for ASD is essential to achieve successful transcatheter closure. Three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (3D-TEE) is emerging, but few studies have comprehensively verified the usefulness of 3D-TEE. We divided 329 patients who underwent transcatheter ASD closure at our university hospital into 157 in the Conventional group evaluated with 2-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography and balloon sizing (BS), and 172 in the 3D-TEE group evaluated with 3D-TEE additionally.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background Right ventricular (RV) dysfunction is a prognostic factor for cardiovascular disease. However, its mechanism and pathophysiology remain unknown. We investigated RV function using RV-specific 3-dimensional (3D)-speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a risk factor for adverse post-procedural outcome after revascularization; however, it is unclear how left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD) and clinical HF symptoms affect percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) outcomes. We investigated the characteristics and long-term outcomes of patients with clinical HF or LVSD after PCI.

Methods: This was a Japanese multicenter registry study of adult patients receiving PCI.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Adenomyosis and endometriosis are common gynecological disorders, but their pathophysiology is still under debate. The aim of this review is to discuss whether adenomyosis and endometriosis represent two different entities or different phenotypes of a single disease. We searched PubMed electronic databases published between January 2000 and April 2020.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA) improves pulmonary hemodynamics in chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) patients. However, whether it affects the severity of sleep apnea (SA) remains unknown. We investigated the effect of BPA on the severity of SA in CTEPH patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: There is no consensus on the length of hospital stay (LOHS) and post-interventional management after balloon pulmonary angioplasty (BPA) in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). We examined temporal trends with respect to LOHS and requirement for intensive care for BPA and their relationship with the incidence of BPA-related complications.

Methods: From November 2012 to September 2017, a total of 123 consecutive patients with CTEPH who underwent BPA were enrolled (age: 66.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Patient with acute coronary syndrome benefits from early revascularization. However, methods for the selection of patients who require urgent revascularization from a variety of patients visiting the emergency room with chest symptoms is not fully established. Electrocardiogram is an easy and rapid procedure, but may contain crucial information not recognized even by well-trained physicians.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: fopen(/var/lib/php/sessions/ci_session268i5sat8asd7kfavuir2c52tmbm8970): Failed to open stream: No space left on device

Filename: drivers/Session_files_driver.php

Line Number: 177

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once

A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Warning

Message: session_start(): Failed to read session data: user (path: /var/lib/php/sessions)

Filename: Session/Session.php

Line Number: 137

Backtrace:

File: /var/www/html/index.php
Line: 316
Function: require_once