Publications by authors named "Niihara T"

The technique used for cancer monitoring is essential for effective cancer therapy. Currently, several methods such as diagnostic imaging and biochemical markers have been used for cancer monitoring, but these are invasive and show low sensitivity. A previous study reported that sensitively discriminated patients with cancer from healthy subjects, based on the smell of a urine sample.

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Background/aim: Early detection of gastrointestinal cancer may reduce mortality. Recently, Caenorhabditis elegans has been reported to be capable of differentiating patients with cancers from healthy persons by the smell of urine. This novel technique using C.

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This paper presents a case study of microbe transportation in the Mars-satellites system. We examined the spatial distribution of potential impact-transported microbes on the Martian moons using impact physics by following a companion study (Fujita et al., in this issue).

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Potential microbial contamination of Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, which can be brought about by transportation of Mars ejecta produced by meteoroid impacts on the Martian surface, has been comprehensively assessed in a statistical approach, based on the most probable history of recent major gigantic meteoroid collisions on the Martian surface. This article is the first part of our study to assess potential microbial density in Mars ejecta departing from the Martian atmosphere, as a source of the second part (Kurosawa et al., 2019) where statistical analysis of microbial contamination probability is conducted.

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Pancreatic cancer is one of the tumors with the worst prognosis, with the 5-year survival rate reported to be 6%. The number of patients suffering from pancreatic cancer in recent years has continued to increase dramatically. Carbohydrate antigen 19-9 is an established biomarker of pancreatic cancer, but it does not have sufficient ability to detect pancreatic cancer at an early stage.

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Background: Pancreatic hamartomas are extremely rare and may be misdiagnosed as malignant tumors. We report herein a case of a small, solid-type pancreatic hamartoma.

Case Presentation: A 72-year-old female was incidentally detected pancreatic lesion by ultrasonography.

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Mucins (MUC) play crucial roles in carcinogenesis and tumor invasion in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMNs). Our immunohistochemistry (IHC) studies have shown a consensus position on mucin expression profiles in pancreatic neoplasms as follows: MUC1-positive but MUC2-negative expression in PDACs; MUC1-negative but MUC2-positive expression in intestinal-type IPMNs (dangerous type); MUC1-negative and MUC2-negative expression in gastric-type IPMNs (safe type); High MUC4 expression in PDAC patients with a poor outcome; and MUC4-positive expression in intestinal-type IPMNs. We also showed that three mucin genes (MUC1, MUC2 and MUC4) expression in cancer cell line was regulated by DNA methylation.

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We report two cases of prostatic cancer invading the rectum with circumferential rectal wall thickening. In both cases, reddish and uneven edematous mucosa was observed by colonoscopy and the boundary of the lesion was indistinct. No mass or ulcer formation was not observed.

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We report a case of a 64-year-old Japanese man with adenoid cystic carcinoma. An elevated lesion covered by intact epithelium in the thoracic esophagus was found in September, 2007 and been followed. After dysphagia appeared follow-up endoscopy was performed in January, 2010, and morphological change into a protruding tumor was recognized.

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We report the case of a 15-year-old Japanese boy with eosinophilic gastroenteritis. The patient complained of abdominal pain and watery diarrhea and had a history of allergic rhinitis. Laboratory data on admission showed leukocytosis with remarkable eosinophilia.

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Background: The ratio of early to advanced gastric carcinomas in the cardiac region is significantly low. It is necessary to establish methods of early diagnosis of gastric carcinomas in the cardiac region.

Methods: Twenty cases (21 lesions) of early gastric carcinomas in the cardiac region were resected between 1997 and 2001.

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A 70-year-old Japanese man with no history of pancreatitis visited his local practitioner, complaining of dyspnea on effort. Left massive pleural effusion was detected and he was then referred to our hospital. A plain chest film showed marked left pleural effusion.

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A 72-year-old woman was admitted with a complaint of a sensation of abdominal fullness. Cytologic examination of ascites revealed many poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma cells. Barium enema study and colonoscopy revealed IIa+IIc-type carcinoma of the descending colon.

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An attempt was made to elucidate the nature and neural basis of the elevated discrimination limen for visual stimuli of reduced sizes that had been discovered earlier in monkeys with inferotemporal lesions. Although anterior inferotemporal damage was found to have only negligible effect, both total inferotemporal and posterior inferotemporal lesions yielded markedly elevated limens for reduced pattern stimuli but not for reduced colour stimuli. The impaired animals could be trained to discriminate reduced patterns that were below their original discrimination limen, but this required many more trials than were needed for postoperative relearning of the initial pair; normal animals, by contrast, showed perfect transfer from the standard to the smallest pair.

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