(1) : The number of severely obese patients worldwide is rapidly increasing. Recently, novel therapeutic approaches, such as bariatric surgery or GLP-1 receptor agonists, have emerged, bringing about a paradigm shift in this field. However, these therapies sometimes face challenges, such as peri-surgical complications or supply shortages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Stoma prolapse (SP) is a common stoma-related complication, particularly in loop colostomies. This study aimed to investigate potential risk factors for SP development after laparoscopic loop colostomy.
Methods: In total, data from 140 patients who underwent laparoscopic loop colostomy were analyzed between September 2016 and March 2022.
Background: Although international nontuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease (NTM-PD) guidelines highlight symptom presence at diagnosis, the clinical characteristics of asymptomatic Mycobacterium avium complex pulmonary infection (MAC-PI) patients remain understudied. We clarified the clinical characteristics and course of asymptomatic MAC-PI patients.
Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 200 consecutive patients with MAC-PIs and adequate available data who newly met the microbiological and radiological criteria for NTM-PD at Fukujuji Hospital from January 2018 to June 2020.
Second-generation androgen receptor (AR) signaling inhibitors (ARSIs), such as abiraterone and enzalutamide, prolong the life of patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). However, patients receiving ARSIs ultimately develop resistance through various complex mechanisms, including AR mutations, constitutively active AR-splice variants (AR-Vs), and AR overexpression. Here, we characterized a novel AR pure antagonist, TAS3681, which inhibits AR transcriptional activity and downregulates AR-full length (AR-FL) and AR-Vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMixed connective tissue disease (MCTD) is an autoimmune disorder characterized by a combination of clinical features from systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic sclerosis, and inflammatory muscle disease, along with the presence of positive anti-U1-ribonucleoprotein (U1-RNP) antibodies. The exact etiology of the disease remains unclear, but it is believed to involve vascular damage within the context of heightened autoimmune responses. Consequently, Raynaud's phenomenon and pulmonary arterial hypertension are observed in patients with MCTD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a global health concern, with advanced-stage diagnoses contributing to poor prognoses. The efficacy of CRC screening has been well-established; nevertheless, a significant proportion of patients remain unscreened, with > 70% of cases diagnosed outside screening. Although identifying specific subgroups for whom CRC screening should be particularly recommended is crucial owing to limited resources, the association between the diagnostic routes and identification of these subgroups has been less appreciated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF(Macro)autophagy is a cellular degradation system for unnecessary materials, such as aggregate-prone TDP-43, a central molecule in neurodegenerative diseases including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Abemaciclib (Abe) and vacuolin-1 (Vac) treatments are known to induce vacuoles characterized by an autophagosome and a lysosome component, suggesting that they facilitate autophagosome-lysosome fusion. However, it remains unknown whether Abe and Vac suppress the accumulation of aggregate-prone TDP-43 by accelerating autophagic flux.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA frequency-dependent dielectric constant characterizes the dielectric response of a medium and also represents the time scale of system's collective dynamics. Although it is valuable not only academically but also practically for developing advanced devices, getting the value of a solution at the interface with a solid or electrode surface is challenging both experimentally and computationally. Here, we propose a computational method that imitates the dielectric spectroscopy and AC impedance measurement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF) is one of the largest families of cell-surface molecules involved in various cell-cell interactions, including cancer-stromal interactions. In this study, we undertook a comprehensive RT-PCR-based screening for IgSF molecules that promote experimental lung metastasis in mice. By comparing the expression of 325 genes encoding cell-surface IgSF molecules between mouse melanoma B16 cells and its highly metastatic subline, B16F10 cells, we found that expression of the immunoglobulin superfamily member 3 gene (Igsf3) was significantly enhanced in B16F10 cells than in B16 cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: A quality indicator (QI) for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) during pregnancy and childbirth that is useful for sharing standard treatment policies has not yet been developed. This study aimed to develop a QI for SLE associated with pregnancy and childbirth.
Methods: To identify candidate QIs, we conducted a systematic literature review on the development of QIs for SLE related to pregnancy and childbirth and on clinical practice guidelines.
We present a case of nephronophthisis 13 that resulted from WDR19 variants. The patient, a nine-year-old Japanese boy, had detection of mild proteinuria during a school urine screening. Urinalysis revealed mild proteinuria without hematuria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChemotherapy and radiation therapy can cause gonadal dysfunction in women of reproductive age. Ovarian tissue cryopreservation is performed to restore fertility by allowing transplantation of the patient's frozen-thawed ovarian tissue or through future in vitro maturation and in vitro fertilization of frozen-thawed oocytes. Herein, we describe our initial experience with vaginal natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery for ovarian tissue preservation in a young woman with malignant tumor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Traumatic tension gastrothorax is a type of obstructive shock similar to tension pneumothorax. However, tension gastrothorax is not well known among emergency physicians, and no consensus has yet been reached on management during initial trauma care. We present a case of traumatic tension gastrothorax in which tube thoracostomy was performed based solely on clinical findings very similar to tension pneumothorax, followed by emergency laparotomy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Panic disorder is a modestly heritable condition. Currently, diagnosis is based only on clinical symptoms; identifying objective biomarkers and a more reliable diagnostic procedure is desirable. We investigated whether people with panic disorder can be reliably diagnosed utilizing combinations of multiple polygenic scores for psychiatric disorders and their intermediate phenotypes, compared with single polygenic score approaches, by applying specific machine learning techniques.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have emerged as a novel method for evaluating heart failure (HF) in adult electrocardiograms (ECGs). However, such CNNs are not applicable to pediatric HF, where abnormal anatomy of congenital heart defects plays an important role. ECG-based CNNs reflecting neurohormonal activation (NHA) may be a useful marker of pediatric HF.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn a spatial Stroop task, eye-gaze targets produce a reversed congruency effect (RCE) with faster responses when gaze direction and location are incongruent than congruent. On the other hand, non-social directional targets (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe CLIP1-LTK fusion was recently discovered as a novel oncogenic driver in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Lorlatinib, a third-generation ALK inhibitor, exhibited a dramatic clinical response in a NSCLC patient harboring CLIP1-LTK fusion. However, it is expected that acquired resistance will inevitably develop, particularly by LTK mutations, as observed in NSCLC induced by oncogenic tyrosine kinases treated with corresponding tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMoyamoya disease (MMD) causes cerebral arterial stenosis and hemodynamic disturbance, the latter of which may disrupt glymphatic system activity, the waste clearance system. We evaluated 46 adult patients with MMD and 33 age- and sex-matched controls using diffusivity along the perivascular space (ALPS) measured with diffusion tensor imaging (ALPS index), which may partly reflect glymphatic system activity, and multishell diffusion MRI to generate freewater maps. Twenty-three patients were also evaluated via O-gas positron emission tomography (PET), and all patients underwent cognitive tests.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Economic feasibility of eliminating mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of hepatitis B virus (HBV) in highly endemic African countries remains uncertain. Prevention of MTCT (PMTCT) involves screening pregnant women for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), identifying those with high viral loads or hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg), and administering tenofovir prophylaxis to high-risk women. We estimated the costs of integrating PMTCT services into antenatal care in Burkina Faso, based on four different strategies to select women for tenofovir prophylaxis: (1) HBV DNA (≥200 000 IU/mL), (2) HBeAg, (3) hepatitis B core-related antigen rapid diagnostic test (HBcrAg-RDT) and (4) all HBsAg-positive women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Pain after a stroke interferes with daily life and the rehabilitation process. This study aimed to clarify the prognosis of pain in subgroups of patients with pain after a stroke using pain quality data.
Methods: The study included 85 patients with pain after stroke undergoing exercise-based rehabilitation.
Calcium oxalate kidney stones, the most prevalent type of kidney stones, undergo a multi-step process of crystal nucleation, growth, aggregation, and secondary transition. The secondary transition has been rather overlooked, and thus, the effects on the disease and the underlying mechanism remain unclear. Here, we show, by periodic micro-CT images of human kidney stones in an ex vivo incubation experiment, that the growth of porous aggregates of calcium oxalate dihydrate (COD) crystals triggers the hardening of the kidney stones that causes difficulty in lithotripsy of kidney stone disease in the secondary transition.
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