[A DRG/PPS simulation in the medical care of tuberculosis].

Purpose: To study the expected usefulness of the introduction of the DRG-PPS (Diagnosis-Related Group/Prospective Payment System, in which an insurer pays a fixed medical fee per hospitalization) into the current medical care of tuberculosis (TB) in Japan.

Method: The medical fees were reviewed for all TB inpatients at 19 hospitals under the National Hospital Organization who were discharged in either June 2007 or February 2008. The sum of the fixed fee by the DRG was assumed based on the bivariate regression analysis of each patient's hospital days and his or her total actual fees during the hospital stay under the current (fee for care) system, since it was difficult to directly calculate the daily fees for every patient that would be the basis of DRG-PPS.

[Clinical features and treatment history of clarithromycin resistance in M. avium-intracellulare complex pulmonary disease patients].

Effective antimicrobial treatment of Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare complex (MAC) has not been established. Clarithromycin (CAM) is an extremely important drug in treatment regimens of MAC diseases. Except for monotherapy, the clinical features of CAM resistance are not clear.

[Exogenous re-infection in tuberculosis].

Patients infected by tuberculosis (TB) had been thought to never experience exogenous re-infection. However, exogenous re-infection in HIV-positive patients is well known. Thanks to the introduction of histopathological examination, analysis of similarities in drug-resistance patterns and epidemiological surveys of genetic phage typing for TB infection, we have begun to understand that even people with a normal immune system can experience re-infection.

[Molecular epidemiological analysis by IS1245-based restriction fragment length polymorphism typing on cases with pulmonary Mycobacterium avium disease observed in the same family].

Introduction: Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare complex (MAC) has become one of major human pathogens, however, its routes of transmission and environmental reservoirs causing human infection were not yet elucidated. We reported three families affected by pulmonary Mycobacterium avium (M. avium) disease.

[Relations between clinical subtypes of Mycobacterium avium pulmonary disease and polyclonal infections detected by IS1245 based restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis].

Introduction: The epidemiology of Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare (MAC) infections has not been completely defined. Recently some reports presented polyclonal MAC infections. The purpose of this study was to reveal the clonal diversity of Mycobacterium avium isolates and the relation between clinical subtype of lung disease and polyclonal infection.

[A case of mitochondrial myopathy with external ophthalmoplegia and ataxic neuropathy].

We report a 70-year-old woman with bilateral optic atrophy, external ophthalmoplegia, bilateral blepharoptosis, and sensory ataxic neuropathy. She had a visual disturbance since childhood. She had dysarthria and gait disturbance at 28 years old.

Is angiomatosis an intrinsic pathohistological feature of massive osteolysis? Report of an autopsy case and a review of the literature.

We report here an autopsied patient who had died during the clinical course of massive osteolysis (MO), which is a rare chronic disease that begins insidiously and is characterized by progressive regional loss of bone. Since the original description by Gorham and Stout in 1955, vascular proliferation, e.g.