Publications by authors named "Yohei Suzuki"

Article Synopsis
  • The study focused on validating the Performance Evaluation Tool based on the modified Barthel Index (PET-MBI) for assessing Activities of Daily Living (ADL) in patients.
  • It involved 53 patients and 18 experienced occupational therapists to determine the consistency of ratings (inter-rater and intra-rater reliability).
  • The results indicated strong reliability, with high inter-rater and intra-rater scores, suggesting that PET-MBI could serve as an effective self-administered tool for large-scale ADL surveys.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The possibility to print electronics by means of office tools has remarkedly increased the possibility to design affordable and robust point-of-care/need devices. However, conductive inks suffer from low electrochemical and rheological performances limiting their applicability in biosensors. Herein, a fast CO laser approach to activate printed carbon inks towards direct enzymatic bioelectrocatalysis (3 generation) is proposed and exploited to build biosensors for D-fructose analysis in biological fluids.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • EGFR-TKIs like afatinib and osimertinib are effective for treating non-small cell lung cancer with EGFR mutations, but high PD-L1 levels may lead to poorer responses.
  • A study analyzed 177 patients with PD-L1-positive EGFR-mutant NSCLC to compare the effectiveness of afatinib versus osimertinib.
  • The findings indicated no significant difference in progression risk or overall survival between the two treatments, suggesting similar effectiveness for patients with this specific cancer profile.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Herein, a strategy to stamp laser-produced reduced graphene oxide (rGO) onto flexible polymers using only office-grade tools, namely, roll-to-roll thermal stamping, is proposed, proving for the first time its effectiveness for direct bioelectrocatalysis. This straightforward, scalable, and low-cost approach allows us to overcome the limits of the integration of laser-induced rGO-films in bioanalytical devices. Laser-produced rGO has been thermally stamped (TS) onto different polymeric substrates (PET, PVC, and EVA) using a simple roll-laminator; the obtained TS-rGO films have been compared with the native rGO (untransferred) via morphochemical and electrochemical characterization.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Data from 263 patients were analyzed, showing combined therapy resulted in a lower risk of cancer progression (hazard ratio of 0.47) compared to first- and second-generation EGFR-TKIs.
  • * The results suggest that combined therapy may offer a promising treatment option for NSCLC patients, as it shows improved progression-free survival compared to EGFR-TKI alone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Herein, we report a scalable benchtop electrode fabrication method to produce highly sensitive and flexible third-generation fructose dehydrogenase amperometric biosensors based on water-dispersed 0D-nanomaterials. The electrochemical platform was fabricated via Stencil-Printing (StPE) and insulated via xurography. Carbon black (CB) and mesoporous carbon (MS) were employed as 0D-nanomaterials promoting an efficient direct electron transfer (DET) between fructose dehydrogenase (FDH) and the transducer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death, and COPD exacerbation worsens the prognosis. Eosinophilic airway inflammation is a COPD phenotype that causes COPD exacerbation and is correlated with peripheral blood eosinophil count. We analyzed real-world data of COPD patients to assess the risk factors of COPD exacerbation focusing on blood eosinophils.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To investigate whether the topical administration of ripasudil ophthalmic solution enhances aqueous outflow in the episcleral vein of the human eye. Two-sequence, prospective, randomized, double-blind, crossover trial. Sixteen eyes of 16 healthy participants were recruited in this study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are used worldwide as a substitute for conventional cigarettes. Although they are primarily intended to support smoking cessation, e-cigarettes have been identified as a gateway to smoking habits for young people. Multiple recent reports have described the health effects of inhaling e-cigarettes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study focused on testing a flexible radiofrequency-tip catheter designed for adrenal gland ablation, evaluating it both in a gel model and in a live animal (pig) setting.
  • - Results showed effective ablation diameters of 10 mm in the pigs after applying 7000 J of energy, with no complications during the procedure and no thermal damage to surrounding organs.
  • - The findings suggest that this transvenous adrenal ablation method could be a promising treatment option for conditions like primary aldosteronism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Bilirubin oxidase from Myrothecium verrucaria (mBOD) is a promising enzyme for catalyzing the four-electron reduction of dioxygen into water and realizes direct electron transfer (DET)-type bioelectrocatalysis. It has two N-linked glycans (N-glycans), and N472 and N482 are known as binding sites. Both binding sites located on opposite side of the type I (T1) Cu, which is the electrode-active site of BOD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tungsten-containing formate dehydrogenase from AM1 (FoDH1)-a promising biocatalyst for the interconversion of carbon dioxide/formate and nicotine adenine dinucleotide (NAD)/NADH redox couples-was investigated using structural biology and bioelectrochemistry. FoDH1 is reported to be an enzyme that can realize "direct electron transfer (DET)-type bioelectrocatalysis." However, its 3-D structure, electrode-active sites, and electron transfer (ET) pathways remain unclear.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective Based on the increasing incidence of smell and taste dysfunction among coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, such issues have been considered an early symptom of infection. However, few studies have investigated the type of taste components that are most frequently affected in COVID-19 patients. This study investigated the difference in frequencies of the types of taste component disorders among hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An iron loss in the motor core was often enhanced by formation of plastically affected zones in piercing the electrical steel sheets. A platform methodology to carry out quantitative evaluation of these affected zones in the pierced electrical steel sheets was proposed to search for the way to minimize the affected zone widths. A coarse-grained electrical steel sheet was employed as a work material for a fine piercing experiment under the narrowed clearance between the plasma-nitrided SKD11 punch and core-die.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Pulmonary emphysema is primarily caused by long-term exposure to cigarette smoke, but newer alternatives like heated tobacco products (HTPs), specifically IQOS, are marketed as safer.
  • A study using 12-week-old male mice showed that exposure to IQOS aerosol for six months resulted in weight loss and increased levels of harmful substances in the body, similar to those seen with traditional cigarette smoke.
  • The findings indicate that chronic use of IQOS can lead to pulmonary emphysema through pathways related to cell death, suggesting that these heated tobacco products are not entirely harmless.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The periodic nanotexture was superposed to the micro-textured grooves on the side surface of the punch. These grooves with nanotextures were shaped to have parallel and vertical orientations to the punch stroke direction, respectively. A stack of five amorphous electrical steel sheets was punched out with these micro-/nano-textured punches.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A new data transformation method for micro-manufacturing using a topological model for a micro-/nano-texture was proposed for a surface-decorated product. Femtosecond laser printing was utilized to form the micro-/nano-textures into the hardened thick layer of dies by plasma nitriding. At first, the plasma-nitrided AISI316L flat substrate was laser-printed as a punch to imprint the tailored nano-textures onto the AA1060 aluminum plate for its surface decoration with topological emblems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A tool steel type SKD11 punch was plasma carburized at 673 K for 14.4 ks at 70 Pa to make carbon supersaturation. This carburized SKD11 punch was employed for upsetting the pure titanium wire with the diameter of 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) diamond coated tungsten carbide (WC) and cobalt (Co) sintered alloy punch was trimmed by the femtosecond laser machining to sharpen its edge with about 2 μm and to simultaneously make nanostructuring to its side surface. In addition to the sharpened edge, its edge profile was formed to be homogeneous enough to reduce the damage layer width by piercing the electrical amorphous steel sheet stack. Each brittle sheet in the stacked work was damaged to have three kinds of defects by piercing; e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: With a rapidly aging society, there is increasing interest in the health of female workers in the field of care services for older adults due to increasing demands to maintain 24-h care and to support older adults without errors or accidents. Therefore, the purpose of this cross-sectional study was to examine the association between sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and sustained attention in women caring for older adults in Japan.

Methods: The study was conducted in women aged 18-67 years old working in care service facilities for older adults in Japan.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Studies on the association between asthma and anxiety in Asian children are limited. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the association between asthma and anxiety among Japanese elementary school students.

Methods: A cross-sectional study of the association between asthma and anxiety in primary school children in Matsuyama City was conducted in 2014.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: How the time sequence of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) procedures is related to clinical outcomes in patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) remains unclear. This study examined the impact of the time interval from collapse to start of CPR (no-flow time, NF time) and the time interval from start of CPR to implementation of extracorporeal CPR (ECPR) (low-flow time, LF time) on neurological outcomes.

Methods and results: During the period from 2010 to 2015, we enrolled 85 patients who received ECPR.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Senescent cells accumulate in tissues during aging or pathological settings. The semi-genetic or pharmacological targeting of senescent cells revealed that cellular senescence underlies many aspects of the aging-associated phenotype and diseases. We previously reported that cellular senescence contributes to aging- and disease-associated pulmonary dysfunction.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An extrusion-type fine blanking with a negative clearance was proposed by the authors instead of standard fine blanking for creating a full-sheared surface in the micro blanking process. In this study, micro blanking experiments and finite element analyses with narrow, zero and negative clearances are carried out for the optimizing the clearance at which a shear cut surface can be finished with a full-sheared surface with the minimized punch load. Fracture criterion, hydrostatic stress and maximum punch stress for the conditions with various clearances are investigated.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF