Publications by authors named "Yuji Morita"

Pyrogens cause shock symptoms when released into the bloodstream. They are classified into two main categories: endotoxins (lipopolysaccharides [LPS]) and non-endotoxin pyrogens. The monocyte activation test (MAT) is an in vitro assay to detect pyrogens in human monocytes.

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Unlabelled: imaging of bacterial infection models enables noninvasive and temporal analysis of individuals, enhancing our understanding of infectious disease pathogenesis. Conventional imaging methods for bacterial infection models involve the insertion of the bacterial luciferase LuxCDABE into the bacterial genome, followed by imaging using an expensive ultrasensitive charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. However, issues such as limited light penetration into the body and lack of versatility have been encountered.

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Article Synopsis
  • Endotoxins (LPS) are problematic in bacterial protein production, but researchers developed a method using a special bacterium that lacks LPS.
  • They successfully created endotoxin-free proteins, including functional green fluorescent protein and the cytokine TNF-α, and significantly reduced contamination levels.
  • This new system also enabled the production of a specific antibody targeting the coronavirus spike protein and a rheumatoid arthritis drug, showcasing its potential for future applications in biotechnology.
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Long-term administration of certain macrolides is efficacious in patients with persistent pulmonary infection, despite how limited the clinically achievable concentrations are, being far below their MICs. An increase in the sub-MIC of macrolide exposure-dependent sensitivity to nitrosative stress is a typical characteristic of . However, a few clinical isolates do not respond to sub-MIC of macrolide treatment.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on understanding the function of the PmrAB two-component system (TCS) in resistance to colistin, a last-resort antibiotic, in extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Gram-negative bacteria.
  • Researchers conducted transcriptome analysis to identify the regulatory genes controlled by PmrAB, revealing its responsiveness to environmental factors like pH and metal ions (Fe, Zn, Al).
  • The findings highlight PmrAB's role in both environmental adaptation and the development of antibiotic resistance by modifying lipooligosaccharide (LOS) to mitigate toxicity and enhance resistance to colistin and polymyxin B.
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Background And Aim: Numerous women of reproductive age experience physical or mental discomfort during their natural menstrual cycle due to paramenstrual symptoms, such as premenstrual syndrome (PMS). To date, there is no established biomarker for the diagnosis of PMS. This study investigated the relationship between skin gas composition and menstruation cycles, and evaluated the possibility of skin gas composition as a biomarker of paramenstrual symptoms.

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Background: Increased expression of efflux pumps is an important mechanism of antibiotic resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and treatment with inhibitors of active efflux pumps seems an attractive strategy to combat with multidrug resistance. Assays using ethidium bromide (EtBr), which accumulates by binding to nucleic acids, are often employed to assess the efficacy of efflux pump inhibitors (EPIs). However, few studies have reported on assays using other nucleic acid dyes.

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KW3110 (KW3110) has anti-inflammatory effects, including the prevention of blue light exposure induced retinal inflammation and ageing-related chronic inflammation in mice. The mechanism involves the promotion of anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-10 production by KW3110, leading to reduced pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1β production. Although various stress-induced mitochondrial damages are associated with excessive inflammatory responses, the effect of KW3110 on inflammatory-stress-induced mitochondrial damage remains unknown.

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Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are most generally used as probiotics and some strains of LAB are known to have anti-inflammatory effects. A specific strain of lactic acid bacteria, Lactobacillus paracasei KW3110 (KW3110), activates macrophages to produce interleukin-10 (IL-10), an anti-inflammatory cytokine; however, the biological mechanism remains unclear. In this study, we showed that the amount of incorporated KW3110 into a macrophage cell line, RAW 264.

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Aging involves age-progressive loss of physiological functions in organs and tissues. We previously showed that Lactobacillus paracasei KW3110 suppressed age-related inflammation and prevented age-related retinal ganglion cell (RGC) loss. As RGCs mediate biological behaviors associated with responses to ambient light, we assessed whether L.

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Multidrug-resistant poses a serious problem due to hospital- and healthcare-associated infections. A major drug resistance mechanism of involves active efflux via resistance nodulation cell division (RND)-type multidrug efflux pumps of which MexXY is increasingly recognized as a primary determinant of aminoglycoside resistance in . MexXY overexpression is often observed in drug-resistant clinical isolates.

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A variety of eye-related symptoms due to the overuse of digital devices is collectively referred to as computer vision syndrome (CVS). In this study, a web-based survey about mind and body functions, including eye strain, was conducted on 1998 Japanese volunteers. To investigate the biological mechanisms behind CVS, a multi-trait genome-wide association study (GWAS), a multivariate analysis on individual-level multivariate data, was performed based on the structural equation modeling methodology assuming a causal pathway for a genetic variant to influence each symptom via a single common latent variable.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study aimed to improve the retrieval of colonic polyps post-surgery, as traditional methods often lead to fragmenting the tissue, complicating diagnosis.
  • - Researchers introduced the "water-slider method" (WSM) to surround resected polyps with water to reduce fragmentation during retrieval, and compared its effectiveness to standard methods in a controlled trial.
  • - Results showed the WSM significantly reduced fragmentation rates for small polyps (8.2% vs. 23.8%), enabling better diagnostic accuracy, while retrieval times remained similar between the two methods.
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A strain of lactic acid bacteria, Lactobacillus paracasei KW3110 (KW3110), activates M2 macrophages with anti-inflammatory reactions and mitigates aging-related chronic inflammation and blue-light exposure-induced retinal inflammation in mice. However, the mechanism underlying the anti-inflammatory effects of KW3110 remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the anti-inflammatory effects of KW3110 using both mouse and human immune cells and evaluated the suppressive effect of KW3110 on the inflammatory reactions of the cells stimulated with lipopolysaccharide and adenosine 5'-triphosphate (LPS/ATP).

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KW3110 (KW3110) has anti-inflammatory effects and mitigates retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cell damage caused by blue-light exposure. We investigated whether KW3110 suppresses chronic inflammatory stress-induced RPE cell damage by modulating immune cell activity and whether it improves ocular disorders in healthy humans. First, we showed that KW3110 treatment of mouse macrophages (J774A.

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Some strains of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) have anti-inflammatory effects, but the mechanism underlying the alleviation of inflammation by LAB is not fully understood. In this study, we examined the inhibitory effect of a certain strain of LAB, , on inflammasome activation, which is associated with various inflammatory disorders. Using bone marrow-derived macrophages from BALB/c mice, we found that , but not , suppressed NLRP3 inflammasome activation and inhibited subsequent caspase-1 activation and IL-1β secretion.

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Recently, aging is becoming an important social problem in many developed countries including Japan. It is socially and universally important to unveil the impact of aging and extend healthy life expectancy. Here we show our recent finding that dedicator of cytokinesis 11 (DOCK11, also known as Zizimin2) may be involved in immunosenescence of B cells.

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We previously showed that berberine attenuates MexXY efflux-dependent aminoglycoside resistance in . Here, we aimed to synthesize berberine derivatives with higher MexXY inhibitory activities. We synthesized 11 berberine derivatives, of which 13-(2-methylbenzyl) berberine (13-o-MBB) but not its regiomers showed the most promising MexXY inhibitory activity.

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Two gram-negative, catalase-negative, oxidase-positive strains (PAGU 1467 and PAGU 1468) isolated from patients with infective endocarditis were investigated to determine their taxonomic status. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that the two strains were members of the Bergeyella-Chryseobacterium-Riemerella branch of the family Flavobacteriaceae. Strains PAGU 1467 and PAGU 1468 were highly related to each other (98.

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Age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa are leading causes of blindness and share a pathological feature, which is photoreceptor degeneration. To date, the lack of a potential treatment to prevent such diseases has raised great concern. Photoreceptor degeneration can be accelerated by excessive light exposure via an inflammatory response; therefore, anti-inflammatory agents would be candidates to prevent the progress of photoreceptor degeneration.

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Taxonomic studies of strain PAGU 1678 , an obligately anaerobic, gram-positive, spore-forming bacterium isolated from biobreeding rat feces, were performed. This strain has been demonstrated to have the ability to exacerbate pathosis in a mouse model of dextran sulfate sodium-induced ulcerative colitis. Phylogenetic analysis based on the 16S rRNA gene showed high homology with Paraclostridium bifermentans.

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Introduction: The purpose of this study was to investigate the incidence of necrosis and insufficiency fracture of the hip and knee using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in renal transplant patients.

Methods: We examined 300 consecutive renal transplant patients using MRI of the hips and knees (T1-weighted coronal MRI) preoperatively and at 3 and 6 months postoperatively. Oblique axial-plane T1-weighted MRI and short-tau inversion-recovery T2-weighted MRI were performed parallel to the femoral neck when distinguishing the osteonecrosis of the femoral head (ONFH) from subchondral insufficiency fracture (SIF) of the femoral head was difficult.

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Age-related chronic inflammation is a major risk factor for the incidence and prevalence of age-related diseases, including infectious and neurodegenerative diseases. We previously reported that a lactic acid bacteria, KW3110, activated macrophages and suppressed inflammation in mice and humans. In this study, we investigated whether long-term intake of heat-killed L.

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Background: Visual display terminals (VDTs) emitting blue light can cause ocular disorders including eye fatigue. Some dietary constituents have been reported to be effective in improving ocular disorders while few clinical studies have been performed. We evaluated the effects of heat-killed KW 3110 on improving ocular disorders and symptoms of eye fatigue among healthy human subjects with VDT loads.

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