Background and purpose: The present study aims to clarify the clinical features of non‐hypertensive cerebral amyloid angiopathy‐related lobar intracerebral hemorrhage (CAA‐L‐ICH).
Methods: We ...investigated clinical, laboratory, and neuroimaging findings in 41 patients (30, women; 11, men) with pathologically supported CAA‐L‐ICH from 303 non‐hypertensive Japanese patients aged ≥55, identified via a nationwide survey as symptomatic CAA‐L‐ICH.
Results: The mean age of patients at onset of CAA‐L‐ICH was 73.2 ± 7.4 years; the number of patients increased with age. The corrected female‐to‐male ratio for the population was 2.2, with significant female predominance. At onset, 7.3% of patients received anti‐platelet therapy. In brain imaging studies, the actual frequency of CAA‐L‐ICHs was higher in the frontal and parietal lobes; however, after correcting for the estimated cortical volume, the parietal lobe was found to be the most frequently affected. CAA‐L‐ICH recurred in 31.7% of patients during the average 35.3‐month follow‐up period. The mean interval between intracerebral hemorrhages (ICHs) was 11.3 months. The case fatality rate was 12.2% at 1 month and 19.5% at 12 months after initial ICH. In 97.1% of patients, neurosurgical procedures were performed without uncontrollable intraoperative or post‐operative hemorrhage.
Conclusions: Our study revealed the clinical features of non‐hypertensive CAA‐L‐ICH, including its parietal predilection, which will require further study with a larger number of patients with different ethnic backgrounds.
Experimental study was conducted to clarify the formation behavior of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) from carbonaceous materials through a de novo ...synthesis route. Samples were prepared by changing mixing method and composite state of metallic chloride in graphite powder in order to simulate the texture of “unburned carbonaceous particles”, i.e., soot, formed in thermal processes. Reagents of KCl, CaCl2·2H2O, FeCl3·6H2O, and CuCl2·2H2O were used as chlorine sources and were added to graphite powder with different methods. The composite state of metallic chloride was varied by preliminary treatments: hand-mixing, mixed-grinding using a high-intensity ball mill, and preheating at different temperatures between 500 and 1100 °C. In the de novo experiment, reaction temperature and oxygen concentration of flowed gas were set at 300 °C and 2.5 mol %, respectively. During the experiment, formation rates of CO and CO2 and the formed amounts of organic chlorine and PCDD/Fs were measured. The results show a reasonable relation between the amount of formed organic chlorine and oxidation rate of carbon, and the order of the activity of metallic chlorines was obtained as KCl < CaCl2 < FeCl3 ≪ CuCl2. Furthermore, it was found that the effect of the composite state of metallic chloride on the formation of PCDD/Fs significantly depends on the kind of metal. The results will give useful information to examine the formation mechanism of PCDD/Fs from unburned carbon particles in thermal processes.
Psychotic symptoms develop in 20-30% of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) receiving chronic anti-PD medications, and visual hallucinations with or without delirium and paranoid delusions are the ...most frequent symptoms. Psychotic symptoms disturb ADL and QOL of PD patients and tax caregivers far more than the motor disabilities do, and good management of drug-induced psychotic symptoms is potentially important. Withdrawal of anti-PD drugs relieves the patients from psychotic side effects, but worsens the parkinsonian motor symptoms. The first step of treatment is to eliminate triggering factors other than anti-PD drugs, such as infections, metabolic disorders, subdural hematoma, and hallucinogenic drugs. The second step is to eliminate anti-PD drugs in the following order; first anticholinergics, amantadine and selegiline, second dopamine agonists, and finally levodopa/carbidopa. Anti-PD medications should be reduced to the point of improving psychotic side effects without drastically worsening parkinsonian motor symptoms. When the above adjustments fail to sufficiently alleviate psychotic side effects, the third step is consideration of antipsychotic drugs although they have potential capacity to antagonize dopamine D2 receptors and worsen parkinsonism. Atypical antipsychotics such as clozapine and olanzapine are recommended, though the former is not available in Japan.
We can easily recognize familiar music by listening to only one or 2 of its opening bars, but the brain regions that participate in this cognitive processing remain undetermined. We used ...positron-emission tomography (PET) to study changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) that occur during listening to familiar music.
We used a PET subtraction technique to elucidate the brain regions associated with the recognition of familiar melodies such as well-known nursery tunes. Nonmusicians performed 2 kinds of musical tasks: judging the familiarity of musical pieces (familiarity task) and detecting deliberately altered notes in the pieces (alteration-detecting task).
During the familiarity task, bilateral anterior portions of bilateral temporal lobes, superior temporal regions, and parahippocampal gyri were activated. The alteration-detecting task bilaterally activated regions in the precunei, superior/inferior parietal lobules, and lateral surface of frontal lobes, which seemed to show a correlation with the analysis of music.
We hypothesize that during the familiarity task, activated brain regions participate in retrieval from long-term memory and verbal and emotional processing of familiar melodies. Our results reinforced the hypothesis reported in the literature as a result of group and case studies, that temporal lobe regions participate in the recognition of familiar melodies.
Self-supporting AC (activated carbon)-FWCNT (few-wall carbon nanotubes) hybrid electrodes were fabricated by mixing of ACs with high specific surface area (SSA) and sub-millimeter-long FWCNTs. In ...order to fabricate the hybrid electrodes, AC and FWCNT were mixed in a weight ratio of 9:1, dispersed by bath-sonication and vacuum-filtrated on a membrane filter. The addition of FWCNTs gives conductivity and mechanical strength, and replace metallic current collectors in thick (0.1 mm) electrodes. For making an electrode, three different ACs that derived from walnut shell (WS), that from apricot stones (AS), and that commercially used for capacitors (YP-80F, Kuraray Chemical Co., Osaka Japan), were used with FWCNT in weight ratio of AC:FWCNT = 9:1. An electrode based only on FWCNT was also prepared as a reference for comparison. Electrochemical properties of the obtained electrodes were investigated by the cyclic voltammetry method (CV). Electrochemical characteristics were measured using the three-electrode cell contained of YP80F-FWCNT, AS-FWCNT, WS-FWCNT as a working electrode, a YP-80F-FWCNT counter electrode and a Ag/AgCl reference electrode with an electrolyte of 1 M Na2SO4 aqueous solution. Also, the morphological properties of obtained electrodes were studied using scanning electron microscope (SEM), the SSA was investigated by the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller analysis. SSA, conductivity, and resistivity of AS-FWCNT and WS-FWCNT electrodes were summarized. Both the AS-FWCNT and WS-FWCNT hybrid electrodes showed specific capacitances of about 140 F/g at 1 mV/s and about 100 F/g at 100 mV/s, which are similar or even better than the AC-CNT hybrid electrode made of commercialized AC (YP-80F).
Some authors proposed that, when listening to music, the auditory input is processed by three stages, operating in a hierarchical fashion: perception of individual sounds, perception or imagery of ...pattern in segmented sound, and encoding or recognition of patterned segmented sound. 6 It is supposed that musical hallucinations are caused by abnormal autonomous activity in the auditory brain systems responsible for normal musical imagery. 7 It seems reasonable to say that, in acquired peripheral deafness, there is impoverished auditory input that allows spontaneous activity between perception or imagery and encoding or recognition of pattern in segmented sound. 6 Regarding lesions in the central nervous system, these lesions may alter the threshold of spontaneous activity within the network for the perception and imagery of music. 6 We describe a patient with musical hallucination who experienced an increase in the repertoire of musical hallucinations as she sang various songs, and discuss some of the undetermined problems related to cognitive processing of music: melody, accompaniment and timbre. ...all the songs in her musical hallucination, including "A red sunset," would sound in the order.
To study dysferlin gene mutations and genotype-phenotype correlations in Japanese patients with Miyoshi myopathy (MM).
MM is an autosomal recessive distal muscular dystrophy that arises from ...mutations in the dysferlin gene. This gene is also mutated in families with limb girdle muscular dystrophy 2B.
The authors examined 25 Japanese patients with MM. Genomic DNA was extracted from the peripheral lymphocytes of the patients. The PCR products of each of 55 exons were screened by single strand conformation polymorphism or direct sequencing from the PCR fragments.
The authors identified 16 different mutations in 20 patients with MM; 10 were novel. Mutations in Japanese patients are distributed along the entire length of the gene.
Four mutations (C1939G, G3370T, 3746delG, and 4870delT) are relatively more prevalent in this population, accounting for 60% of the mutations in this study. This study revealed that the G3370T mutation was associated with milder forms of MM and the G3510A mutation was associated with a more severe form.
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