Background
Oscillatory activities observed in multiple regions are closely associated with the experience of pain. Specifically, oscillatory activities within the theta‐ and beta‐frequency bands, ...observed in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), have been implicated in pain perception among healthy individuals and those with chronic pain. However, their physiological significance remains unclear.
Methods
We explored the modulation of pain perception in healthy individuals by theta‐ and beta‐band transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) over the left DLPFC and examined the relationship between the modulation effect and magnitude of the electric field elicited by tACS in the left DLPFC using computational simulation.
Results
Our findings revealed that both theta‐ and beta‐tACS increased the heat pain threshold during and after stimulation. Notably, the simulated electric field magnitude in the left DLPFC exhibited an inverted U‐shaped relationship with the pain modulation effect for theta‐tACS.
Conclusions
Our study findings suggested that there would be an optimal electric field strength to produce a high analgesic effect for theta‐tACS.
Significance
The application of theta‐ and beta‐tACS interventions targeting the left DLPFC might facilitate the treatment of chronic pain. Furthermore, the attainment of effective pain modulation via theta‐tACS over the DLPFC warrants the use of optimal stimulus intensity.
Metastasis to a trocar tract (port-site metastasis, PSM) is an uncommon but serious complication that possibly compromises the prognosis of cancer patients treated laparoscopically.
A 42-year-old ...Japanese woman had a 20-cm benign right ovarian cyst resected using gasless lift-laparoscopy. Five years and eight months postoperatively, she noticed a three-cm subcutaneous tumor involving the trocar tract. She was also found to have a pelvic mass and an exploratory laparotomy revealed left ovarian cancer. Based on the histopathological findings, the subcutaneous tumor was diagnosed as a metastasis from the ovarian cancer.
This case suggested that PSM could occur without direct or indirect wound contamination during laparoscopic surgery.
Metastasis to the uterine cervix from non-gynecologic neoplasms is rare. However, metastatic tumors sometimes precede the diagnosis of a primary tumor, and may lead to diagnosis of the primary tumor.
...A 50-year-old woman was referred to us complaining of increasing right flank pain. Computed tomography scan demonstrated an enlarged uterus with right-sided hydronephrosis and hydroureter. Cervical cytology revealed adenocarcinoma. She was considered to have a Stage IIIB cervical adenocarcinoma. Although no cervical lesion was seen colposcopically, histopathology from biopsies of the uterine cervix revealed poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma infiltrating around the normal endocervical glands. A metastasis from the gastrointestinal tract was suspected. The patient underwent gastroscopy and was found to have Borrmann type IV gastric cancer. Biopsies confirmed a poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma with signet ring cells.
Physicians should bear in mind that metastatic tumors may precede the diagnosis of a primary tumor and could manifest by mimicking advanced cervical cancer.
Thirteen patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, who did not show any detectable lesion after cisplatin-containing chemotherapy following primary operation, were treated with adoptive transfer of ...tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL group). Eleven patients with almost equivalent conditions of disease, who were treated with only chemotherapy following primary operation, served as a control group. The median time of follow-up was 36 (range, 23-44) months in the TIL group and 33 (range, 14-48) months in the control group. The estimated 3-year overall survival rate of disease-free patients in the TIL group and in the control group was 100% and 67.5%, respectively. A significant difference was noticed between the overall survival rate of the TIL group and the control group (P < 0.01). Furthermore, the estimated 3-year disease-free survival rate of the patients in the TIL group and in the control group was 82.1% and 54.5%, respectively. The disease-free survival rate of patients in the TIL group and in the control group was significantly different (P < 0.05). These results suggest that the adoptive transfer of TILs after all chemotherapy has been finished might be one promising method to achieve complete cure of advanced epithelial ovarian cancer.
Two-dimensional transient simulations of AlGaAs/GaAs HFETs are performed in which substrate traps and surface states are considered. When the drain voltage is raised abruptly, the drain current ...overshoots the steady-state value, and when it is lowered abruptly, the drain current remains at a low value, showing drain-lag behavior. Turn-on characteristics are also calculated when both the gate voltage and the drain voltage are changed abruptly, and quasi-pulsed I-V curves are derived from them. It is shown that the drain lag due to substrate traps could become a cause of so-called current compression of the HFETs. It is also shown that gate lag due to surface states could become a major cause of the current compression.
The effect of solid‐phase anti‐CD3 antibody activation and cryopreservation was evaluated on thirteen samples of tumor‐infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) derived from epithelial ovarian cancer. Seven ...preparations of TILs were cultured with or without solid‐phase anti‐CD3 antibody in addition to 100 units/ml of recombinant interleukin‐2 (rIL‐2). The proliferation rate of all of the seven TIL preparations stimulated by anti‐CD3 antibody on the fourth or fifth day of culture was 3.4 to 9.8 times greater than that of lymphocytes cultured with rIL‐2 alone. Furthermore, in an experiment with five TIL samples activated with anti‐CD3 antibody, three of them showed augmented cytotoxic activity against autologous fresh tumor cells. The population of CD3+/CD8+ TILs was increased after 4–5 weeks of cultivation and CD8+ lymphocytes amounted to over 70% in all of seven preparations tested, whereas two of seven preparations not activated by anti‐CD3 antibody were CD3+/CD4+‐dominant. In addition, nine preparations of TILs cultured with rIL‐2 were cryopreserved for several weeks; after recovery from cryopreservation, no major change was observed in cell surface markers, in growth rate or in cytotoxic activity. These results suggest that cryopreserved and/or anti‐CD3 antibody‐activated lymphocytes could conveniently be employed in a clinical trial of adoptive immunotherapy employing TIL.
The effect of chronic middle ear inflammation on the pneumatization of the tympanic bulla was investigated in piglets. The pig tympanic bulla has an air cell system which is divided by trabeculae and ...closely resembles the human mastoid air cell system. The tympanic bulla and its air cell system in normal ears were well developed because of the bone formation and the bone resorption inside the cortex, whereas the tympanic bulla affected by chronic otitis media in the early stages of life exhibited retardation of pneumatization arising from the disturbed bone resorption by inflammatory stimulus. It was concluded that affliction with chronic middle ear inflammation in the early stages of life causes inhibition of pneumatization by hindering the development of the air cell system.
Chirp pulse microwave computed tomography (CP-MCT) is a modality for microwave imaging of biological objects. By using the high-resolution model, which uses the chirp pulse signal from 2 GHz to 3 ...GHz, diagnosis of an early stage breast tumor has been attempted mainly by numerical simulation. However, the FDTD-based numerical simulation showed that only diagnostic information provided by the tomographic images was not sufficient for localizing the tumor in the breast fat tissues. This is mainly due to the strong scattering at the surface of the breast and the boundary between the tumor and surrounding fat tissues because of the big difference in those permittivity values. To gain the compensative information, we have investigated feasibility of the breast radar, which provides the dosimetric image according to the same measurement principle as CP-MCT. The chirp pulse microwave breast radar (CP-MBR) can provide tumor information projected onto the imaging plane of CP-MCT. The numerical simulation of the breast radar shows that the integrated use of those microwave imaging systems is useful for localizing the early stage tumors in the breast.
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