.
Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy of treatment of diffuse diabetic macular oedema (DME) with difluprednate ophthalmic emulsion 0.05% (Durezol™) in eyes before vitrectomy.
Methods: This study ...enrolled patients with diffuse DME for whom more than 3 months had passed since prior treatment. Nineteen eyes in 15 subjects were treated with difluprednate ophthalmic emulsion 0.05% four times daily for the first month and then twice daily for 2 months (treatment group). As a control group, 22 eyes in 11 subjects with DME were selected from subjects who underwent the steroid responder test.
Results: In the treatment group, the mean visual acuity (VA) (±SD) was 0.38 ± 0.25 logMAR and mean retinal thickness was 461.1 ± 109.9 μm at baseline. After 1 month of treatment, the mean VA had improved to 0.29 ± 0.25 (Wilcoxon rank‐sum test, p = 0.30), while mean retinal thickness had decreased to 372.1 ± 70.0 μm (p = 0.006). The rate of effective improvement in retinal thickness was 42% and that of VA was 26%. In the control group, changes in neither VA nor retinal thickness were significant.
Conclusions: Eye drop therapy using difluprednate ophthalmic emulsion 0.05% is a useful and effective treatment modality without surgical intervention or severe side‐effects.
NSCLC patients with EGFR mutations respond to EGFR-TKIs; however, the management of refractory tumors to EGFR-TKIs remains unclear. We demonstrated that repeated genetic testing might be useful for ...detecting resistance mechanisms as well as for decision-making in EGFR mutated NSCLC patients, following the emergence of resistance to the initial EGFR-TKIs.
A 69-year-old man was diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma with an EGFR exon 19 deletion. After tumor re-growth treated with erlotinib and chemotherapy, he was diagnosed with an SCLC transformation and administered chemotherapy to treat the SCLC. After the resistance of chemotherapy, the EGFR-T790M mutation by liquid biopsy was detected and treated him with osimertinib, which resulted in a clinical response.
The plant secondary cell wall is a highly ordered structure composed of various polysaccharides, phenolic components and proteins. Its coordinated regulation of a number of complex metabolic pathways ...and assembly has not been resolved. To understand the molecular mechanisms that regulate secondary cell wall synthesis, we isolated a novel rice mutant, cell wall architecture1 (cwa1), that exhibits an irregular thickening pattern in the secondary cell wall of sclerenchyma, as well as culm brittleness and reduced cellulose content in mature internodes. Light and transmission electron microscopy revealed that the cwa1 mutant plant has regions of local aggregation in the secondary cell walls of the cortical fibers in its internodes, showing uneven thickness. Ultraviolet microscopic observation indicated that localization of cell wall phenolic components was perturbed and that these components abundantly deposited at the aggregated cell wall regions in sclerenchyma. Therefore, regulation of deposition and assembly of secondary cell wall materials, i.e. phenolic components, appear to be disturbed by mutation of the cwa1 gene. Genetic analysis showed that cwa1 is allelic to brittle culm1 (bc1), which encodes the glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchored COBRA-like protein specifically in plants. BC1 is known as a regulator that controls the culm mechanical strength and cellulose content in the secondary cell walls of sclerenchyma, but the precise function of BC1 has not been resolved. Our results suggest that CWA1/BC1 has an essential role in assembling cell wall constituents at their appropriate sites, thereby enabling synthesis of solid and flexible internodes in rice.
Multi-nuclide AMS performances at MALT Matsuzaki, Hiroyuki; Nakano, Chuichiro; Tsuchiya, Yoko (Sunohara) ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms,
June 2007, 2007-06-00, Letnik:
259, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
MALT (Micro Analysis Laboratory, Tandem accelerator, The University of Tokyo) is a service and research facility for elemental and isotopic micro-analysis using a tandem accelerator, which was ...constructed in 1991–1993 and has been in operation since 1994. Since then, AMS, NRA and PIXE systems have been developed and highly refined. The accelerator of MALT is a 5UD Pelletron™ tandem van de Graaf (produced by National Electrostatics Corporation, USA) and maximum 5MV voltage is available. MALT is equipped with two MC-SNICS ion sources (one of them dedicated for 14C-AMS), a sequential injection system and multi-Faraday cup systems. These equipment are all indispensable for a high precision and high efficiency AMS system.
At MALT, high quality AMS of 7Be, 10Be, 14C, 26Al has been available. Recently, a 36Cl-AMS system using a gas-filled magnet was also greatly refined, and a new 129I-AMS system was developed and shows good performance. Now MALT is the only facility with multi-nuclide AMS in the Asian area.
Over 40 projects are running at MALT every year. The total accelerator operation time in the 2004 season was 6363h. In November 2004, the total operation time of the pelletron chain system since the construction of MALT went over 40,000h without replacement.
Background:Recent trends in the clinical characteristics, management and prognosis of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) remain to be examined in Japan.Methods and Results:We compared 306 and 710 DCM ...patients in the Chronic Heart Failure Analysis and Registry in the Tohoku District (CHART)-1 (2000–2005, n=1,278) and the CHART-2 (2006–present, n=10,219) Studies, respectively. Between the 2 groups of DCM patients, there were no significant differences in baseline characteristics. The prevalence of hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes mellitus were all significantly increased from the CHART-1 to the CHART-2 Study. The use of β-blockers and aldosterone antagonists was significantly increased, while that of loop diuretics and digitalis was significantly decreased in the CHART-2 Study. The 3-year mortality rate was significantly improved from 14% in the CHART-1 to 9% in the CHART-2 Study (adjusted HR, 0.60; 95% CI: 0.49–0.81; P=0.001). In particular, 3-year incidence of cardiovascular death was significantly decreased (adjusted HR, 0.26; 95% CI: 0.14–0.50, P<0.001), while that of HF admission was not (adjusted HR, 0.90; 95% CI: 0.59–1.37, P=0.632). The prognostic improvement was noted in patients with BNP <220 pg/ml, LVEF>40%, β-blocker use and aldosterone antagonist use.Conclusions:Long-term prognosis of DCM patients has been improved, along with the implementation of evidence-based medication in Japan. (Circ J 2015; 79: 1332–1341)
In the Shibukuro and Tama River system, Akita, where river water is acidified by inflow of acidic hot spring water, mixing process of confluent river water is explained by changes in the isotope ...ratios of Sr and S as well as the chemical composition of dissolved components. Based on the relationships between Sr and S isotopic ratios and their reciprocal concentrations, the mixing ratio of waste water from a neutralization plant of acidic hot spring water with river water of Shibukuro River was estimated as 1 to 1, and at the confluence of Shibukuro and Tama Rivers the mixing ratio of these two was estimated to be 3 to 7 or 4 to 6. These mixing ratios were mostly consistent with those obtained from the concentrations of dissolved chemical components. These consistent mixing ratios suggest that the chemical composition of river water was mainly controlled by the mixing of the waste water and the tributary river waters, and the influence of precipitation of insoluble salts was negligible. The contribution of the waste water was about 10% at Tose located downstream from the confluence of Shibukuro and Tama Rivers.
Current status and future direction of MALT, The University of Tokyo Matsuzaki, Hiroyuki; Nakano, Chuichiro; Yamashita, Hiroshi ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms,
August 2004, 2004-08-00, Letnik:
223-224
Journal Article
Recenzirano
MALT (Micro-Analysis Laboratory, Tandem accelerator) at The University of Tokyo is a research and service facility for elemental and isotopic analysis using a tandem accelerator for AMS, PIXE and ...NRA. Among these, AMS is the most promising technique at MALT. After the AMS-8 conference in 1999, the overall performance was greatly improved for 10Be-, 26Al- and 14C-AMS. For 10Be-AMS, the negative ion current was considerably increased by a new Cs-ionizer system and the replacement of the compound powder (Nb instead of Ag) for the BeO target. More than 3 μA current of BeO− ions can be extracted while it had been typically 1 μA before. For 26Al-AMS, by examining the sample ignition process, the negative ion gain was increased more than 200 nA (typically 100 nA before), which greatly improved the overall efficiency. For 14C-AMS, the 12C− current dependency problem has been moderated substantially by installing a fine controllable Cs oven and careful beam tuning. As a consequence, the precision is now better than 0.5% for modern carbon.
In addition, systems for 36Cl-AMS and 129I-AMS are currently being developed for future research programs at MALT.
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