Background. Serum Krebs von den Lungen-6 (KL-6) measurement is widely used to assess disease activity or prognosis in patients with interstitial lung diseases (ILDs). However, the clinical ...differences between high and low serum KL-6 levels at the time of acute exacerbation (AE) of ILD are not well known. Methods. Clinical parameters including age, sex, Charlson Comorbidity Index score (CCIS), blood biomarkers, high-resolution CT findings, and disease mortality were retrospectively compared between high and low KL-6 (cutoff value: 1000 U/mL) patients at the time of diagnosis of AE of ILDs. Results. Thirty-eight high serum KL-6 and 57 low serum KL-6 patients were included. There was no significant difference in 6-month mortality between them (P = 0.685), whereas serum lactate dehydrogenase was a significant predictor of 6-month mortality in the high serum KL-6 patients (odds ratio (OR): 1.006; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.003–1.009; P < 0.001), and CCIS (OR: 1.502; 95% CI: 1.242–1.838; P < 0.001) and sex (OR: 5.751; 95% CI: 1.121–105.163; P = 0.033) were significant predictors in low serum KL-6 patients. In addition, the incidences of congestive heart failure, symptomatic chronic pulmonary disease, cerebrovascular disease, and second metastatic solid tumours were significantly higher in nonsurvivors with low serum KL-6 than in other groups (P < 0.05). Conclusions. The clinical features in patients with AEs of ILDs may differ depending on the serum KL-6 level, and clinicopathological examination according to this subtyping guided by the serum KL-6 level is essential.
Nevi are benign melanocytic tumors, and some nevi are considered to develop into malignant melanomas. Most nevi arise in the skin, but nevi occasionally occur in the conjunctiva, esophageal mucosa, ...or at other sites. Pulmonary melanocytic nevi are extremely rare, and only one case has been reported in the literature. Here, we present a case of pulmonary melanocytic nevus, involving a BRAF gene mutation (V600E), and we discuss the potential significance of this condition as a precursor to pulmonary malignant melanoma.
A weak easy-plane-type antiferromagnet CsCuCl
3 has been known to present a phase transition, due to the quantum fluctuation in the magnetic frustration system, in the ordered state below 10 K under ...a field
∼12
T
applied along the
c-axis. In order to study more clearly the effect of the quantum fluctuation on the phase transition in the ordered state, an NMR experiment was carried out in CsCuCl
3 with Co
2+ impurity (
x⩽0.03) of Ising anisotropy. A new phase transition was observed from the susceptibility and the NMR measurement.
1H-NMR study of the organic radical compound BIPNNBNO which is a two-dimensional spin-gap system has been performed under the applied field up to 7.7 T including the critical field region and in the ...temperature down to 0.4 K. The proton spin-lattice relaxation rate T1-1 exhibited the thermal activation-type behavior suggesting the existence of the energy gap not only in the gapped state near zero field but also in the 1/3-plateau phase above about 6 T. It was found that T1-1 increased with decreasing temperature in the critical field region between the gapped phase and the plateau phase, which is similar to what has been already observed for one-dimensional systems associated with the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) state.
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