Rapidly Progressive Cardiac Manifestation of Behçet's Disease Involving Conduction System and Aortic Valve

Cardiac conduction system impairment is a rare clinical manifestation of Behçet's disease. We report a patient who showed 1st degree atrioventricular block at first presentation, and showed aggravated finding of 3rd degree atrioventricular block on five months later. His cardiac manifestation finally developed to acute severe aortic regurgitation on six months later from his first cardiac manifestation. We observed this rapid progression during 6 months and successfully improved symptom and disease severity of the patient with treatment targeting Behçet's disease

A Projection of Extreme Precipitation Based on a Selection of CMIP5 GCMs over North Korea

The numerous choices between climate change scenarios makes decision-making difficult for the assessment of climate change impacts. Previous studies have used climate models to compare performance in terms of simulating observed climates or preserving model variability among scenarios. In this study, the Katsavounidis-Kuo-Zhang algorithm was applied to select representative climate change scenarios (RCCS) that preserve the variability among all climate change scenarios (CCS). The performance of multi-model ensemble of RCCS was evaluated for reference and future climates. It was found that RCCS was well suited for observations and multi model ensemble of all CCS. Using the RCCS under RCP (Representative Concentration Pathway) 8.5, the future extreme precipitation was projected. As a result, the magnitude and frequency of extreme precipitation increased towards the farther future. Especially, extreme precipitation (daily maximum precipitation of 20-year return-period) during 2070-2099, was projected to occur once every 8.3-year. The RCCS employed in this study is able to successfully represent the performance of all CCS, therefore, this approach can give opportunities managing water resources efficiently for assessment of climate change impacts

Metabolite Profiling of Diverse Rice Germplasm and Identification of Conserved Metabolic Markers of Rice Roots in Response to Long-Term Mild Salinity Stress

The sensitivity of rice to salt stress greatly depends on growth stages, organ types and cultivars. Especially, the roots of young rice seedlings are highly salt-sensitive organs that limit plant growth, even under mild soil salinity conditions. In an attempt to identify metabolic markers of rice roots responding to salt stress, metabolite profiling was performed by 1H-NMR spectroscopy in 38 rice genotypes that varied in biomass accumulation under long-term mild salinity condition. Multivariate statistical analysis showed separation of the control and salt-treated rice roots and rice genotypes with differential growth potential. By quantitative analyses of 1H-NMR data, five conserved salt-responsive metabolic markers of rice roots were identified. Sucrose, allantoin and glutamate accumulated by salt stress, whereas the levels of glutamine and alanine decreased. A positive correlation of metabolite changes with growth potential and salt tolerance of rice genotypes was observed for allantoin and glutamine. Adjustment of nitrogen metabolism in rice roots is likely to be closely related to maintain the growth potential and increase the stress tolerance of rice

Clinical implications of combined glucose intolerance in treatment-naïve hypertensive patients

Background: This study is the first study to evaluate clinical significance of combined glucose intolerance (CGI) in treatment-naïve hypertensive patients. Methods: We compared the results of demographic, anthropometric, clinical, laboratory examinations, echocardiography, arterial stiffness, central blood pressure (BP) and ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) between the groups according to fasting blood sugar (FBS), postprandial 2 hour blood glucose (PP2) and gender in treatment-naïve hypertensive patients. A total of 376 concecutively-eligible patients were categorized as follows: (1) normal glucose tolerance (NGT); FBS<100 mg/dL and PP2 < 140 (2) isolated glucose intolerance (IGI); 100≤FBS<126 or 140≤PP2 < 200, but not both 100≤FBS<126 and 140≤PP2 < 200 (3) CGI; both 100≤FBS<126 and 140≤PP2 < 200. Results: Males were divided into NGT (n = 58, 33.1%), IGI (n = 88, 50.3%), CGI (n = 29, 16.6%) and females were divided into NGT (n = 59, 43.1%), IGI (n = 48, 35%), CGI (n = 30, 21.9%). In males multivariate analyses revealed that mitral average E/Ea (IGI vs CGI, p = 0.022), brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity baPWV(Rt.) (IGI vs CGI, p = 0.026), baPWV(Lt.) (IGI vs CGI, p = 0.018), office systolic BP (SBP) (NGT vs. CGI, p = 0.005; IGI vs. CGI, p = 0.001), office diastolic BP (DBP) (NGT vs. CGI, p = 0.034; IGI vs. CGI, p = 0.019), night-time SBP (NGT vs. CGI, p = 0.049; IGI vs. CGI, p = 0.018) were significantly higher in the CGI group than in the NGT or IGI group. However, there were no significant differences between the female groups. Conclusions: Treatment-naïve hypertensive males with CGI revealed subclinical diastolic dysfunction, arterial stiffness, and BPs