Sarcoidosis-associated hepatocellular carcinoma

Sarcoidosis is a systemic granulomatous inflammation of unknown etiology, and seems to involve the liver parenchyma in most cases. However, sarcoidosis-associated hepatocellular carcinoma is rare. We report here a case in which a hepatocellular carcinoma occurred within the liver, which was probably involved as a result of systemic sarcoidosis. A 57-year-old Japanese man had been followed up for 2 years because of diabetic nephropathy and sarcoidosis. On admission for pneumonia, imaging studies revealed an unexpected hepatic tumor. Histology revealed a hepatocellular carcinoma accompanied by T-lymphocytic infiltration and marked granulomatous inflammation, which was surrounding some tumor nodules. The background liver parenchyma exhibited a moderate degree of fibrosis with granulomatous inflammation. The patient had no other apparent liver disease such as viral hepatitis, steatohepatitis, or primary biliary cirrhosis. Therefore, in the present case, sarcoidosis may be considered the probable background etiology for hepatocarcinogenesis

Reproductive biology of Hibiscus hamabo Siebold et Zucc.（Malvaceae）

The reproductive biology of Hibiscus hamabo Siebold et Zucc.（Malvaceae）was studied in Nagasaki, Kyushu, southwestern Japan. This species is the northernmost distributed Hibiscus species in Japan, and the flowers are similar to those of H . tiliaceus, which is a pan tropical and subtropical species. The flowering period was ob-served to be limited to a month and a half, starting at the beginning of July, peaking in mid-July and ending in mid-August. Eight floral characters, petal length, petal width, style length, anther-stigma distance, anther-anther distance, pistil tip length, number of anthers and floral dry weight, and size of mature fruits and seed dry weight, were measured for two populations. The Togitsu population is small and isolated but surrounded by various ecosystems, and the Saikai population is larger and surrounded by natural vegetation. The measure-ments of reproductive organs, flower, fruit, seed production and seed weight were greater and more varied in the Saikai population. Pollination experiments with the following four treatments were done for these two popula-tions : hand cross-pollination, hand self-pollination, autonomous self-pollination and open-pollination. The re-sults of fruit sets and seed sets indicated that H . hamabo is clearly self-compatible but has inbreeding depres-sion. In open-pollinated flowers, fruit sets of the Togitsu population were significantly greater than those of the Saikai population. Fruit predation in the Togitsu population was also greater than that in the Saikai. A compari-son of these results with those of H . tiliaceus, a phylogenetically closely related species, indicated that the repro-ductive systems of H . hamabo are characterized by adaptation to the warm-temperate climate. A comparison be-tween the populations suggested that the size of the populations and the ecosystem diversity surrounding them were important for their breeding success