SHED-CM for ALS Treatment

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by the loss of upper and lower motor neurons, for which an effective treatment has yet to be developed. Previous reports have shown that excessive oxidative stress, related to mitochondrial dysfunction and the accumulation of misfolding protein, contributes to ALS pathology. In terms of treatment, it remains necessary to identify effective medicines for multiple therapeutic targets and have additive effects against several disorders. In this study, we investigated stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth (SHED), which release many factors, such as neurotrophic factors and cytokines, and are applied to treat neurological diseases. Specifically, we examined whether SHED-conditioned medium (CM), i.e., the serum-free culture supernatant of SHED, reduced mutant SOD1-induced intracellular aggregates and neurotoxicity. We found that SHED-CM significantly suppressed the mutant SOD1-induced intracellular aggregates and neurotoxicity. The neuroprotective effects of SHED-CM are partly related to heat shock protein and the activation of insulin-like growth factor-1 receptor. SHED-CM also had a protective effect on induced pluripotent stem cell-derived motor neurons. Moreover, SHED-CM was effective against not only familial ALS but also sporadic ALS. Overall, these results suggest that SHED-CM could be a promising treatment for slowing the progression of ALS

保健師教育課程の教育評価 : コロナ禍における遠隔（Web）ツールを活用した公衆衛生看護学実習プログラムの実践

報告Reports　世界的パンデミックを引き起こしている新型コロナウイルス感染症の感染拡大により、本学では、本来学生が実習地に赴き、地域住民との関わりの中で修得している保健師の実践力を、従来の自治体などに赴く実習（以下、臨地実習）から「学内実習」によって獲得させるための実習プログラムに急遽修正する事が求められた。　今回の公衆衛生看護学実習では、保健師に求められる実践力と卒業時の到達目標と到達度が獲得できるよう、新たに遠隔（Web）ツールを活用した実習プログラムを開発し実施したので、その取り組み内容の報告及び今後の課題と展望について考察する

Spontaneous Echo Contrast and Thrombus Formation at the Carotid Bifurcation After Carotid Endarterectomy

Spontaneous echo contrast (SEC) consists of numerous microechoes swirling in the cardiovascular lumen and is usually seen during blood stasis in dysfunctional left atrium. However, SEC and consecutive local thrombus formation at the carotid artery early after carotid endarterectomy (CEA) have not been reported. This study retrospectively investigated the clinical importance and therapeutic strategy of postoperative SEC and thrombus formation in 113 consecutive patients who underwent CEA between 2001 and 2009. Ultrasonography was routinely performed preoperatively, intraoperatively, and 1 day and 1 week after the operation. If SEC and/or thrombus was detected at any time after the operation, follow-up ultrasonography was performed at short intervals, once a week for inpatients and once every 1-2 months for outpatients. Eight of the 113 patients (7%) had SEC after the operation from Day 1 to 12 (mean 7.2 days), and 6 of these 8 patients developed local de novo thrombus formation at the site of SEC from Day 6 to 33 (mean 14.7 days). The maximum luminal narrowing by the thrombi were 26-62% (mean 37%). After administering anticoagulant therapy, all thrombi disappeared from Day 13 to 190 (mean 57 days) from CEA. SEC seen after CEA is highly associated with consecutive local thrombus formation. Postoperative geometric blood stasis with the absence of intima may be the causative factor for its development

Sediment recognition by warp tension monitoring of bottom otter trawling and applying the self-organizing map algorithm

Model towing experiments of a bottom trawl net with hyper-lift trawl door were conducted to investigate the effect of the bottom sediment (concrete, sand, gravel, and rock) on the warp tension of the overall trawl system.The towing speed was from 50 cm/s to 70 cm/s and the ratio of warp length relative to the water depth was within the range of 4–6. Through the signal analysis of time-series warp tension, results reveal that there is a significant dependence of the warp tension on the type of bottom sediment, and the oscillation of warp tension in a frequency range of 1–10 Hz increases in the order of concrete, sand, gravel, and rock.Based on these characterizations, the time-series warp tension is thus represented by the feature vector for the input data of the self-organizing map (SOM) and learning vector quantization (LVQ) neural networks.A clustering method with an unsupervised SOM neural network acting as an updating tool for the bottom sediment database was successfully built using the validation of the prepared sediments.In combination with the output vector of labeled bottom sediment, the supervised LVQ neural network for sediment recognition performed excellently with a high classification accuracy of over 80%.公開日: 2023-07-0

Nationwide epidemiologic study of norovirus-related hospitalization among Japanese older adults

Abstract Background Older adults are vulnerable to hospitalization or death from norovirus infection, but the actual disease burden remains unknown. Therefore, we conducted a nationwide survey to estimate the number of inpatients with norovirus gastroenteritis and associated deaths among Japanese older adults. Methods We performed a nationwide two-step query targeting 4184 hospital departments selected from 17,575 departments using stratified random sampling according to the number of beds. We asked each department to complete a mail-back questionnaire on the annual numbers of inpatients with infectious gastroenteritis and associated deaths between administrative years 2012 and 2014, and the implementation status of norovirus infection testing. In a second query, we investigated the annual number of inpatients with norovirus gastroenteritis and associated deaths in departments that had reported infectious gastroenteritis inpatients in the first query. Clinical information was collected for inpatients with norovirus gastroenteritis in administrative year 2014. Results Norovirus testing for patients hospitalized for acute gastroenteritis was routinely conducted in 16% of the responding departments. Although half the departments responded that some acute gastroenteritis inpatients received such testing but others did not. In this situation, numbers of inpatients with norovirus gastroenteritis in Japan were estimated as 31,800 (95% CI: 25,700-37,900) in administrative year 2012, 21,600 (95% CI: 17,700–25,500) in administrative year 2013, and 15,700 (95% CI: 12,900–18,500) in administrative year 2014. The estimated number of associated deaths was approximately 600 in each administrative year. Factors associated with death included higher age, living in long-term care facilities, underlying illnesses such as chronic respiratory diseases, and complications such as aspiration pneumonia. Conclusions The actual number of norovirus inpatient would be higher than the estimated here due to the low rate of routinely implemented norovirus testing. Considering Japan’s rapidly aging society and the disease burden of norovirus infection among Japanese older adults, it is important to protect this high-risk population from norovirus infection