The relation between mindfulness and the fatigue of women with breast cancer: path analysis

Background: Although fatigue is a common and distressing symptom in cancer survivors, the mechanism of fatigue is not fully understood. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the relation between the fatigue and mindfulness of breast cancer survivors using anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance as mediators. Methods: Path analysis was performed to examine direct and indirect associations between mindfulness and fatigue. Participants were breast cancer survivors who visited a breast surgery department at a university hospital in Japan for hormonal therapy or regular check-ups after treatment. The questionnaire measured cancer-related-fatigue, mindfulness, anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance. Demographic and clinical characteristics were collected from medical records. Results: Two-hundred and seventy-nine breast cancer survivors were registered, of which 259 answered the questionnaire. Ten respondents with incomplete questionnaire data were excluded, resulting in 249 participants for the analyses. Our final model fit the data well (goodness of fit index = .993; adjusted goodness of fit index = .966; comparative fit index = .999; root mean square error of approximation = .016). Mindfulness, anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance were related to fatigue, and mindfulness had the most influence on fatigue (β = − .52). Mindfulness affected fatigue not only directly but also indirectly through anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance. Conclusions: The study model helps to explain the process by which mindfulness affects fatigue. Our results suggest that mindfulness has both direct and indirect effects on the fatigue of breast cancer survivors and that mindfulness can be used to more effectively reduce their fatigue. It also suggests that health care professionals should be aware of factors such as anxiety, depression, pain, loneliness, and sleep disturbance in their care for fatigue of breast cancer survivors. Trial registration: This study was registered in the University Hospital Medical Information Network Clinical Trials Registry (UMIN number. 000027720) on June 12, 2017

Maternal Nanos inhibits Importin-α2/Pendulin-dependent nuclear import to prevent somatic gene expression in the Drosophila germline

Repression of somatic gene expression in germline progenitors is one of the critical mechanisms involved in establishing the germ/soma dichotomy. In Drosophila, the maternal Nanos (Nos) and Polar granule component (Pgc) proteins are required for repression of somatic gene expression in the primordial germ cells, or pole cells. Pgc suppresses RNA polymerase II-dependent global transcription in pole cells, but it remains unclear how Nos represses somatic gene expression. Here, we show that Nos represses somatic gene expression by inhibiting translation of maternal importin-α2 (impα2) mRNA. Mis-expression of Impα2 caused aberrant nuclear import of a transcriptional activator, Ftz-F1, which in turn activated a somatic gene, fushi tarazu (ftz), in pole cells when Pgc-dependent transcriptional repression was impaired. Because ftz expression was not fully activated in pole cells in the absence of either Nos or Pgc, we propose that Nos-dependent repression of nuclear import of transcriptional activator(s) and Pgc-dependent suppression of global transcription act as a ‘double-lock’ mechanism to inhibit somatic gene expression in germline progenitors

Regional heritability mapping identifies several novel loci (STAT4, ULK4, and KCNH5) for primary biliary cholangitis in the Japanese population

原発性胆汁性胆管炎の新たな遺伝要因を同定 --ヒト全ゲノム領域へのRHM法による世界初の成果--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2021-04-09.While the advent of GWAS more than a decade ago has ushered in remarkable advances in our understanding of complex traits, the limitations of single-SNP analysis have also led to the development of several other approaches. Simulation studies have shown that the regional heritability mapping (RHM) method, which makes use of multiple adjacent SNPs jointly to estimate the genetic effect of a given region of the genome, generally has higher detection power than single-SNP GWAS. However, thus far its use has been mostly limited to agricultural settings, and its potential for the discovery of new genes in human diseases is yet to be fully exploited. In this study, by applying the RHM method to primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) in the Japanese population, we identified three novel loci (STAT4, ULK4, and KCNH5) at the genome-wide significance level, two of which (ULK4 and KCNH5) have not been found associated with PBC in any population previously. Notably, these genes could not be detected by using conventional single-SNP GWAS, highlighting the potential of the RHM method for the detection of new susceptibility loci in human diseases. These findings thereby provide strong empirical evidence that RHM is an effective and practical complementary approach to GWAS in this context. Also, liver tissue mRNA microarray analysis revealed higher gene expression levels in ULK4 in PBC patients (P < 0.01). Lastly, we estimated the common SNP heritability of PBC in the Japanese population (0.210 ± 0.026)

放送大学学士の効用 : 女子卒業者の調査より

日本教育社会学会第48回大会, 1996年10月(九州大学), Ⅱ-1部会 高等教育(2