An Electron Microscope Study on the Sinus Endothelial Cells of Lymph Node with Reference to their Relation to the Reticuloendothelial System.

1. A study was made on the fine structure and function of the sinus endothelial cells of lymph node to know more precisely about the features of them with reference to the relation to the reticuloendothelial system. 2. In normal condition they showed no phagocytic activity whereas reticulum cells in the sinus showed marked phagocytic activity. 3. Electron microscopically they were identical with the proper endothelia of blood vessels. Namely they had a basement membrane and connected with each other by tight junction structures. 4. These results led to the conclusion that the sinus endothelial cells of lymph node had to be omitted from the categories of reticuloendothelial system. 5. However, they turned to phagocytic after the foreign body stimulation for 2 weeks. 6. This phenomenon showed a possibility that the reticuloendothelial cells were not specific cells but only the proper endothelia which have been situated in an irritative circumstance. 7. The significance of these results on the concept of reticuloendothelial system was briefly discussed

Frequent Consumption of Vegetables and The Decreased Risk of Ovarian Cancer

A case-control study was conducted to assess the relationship of dietary habits to ovarian cancer. A uniform questionnaire was filled out by 44 ovarian cancer cases hospitalized at Sapporo Medical University or 2 other hospitals in Sapporo between August and norember, 1990. Two hundred twenty individually locality-matched controls were selected from telephone books and sent the same questionnaire ; 156 (70.9%) responded. The conditional logistic regression anal-ysis was used to compare the data of 44 ovarian cancer cases and the 156 individ-ually age-matched controls. Univariate analysis revealed that single marital sta-tus was significantly associated with the increased risk of ovarian cancer (odds ratio, or OR=3.45, 95% confidence interval, or 95%CI 1.13-10.84). Frequent intake of midnight meals was also significantly related to the increased risk (trend, OR=1.56, 95%CI 1.01-2.41), and frequent intake of vegetables other than yellow or red was significantly related to the decreased risk (trend, OR= 0.58, 95%CI 0.37-0.91). These odds ratios concerning dietary habits were not substantially altered even after adjustment for potentially distorting variables such as marital status, the number of parities, and family history for uterine, ovarian, or breast cancer with the multivariate analysis. No other dietary habits, including frequent consumption of meat, fish, or milk, were associated with the increase or decrease of the risk of ovarian cancer

Knowledge and Demand for Information about Islet Transplantation in Patients with Type 1 Diabetes

This cross-sectional study based on self-administrated questionnaire was conducted to investigate knowledge, related factors, and sources of information regarding islet transplantation in patients with type 1 diabetes in Japan. Among 137 patients who provided valid responses, 67 (48.9%) knew about islet transplantation. Their main source of information was newspapers or magazines (56.7%) and television or radio (46.3%). However, 85.8% of patients preferred the attending physician as their source of information. Although more than half of the patients were correctly aware of issues related to islet transplantation, the following specific issues for islet transplantation were not understood or considered, and there was little knowledge of them: need for immunosuppressants, lifestyle and dietary adaptations, fewer bodily burdens, and complications. The experience of hypoglycaemia, a high level of academic background, frequent self-monitoring of blood glucose, and the use of continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion were related to higher knowledge about islet transplantation

An Antiproliferative Monoclonal Antibody, 4F9, Reacts with a Subset of Human CD45 Molecules.

The 4F9 monoclonal antibody (IgM) was established for its ability to induce mild growth inhibition to a human T cell line, SUP-T13. The antibody reacted with all hematopoietic cell lines, but not with nonhematopoietic cell lines. Im-munoprecipitation and immunoblotting experiments showed that 4F9 recognized cell surface molecules with apparent molecular weights of between 190 and 220 kDa which varied slightly in size among the cell lines. Therefore, it was strong-ly suggsted that 4F9 recognizes a subset of human CD45 molecules. In immuno-histochemical analysis with paraffin-embedded tissue sections, 4F9 reacted with most lymphocytes except for germinal center B cells in lymph nodes and both medullary and cortical thymocytes. The results of the present study indicated that the anti-CD45, such as 4F9 antibody, affect growth of malignant T cells. The 4F9 antibody is useful in the immunohistochemical analysis of CD45 mole-cules in paraffin-embedded tissue sections