Vegetation and Socio-economic Structure in Kake-cho, Hiroshima Prefecture

This study analyzed the relationship between rural vegetation and the socioeconomic structure of six villages in Hiroshima Prefecture that consolidated in 1956 to form Kake-cho, a typical mountain town. We measured the area of vegetation in each of the original six villages with a vegetation map (Nakagoshi et al., 1992). A principal component analysis of agricultural and forestry census data from 1970 and 1990 revealed that conifer plantations and deciduous forests were the dominant types of vegetation. The amount of vegetation, 29.7 per square kilometer,[Chris1] was closely related to the agriculture of the region. In 1970, conifer plantations dominated the villages of Kake and Tsubono, but deciduous vegetation and pine forests were more common in the other four villages where farming was the main industry. By 1990, the human population of all six villages had decreased, but the amount of tall vegetation had increased throughout the area. The changes in the amount of vegetation resulted from natural succession, not human activity

Mechanism of furosemide resistance in analbuminemic rats and hypoalbuminemic patients

Mechanism of furosemide resistance in analbuminemic rats and hypoalbuminemic patients. To elucidate the mechanism of resistance of hypoalbuminemic patients to furosemide, the effect of this diuretic on urine volume of normal and analbuminemic rats (NAR) and of hypoalbuminemic patients was studied. Intravenous administration of furosemide rapidly enhanced sodium diuresis in normal rats but not in NAR. Total plasma clearance and distribution volume of furosemide were much larger in NAR than in normal rats, while no significant difference in these pharmacokinetic parameters was observed for the unbound fraction of the diuretic between the two animal groups. In contrast, urinary secretion of furosemide was significantly lower in NAR than in normal rats. Injected furosemide bound to albumin markedly promoted diuresis in NAR, while the same dose of albumin alone had no effect, indicating that binding to albumin is essential for the delivery of furosemide to the kidney, the site for its action. Injection of the complex rapidly increased the urine volume of hypoalbuminemic patients who showed a marked resistance to this diuretic. Thus, the resistance to furosemide in both NAR and hypoalbuminemic patients may be explained on the same basis

Development of an epileptic seizure prediction algorithm using R–R intervals with self-attentive autoencoder

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that may affect the autonomic nervous system (ANS) from 15 to 20 min before seizure onset, and disturbances of ANS affect R–R intervals (RRI) on an electrocardiogram (ECG). This study aims to develop a machine learning algorithm for predicting focal epileptic seizures by monitoring R–R interval (RRI) data in real time. The developed algorithm adopts a self-attentive autoencoder (SA-AE), which is a neural network for time-series data. The results of applying the developed seizure prediction algorithm to clinical data demonstrated that it functioned well in most patients; however, false positives (FPs) occurred in specific participants. In a future work, we will investigate the causes of FPs and optimize the developing seizure prediction algorithm to further improve performance using newly added clinical data

石川県加賀地方各地で危急種ミズアオイの生育を確認

[雑録] Short communication

Effects of Aliskiren Monotherapy versus Amlodipine Monotherapy in Hypertensive Patients with Obesity or Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Introduction: Renin-angiotensin system inhibitors have been reported to exert protective effects against organ damage and failure; however, the impact of the direct renin inhibitor as monotherapy has not been assessed. Here, we investigated the effects of 24-week monotherapy with aliskiren compared to amlodipine in hypertensive patients with type 2 diabetes or obesity. Methods: In this randomized intervention study, 62 adult hypertensive patients with visceral obesity (defined as a body mass index [BMI] greater than 25 kg/m2 and a visceral adipose tissue area [VFA] greater than 100 cm2) or type 2 diabetes mellitus (age 57 ± 13, 65% men, BMI 28.8 ± 4.8 kg/m2, VFA 134.8 ± 47.0 cm2, blood pressure 141 ± 16/86 ± 13 mm Hg) were randomized to receive 24-week treatment with aliskiren (max. 300 mg) or amlodipine (max. 10 mg). The primary outcome was the change in VFA at 24 weeks post-treatment. Results: Change in VFA did not differ significantly from baseline in either group. Systolic blood pressure significantly decreased at 12 weeks (−10 mm Hg, p = 0.001) and 24 weeks (−10 mm Hg, p = 0.001) in the amlodipine group and at 24 weeks (−11 mm Hg, p = 0.001) in the aliskiren group. Diastolic blood pressure significantly decreased at 24 weeks (−6 mm Hg, p = 0.009) only in the amlodipine group. Although the estimated glomerular filtration rates did not significantly change in either group, the logarithm of urinary albumin excretion significantly decreased at 24 weeks only in the aliskiren group (−0.60, p < 0.001). The 24-week changes in the urinary albumin excretion significantly correlated with the changes in the plasma renin activity in the aliskiren group (r = 0.51, p = 0.008). Conclusion: Aliskiren monotherapy did not show any superiority to amlodipine monotherapy on VFA, estimated glomerular filtration rates, or urinary albumin excretion in obese or type 2 diabetic hypertensive patients

Characterization and tRNA Recognition of Mammalian Mitochondrial Seryl-tRNA Synthetase

Animal mitochondrial protein synthesis systems contain two serine tRNAs (tRNAs(Ser)) corresponding to the codons AGY and UCN, each possessing an unusual secondary structure; the former lacks the entire D arm, and the latter has a slightly different cloverleaf structure. To elucidate whether these two tRNAs(Ser) can be recognized by the single animal mitochondrial seryl-tRNA synthetase (mt SerRS), we purified mt SerRS from bovine liver 2400-fold and showed that it can aminoacylate both of them. Specific interaction between mt SerRS and either of the tRNAs(Ser) was also observed in a gel retardation assay. cDNA cloning of bovine mt SerRS revealed that the deduced amino acid sequence of the enzyme contains 518 amino acid residues. The cDNAs of human and mouse mt SerRS were obtained by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and expressed sequence tag data base searches. Elaborate inspection of primary sequences of mammalian mt SerRSs revealed diversity in the N-terminal domain responsible for tRNA recognition, indicating that the recognition mechanism of mammalian mt SerRS differs considerably from that of its prokaryotic counterpart. In addition, the human mt SerRS gene was found to be located on chromosome 19q13.1, to which the autosomal deafness locus DFNA4 is mapped

Novel, Objective, Multivariate Biomarkers Composed of Plasma Amino Acid Profiles for the Diagnosis and Assessment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease

BACKGROUND: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic intestinal disorder that is associated with a limited number of clinical biomarkers. In order to facilitate the diagnosis of IBD and assess its disease activity, we investigated the potential of novel multivariate indexes using statistical modeling of plasma amino acid concentrations (aminogram). METHODOLOGY AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We measured fasting plasma aminograms in 387 IBD patients (Crohn's disease (CD), n = 165; ulcerative colitis (UC), n = 222) and 210 healthy controls. Based on Fisher linear classifiers, multivariate indexes were developed from the aminogram in discovery samples (CD, n = 102; UC, n = 102; age and sex-matched healthy controls, n = 102) and internally validated. The indexes were used to discriminate between CD or UC patients and healthy controls, as well as between patients with active disease and those in remission. We assessed index performances using the area under the curve of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC AUC). We observed significant alterations to the plasma aminogram, including histidine and tryptophan. The multivariate indexes established from plasma aminograms were able to distinguish CD or UC patients from healthy controls with ROC AUCs of 0.940 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.898-0.983) and 0.894 (95%CI: 0.853-0.935), respectively in validation samples (CD, n = 63; UC, n = 120; healthy controls, n = 108). In addition, other indexes appeared to be a measure of disease activity. These indexes distinguished active CD or UC patients from each remission patients with ROC AUCs of 0.894 (95%CI: 0.853-0.935) and 0.849 (95%CI: 0.770-0.928), and correlated with clinical disease activity indexes for CD (r(s) = 0.592, 95%CI: 0.385-0.742, p<0.001) or UC (r(s) = 0.598, 95%CI: 0.452-0.713, p<0.001), respectively. CONCLUSIONS AND SIGNIFICANCE: In this study, we demonstrated that established multivariate indexes composed of plasma amino acid profiles can serve as novel, non-invasive, objective biomarkers for the diagnosis and monitoring of IBD, providing us with new insights into the pathophysiology of the disease

The whole blood transcriptional regulation landscape in 465 COVID-19 infected samples from Japan COVID-19 Task Force

「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19患者由来の血液細胞における遺伝子発現の網羅的解析 --重症度に応じた遺伝子発現の変化には、ヒトゲノム配列の個人差が影響する--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-23.Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recently-emerged infectious disease that has caused millions of deaths, where comprehensive understanding of disease mechanisms is still unestablished. In particular, studies of gene expression dynamics and regulation landscape in COVID-19 infected individuals are limited. Here, we report on a thorough analysis of whole blood RNA-seq data from 465 genotyped samples from the Japan COVID-19 Task Force, including 359 severe and 106 non-severe COVID-19 cases. We discover 1169 putative causal expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) including 34 possible colocalizations with biobank fine-mapping results of hematopoietic traits in a Japanese population, 1549 putative causal splice QTLs (sQTLs; e.g. two independent sQTLs at TOR1AIP1), as well as biologically interpretable trans-eQTL examples (e.g., REST and STING1), all fine-mapped at single variant resolution. We perform differential gene expression analysis to elucidate 198 genes with increased expression in severe COVID-19 cases and enriched for innate immune-related functions. Finally, we evaluate the limited but non-zero effect of COVID-19 phenotype on eQTL discovery, and highlight the presence of COVID-19 severity-interaction eQTLs (ieQTLs; e.g., CLEC4C and MYBL2). Our study provides a comprehensive catalog of whole blood regulatory variants in Japanese, as well as a reference for transcriptional landscapes in response to COVID-19 infection