Reliability and Validity of the Self-report Quality of Life Questionnaire for Japanese School-aged Children with Asthma (JSCA-QOL v.3)

ABSTRACTBackgroundAsthma is a chronic disease prevalent in children which threatens their quality of life (QOL) through unexpected asthma attacks and/or the burden of daily self-management. As some conditions of chronic illness make it difficult for a child to accomplish normal developmental tasks, there may be fewer opportunities for the child to obtain a sense of achievement. This study investigated the reliability and validity of the Quality of Life Questionnaire for Japanese School-aged Children with Asthma Version 3 (JSCA-QOL v.3). This questionnaire includes 25 items with a 5-point Likert Scale format over five domains:"asthma attack triggers", "change in daily life", "family support", "satisfaction with daily life" and "restriction in participating in daily activities", and one summary scale.MethodsIn the present study, 2,425 children with asthma aged from 10 to 18 years were investigated in Japan. The internal consistency reliability of each domain was investigated with Cronbach's α reliability coefficient, and test-retest reliability with Spearman's correlations coefficient. Factorial validity by factor analysis using maximum-likelihood extraction with promax rotation was performed. Data analysis was performed using SPSS 12.0J.ResultsThe final number of effective replies was 2,097 (the rate of effective data was 86.5%). "Asthma attack triggers", "change in daily life", "family support", "satisfaction with daily life" and "restriction in participating in daily activities" showed a high internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.66–0.86) as well as good test-retest reliability (Spearman's rho = 0.60, p < 0.01).The factorial validity was appropriate (KMO value = 0.90), because it was conceivable that the five factors extracted from factor analysis would be the same as in our hypothesis and support constructive validity. In addition, there was good correlation between the summary scale and the total QOL score (Spearman's rho = 0.58, p <0.01).ConclusionsThe present study showed that the JSCA-QOL v.3 is a reliable and valid measurement tool that can be used to appropriately assess QOL in school-aged children with asthma. As the JSCA-QOL v.3 can be easily completed in about 10 minutes, it can contribute as an efficient evaluation tool of the outcome of medical treatment through continual utilization in the outpatient clinic. The JSCA-QOL v.3 allows a health provider to help school-aged children with asthma to achieve their developmental tasks

多能性幹細胞の未分化・分化を制御するシグナル調節因子の解析

創価大

Antarctic Circumpolar Current Fluctuation in the Late Neogene: constraint from sediment wave on the Conrad Rise, Indian Sector of the Southern Ocean

第3回極域科学シンポジウム　横断セッション「海・陸・氷床から探る後期新生代の南極寒冷圏環境変動」11月26日（月） 国立国語研究所 ２階講

Application of therapeutic drug monitoring of imatinib for individual treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumor

Many molecular target agents are continuously administered at fixed dosages. Imatinib, which can control the growth of a gastrointestinal stromal tumor, is administrated at 400 mg/day. However, many patients cannot continue treatment because of adverse events, such as neutropenia. To obtain the best therapeutic response while maintaining quality of life, individualization should be considered. Study participants were gastrointestinal stromal tumor patients who required treatment with imatinib. Therapeutic drug monitoring was conducted using high-performance liquid chromatography. In our study, the trough (lowest) concentration that a drug reaches before the next dose is administered differed among patients. The grades of adverse events also differed individually. Moreover, the dosage that was necessary to shrink gastrointestinal stromal tumor differed in cases by cases. Dosage was modified according to the balance between blood concentration and therapeutic responses in order to minimize adverse events for individual patients, and to maximize the effect as the responses differed among patients. It was shown that based on therapeutic drug monitoring, individualization enabled the patients who may not normally continue the typical treatment to tolerate imatinib. According to the therapeutic drug monitoring, individualization of dosage of imatinib could improve the patients’ outcomes in both ends, therapeutic and adeverse responses. 

Moments of the quark electromagnetic-current two-point function at the physical point: connected contributions

Phenomenology-HEPInternational audienceThe low, euclidean momentum behavior of the hadron vacuum polarization (HVP) is critical for determining, amongst other quantities, the anomalous magnetic moments of the muon. Here we present lattice QCD results for the first two derivatives of the HVP function at vanishing virtuality [1]. Computations are performed with 2 + 1 + 1 flavors of staggered quarks around the physical mass point, in volumes of linear extent larger than 6 fm, and at six values of the lattice spacing, allowing for a fully controlled continuum extrapolation. We further consider possible uncertainties which stem from finite-volume and isospin-breaking effects. After adding to our connected contributions the disconnected terms presented in [2], we compare the resulting derivatives of the full HVP with phenomenological estimates. 34th annual International Symposium on Lattice Field Theor

Curcumin analog, GO-Y078, overcomes resistance to tumor angiogenesis inhibitors

Tumor angiogenesis inhibition is one of the most potent strategies in cancer chemotherapy. From past clinical studies, inhibition of the vascular endothelial growth factor pathway successfully treats malignant tumors. However, vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitors alone cannot cure tumors. Moreover, resistance to small molecule inhibitors has also been reported. Herein, we show the antiangiogenic potential of a newly synthesized curcumin analog, GO-Y078, that possibly functions through inhibition of actin stress fiber formation, resulting in mobility inhibition; this mechanism is different from that of vascular endothelial growth factor inhibition. In addition, we examined the detailed mechanism of action of the antiangiogenesis potential of GO-Y078 using human umbilical venous epithelial cells resistant to angiogenesis inhibitors (HUVEC-R). GO-Y078 inhibited the growth and mobility of HUVEC-R at 0.75mol/L concentration. Expression analyses by microarray and RT-PCR showed that expressions of genes including that of fibronectin 1 were significantly suppressed. Among these genes, fibronectin 1 is abundantly expressed and, therefore, seems to be a good target for GO-Y078. In a knockdown experiment using Si-oligo of fibronectin 1 (FN1), FN1 expression was decreased to half of that in mock experiments as well as GO-Y078. Knockdown of FN1 resulted in the suppression of HUVEC-R growth at 24hours after treatment. Fibronectin is a key molecule contributing to angiogenesis that could be inhibited by GO-Y078. Thus, resistance to vascular endothelial growth factor inhibition can be overcome using GO-Y078

A Functional SNP in BNC2 Is Associated with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is the most common spinal deformity. We previously conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) and detected two loci associated with AIS. To identify additional loci, we extended our GWAS by increasing the number of cohorts (2,109 affected subjects and 11,140 control subjects in total) and conducting a whole-genome imputation. Through the extended GWAS and replication studies using independent Japanese and Chinese populations, we identified a susceptibility locus on chromosome 9p22.2 (p = 2.46 × 10−13; odds ratio = 1.21). The most significantly associated SNPs were in intron 3 of BNC2, which encodes a zinc finger transcription factor, basonuclin-2. Expression quantitative trait loci data suggested that the associated SNPs have the potential to regulate the BNC2 transcriptional activity and that the susceptibility alleles increase BNC2 expression. We identified a functional SNP, rs10738445 in BNC2, whose susceptibility allele showed both higher binding to a transcription factor, YY1 (yin and yang 1), and higher BNC2 enhancer activity than the non-susceptibility allele. BNC2 overexpression produced body curvature in developing zebrafish in a gene-dosage-dependent manner. Our results suggest that increased BNC2 expression is implicated in the etiology of AIS