Preliminary Trial of Rebamipide for Prevention of Low-Dose Aspirin-Induced Gastric Injury in Healthy Subjects: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Cross-Over Study

Although low-dose aspirin is widely used, since it is a cheap and effective means of prevention of cardiovascular events, it can cause hemorrhagic gastrointestinal complications. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of rebamipide in preventing low-dose aspirin-induced gastric injury. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial was performed in twenty healthy volunteers. Aspirin 81 mg was administered with placebo or rebamipide 300 mg three times daily for 7 consecutive days. The rebamipide group exhibited significant prevention of erythema in the antrum compared with the placebo group (p = 0.0393, respectively). Results for the body and fornix did not differ significantly between the placebo and rebamipide groups. In conclusion, short-term administration of low-dose aspirin induced slight gastric mucosal injury in the antrum, but not in the body or fornix. Rebamipide may be useful for preventing low-dose aspirin-induced gastric mucosal injury, especially which confined to the antrum

A case study of formation of an art concept by a contemporary artist: Analysis ofthe utilization of drawing in the early phase

When producing a new series of artworks, an artist may engage in a variety of activities in the formation of an art concept.In a specific instance, a contemporary artist was demonstrated first to draw his ideas on paper, as an initial phase ofdeveloping his art concept. This paper utilizes data from a previous study to analyze the drawings and interviews conductedduring this drawing phase. The results show that the artist used various types of modification of his art-making process. Bychanging his own creative activity, the artist often reflected upon his creative process, asking himself what he really wantedto do, and explored new images in response to unexpected findings and the feeling of confusion at his own drawings

Formation of an art concept: A case study using quantitative analysis of a contemporary artist’s interview data

The process of formation by an artist of an art concept for the production of a new series of artwork has not yet been empirically elucidated. The goal of this study is to describe the process of art concept formation by a contemporary artist through quantitative analyses of a text corpus based on interviews with the artist. From an analysis of the frequency of occurrence of items of vocabulary in the interview data and the TF-IDF (term frequency–inverse document frequency), we find that the second of three phases in the artist's creative process was the most critical for the formation of the art concept, as also shown in our previous qualitative study. Further, based on an analysis of co-occurrence frequencies of words, the structure of the art concept is deduced from the importance of co-occurring vocabulary. By means of visualizing the network of co-occurrence analysis, it is clarified that the feature words "The Large Glass" functioned in the first phase as the medium for dividing the structure of the concept into two parts. In the second phase, these two parts of the structure became integrated into one. In the last phase, the structure of the concept was elaborated on with the revived feature words, "White Noise" and "Duchamp"

Hypoxia-Inducible Factors Activate CD133 Promoter through ETS Family Transcription Factors

CD133 is a cellular surface protein that has been reported to be a cancer stem cell marker, and thus it is considered to be a potential target for cancer treatment. However, the mechanism regulating CD133 expression is not yet understood. In this study, we analyzed the activity of five putative promoters (P1-P5) of CD133 in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells and colon cancer cell line WiDr, and found that the activity of promoters, particularly of P5, is elevated by overexpression of hypoxia-inducible factors (HIF-1 alpha and HIF-2 alpha). Deletion and mutation analysis identified one of the two E-twenty six (ETS) binding sites (EBSs) in the P5 region as being essential for its promoter activity induced by HIF-1 alpha and HIF-2 alpha. In addition, a chromatin imunoprecipitation assay demonstrated that HIF-1 alpha and HIF-2 alpha bind to the proximal P5 promoter at the EBSs. The immunoprecipitation assay showed that HIF-1 alpha physically interacts with Elk1; however, HIF-2 alpha did not bind to Elk1 or ETS1. Furthermore, knockdown of both HIF-1 alpha and HIF-2 alpha resulted in a reduction of CD133 expression in WiDr. Taken together, our results revealed that HIF-1 alpha and HIF-2 alpha activate CD133 promoter through ETS proteins

Effect of HIFs or ETS knockdown on CD133 promoter activity and expression in WiDr cells.

<p>(A) P5 −98 bp promoter activity under knockdown of HIF-1α and HIF-2α. (B) P5 −98 bp promoter activity under knockdown of ETS families. (C) P5 −98 bp promoter activity after overexpression of HIF-1α and HIF-2α 24 hrs after knockdown of HIF-1α and HIF-2α under normoxia and hypoxia. (D) Quantitative real-time reverse-transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis of CD133 under knockdown of HIF-1α and HIF-2α. *<i>P</i><0.05 vs. control siRNA (siCont). (E) Western blot analysis of HIF-1α and HIF-2α and CD133 under knockdown of HIF-1α and HIF-2α. β-actin is an internal control.</p

Binding of HIFs to CD133 P5 proximal promoter and ETS-family proteins.

<p>(A) Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay showing the binding of O₂-stable HIF-1α and HIF-2α (HIF-1α-P/A and HIF-2α-P/A, respectively) to the CD133 P5 promoter (between −98 bp and +10 bp) in WiDr cells. (B) IP-western blot analysis showing the binding of HIF-1α-P/A and HIF-2α-P/A to ETS1 or Elk1 using human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells (left) and WiDr cells (right). (C) Luciferase activity of P5 −98 bp promoter in HEK293 cells after overexpression of HIF-1α together with the knockdown of Elk1. *<i>P</i><0.05 vs. HIF-1α overexpression. (D) IP-western blot analysis showing the binding of HIF-1α to Elk1 under normoxia and hypoxia in HEK293 cells.</p