A predictive factor for the response to S-1 plus cisplatin in gastric cancer

AIM: To prove that the protein expression level of thymidylate synthase is a predictive factor for the response to S-1/cisplatin (CDDP) chemotherapy in gastric cancer

Pollen food allergy syndrome caused by Japanese radish: A case report

Pollen food allergy syndrome (PFAS) is a food allergy that manifests as hypersensitivity symptoms of the oropharyngeal mucosa on ingesting specific foods, and findings resemble herpetic gingivostomatitis. Few reports of PFAS caused by consuming radishes are found in the literature. A 31-year-old man presented to our department with stomatitis and pharyngeal pain. He had no history of allergies. Herpetic gingivostomatitis was suspected. He was admitted to the emergency room a few days later complaining of oral and epigastric pain. Symptoms were similar to those reported previously. He reported frequently consuming raw Japanese radish (Raphans sativus L.) which gave rise to his symptoms. Japanese radish was suspected as the allergen. The skin-prick test confirmed the diagnosis of PFAS. PFAS can be diagnosed easily once the food-causing symptoms are identified. Upon encountering widespread erosion in the oral cavity, it is essential to consider PFAS as the possible cause

Improving segmentation of calcified and non-calcified plaques on CCTA-CPR scans via masking of the artery wall

The presence of plaques in the coronary arteries is a major risk to the patients' life. In particular, non-calcified plaques pose a great challenge, as they are harder to detect and more likely to rupture than calcified plaques. While current deep learning techniques allow precise segmentation of real-life images, the performance in medical images is still low. This is caused mostly by blurriness and ambiguous voxel intensities of unrelated parts that fall on the same value range. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology for segmenting calcified and non-calcified plaques in CCTA-CPR scans of coronary arteries. The input slices are masked so only the voxels within the wall vessel are considered for segmentation, thus, reducing ambiguity. This mask can be automatically generated via a deep learning-based vessel detector, that provides not only the contour of the outer artery wall, but also the inner contour. For evaluation, we utilized a dataset in which each voxel is carefully annotated as one of five classes: background, lumen, artery wall, calcified plaque, or non-calcified plaque. We also provide an exhaustive evaluation by applying different types of masks, in order to validate the potential of vessel masking for plaque segmentation. Our methodology results in a prominent boost in segmentation performance, in both quantitative and qualitative evaluation, achieving accurate plaque shapes even for the challenging non-calcified plaques. Furthermore, when using highly accurate masks, difficult cases such as stenosis become segmentable. We believe our findings can lead the future research for high-performance plaque segmentation.Comment: Extended abstract (see SPIE for final published version

Complete genome sequence of the motile actinomycete Actinoplanes missouriensis 431T (= NBRC 102363T)

Actinoplanes missouriensis Couch 1963 is a well-characterized member of the genus Actinoplanes, which is of morphological interest because its members typically produce sporangia containing motile spores. The sporangiospores are motile by means of flagella and exhibit chemotactic properties. It is of further interest that members of Actinoplanes are prolific sources of novel antibiotics, enzymes, and other bioactive compounds. Here, we describe the features of A. missouriensis 431(T), together with the complete genome sequence and annotation. The 8,773,466 bp genome contains 8,125 protein-coding and 79 RNA genes