Stressors and Coping in Hemodialysis Patients

本研究の目的は,血液透析患者のストレッサ-と対処について明らかにすることである｡対象者は岡山市内の二カ所の病院において,研究参加に同意が得られた外来透析患者65名であり,透析ストレッサ一,対処,人口統計学的や医学的な情報などについて質問紙法による調査を行った｡その結果,以下のようなことが明らかになった｡(1)透析ストレッサ-は｢将来への不安｣が最も高く,そして｢治療時間の長さ｣や｢身体的活動の制限｣などの精神的ストレッサ-が続いていた｡(2)対処は,消極的回避的および積極的前向き対処が問題解決的対処よりも上位を占めていた｡今日､医学や透析機器などの改良で透析治療は 進歩を遂げてきているが,透析患者は将来への不安や時間の拘束などの制約や負担を抱えている｡しかしながら,そのようなストレスフルな状況に対して,運命として引き受けるという感情を持ちながらもその思いをマイナスとしてだけに捉えるのではなく,前向きに対処をしていることが伺えた｡The purpose of this study is to clarify stressors and coping in hemodialysis patients, The subjects were sixty five hemodialysis outpatients who agreed to participate in this study. The data was collected by questionnaires that consisted of dialysis stressor, coping and demographic and medical characteristics, from two hospitals in Okayama city. The results were as follows: (1) "uncertainty concerning the future" has the highest scores among the dialysis stressors, and was followed by psychosocial stressors such as "length of treatment" and "limitation of physical activities". (2) In emotional control negative emotional coping to evade problems and positive emotional coping to face problems are much higher scores than cognitive coping to solve problems. In spite of the improved hemodialysis treatment of today, patients are still under high stresses. it was found that hemodialysis patients strove to cope well with stressful situations such as uncertainty concerning the future and restrictions on time

A comparison of three methods of decellularization of pig corneas to reduce immunogenicity.

AIM: To investigate whether decellularization using different techniques can reduce immunogenicity of the cornea, and to explore the decellularized cornea as a scaffold for cultured corneal endothelial cells (CECs). Transplantation of decellularized porcine corneas increases graft transparency and survival for longer periods compared with fresh grafts. METHODS: Six-month-old wild-type pig corneas were cut into 100-200 µm thickness, and then decellularized by three different methods: 1) 0.1% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS); 2) hypoxic nitrogen (N2); and 3) hypertonic NaCl. Thickness and transparency were assessed visually. Fresh and decellularized corneas were stained with hematoxylin/eosin (H&E), and for the presence of galactose-α1,3-galactose (Gal) and N-glycolylneuraminic acid (NeuGc, a nonGal antigen). Also, a human IgM/IgG binding assay was performed. Cultured porcine CECs were seeded on the surface of the decellularized cornea and examined after H&E staining. RESULTS: All three methods of decellularization reduced the number of keratocytes in the stromal tissue by >80% while the collagen structure remained preserved. No remaining nuclei stained positive for Gal or NeuGc, and expression of these oligosaccharides on collagen was also greatly decreased compared to expression on fresh corneas. Human IgM/IgG binding to decellularized corneal tissue was considerably reduced compared to fresh corneal tissue. The cultured CECs formed a confluent monolayer on the surface of decellularized tissue. CONCLUSION: Though incomplete, the significant reduction in the cellular component of the decellularized cornea should be associated with a significantly reduced in vivo immune response compared to fresh corneas

Distribution of Lenticular Astigmatism in a Pre-Cataract Surgery Population

Recently custom ablation of LASIK (laserin situ keratomileusis) has rapidly evolved. It could achieve supervision temporarily, but we suspect that the vision could deteriorate due to against-the rule astigmatism decades after the operation. To clarify this concern, we evaluated distribution of the total and corneal astigmatism of 101 eyes of 65 pre-cataract surgery patients (meanage:73 years). Then we calculated the lenticular astigrlatism by vector analysis. The mean amounts of total and corneal astigmatism were 1.22±1.50D and 0.97±0.84D each. The percentages of no astigmatism: oblique: with-the-rule: against-the-rule were 32: 4: 15: 50 and 7: 28: 26: 40, respectively. The mean amount of lenticular astigrlatism measured by vector analysis was 1.6± 1.4D. The percentage of no astigmatism: oblique: with-the-rule: against-the-rule was 2: 0: 39: 59. This biased distribution of astigmatism might have contributed to the biased distribution (no and against-the-rule) of total astigmatism. These data indicate that in a pre-cataract surgery population against-the-rule astigmatism is predominant in both corneal and lenticular astigmatism. We suspect that custom correction of adolescent eyes, in which with-the-rule astigmatism is predominant, might elicit more against-the-rule astigmatism when they reach pre-cataract surgery age population, leading to a decline in quality of vision

L-BSE prions after propagation in a non-human primate model

Classical- (C-) and atypical L-type bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) prions cause different pathological phenotypes in cattle brains, and the disease-associated forms of each prion protein (PrPSc) has a dissimilar biochemical signature. Bovine C-BSE prions are the causative agent of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. To date, human infection with L-BSE prions has not been reported, but they can be transmitted experimentally from cows to cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis), a non-human primate model. When transmitted to monkeys, C- and L-BSE prions induce different pathological phenotypes in the brain. However, when isolated from infected brains, the two prion proteins (PrPSc) have similar biochemical signatures (i.e., electrophoretic mobility, glycoforms, and resistance to proteinase K). Such similarities suggest the possibility that L-BSE prions alter their virulence to that of C-BSE prions during propagation in monkeys. To clarify this possibility, we conducted bioassays using inbred mice. C-BSE prions with or without propagation in monkeys were pathogenic to mice, and exhibited comparable incubation periods in secondary passage in mice. By contrast, L-BSE prions, either with or without propagation in monkeys, did not cause the disease in mice, indicating that the pathogenicity of L-BSE prions does not converge towards a C-BSE prion type in this primate model. These results suggest that, although C- and L-BSE prions propagated in cynomolgus monkeys exhibit similar biochemical PrPSc signatures and consist of the monkey amino acid sequence, the two prions maintain strain-specific conformations of PrPSc in which they encipher and retain unique pathogenic traits

Behavioral Partitioning with Exploiting Function-Level Parallelism

Abstract-This paper proposes a method to efficiently generate hardware from a large behavioral description by behavioral synthesis. For a program with functions which are executable in parallel, this proposed method determines an optimal behavioral partitioning which fully exploits the function-level parallelism with simultaneously minimizing the area in the datapath and control path. This partitioning problem is formulated as an integer programming problem. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method