A Case of Isolated Septal Myocardial Infarction: Myocardial Perfusion-Metabolism Mismatch as a Tool for Diagnosis

Isolated septal myocardial infarction is an uncommon condition with diagnostic difficulty due to small infarction size and anatomical variations. We report a case of isolated septal myocardial infarction, in which the diagnosis was confirmed not by electrocardiographic, echocardiographic, or angiographic findings, but by nuclear imaging. A 46-year-old man with chest discomfort exhibited ST-segment elevations in leads V1 and V2, and borderline abnormalities of the septal wall motion on echocardiography. Emergency coronary angiography demonstrated delayed flow in the second septal branch of the left anterior descending coronary artery. Intravascular ultrasound showed plaque in the proximal portion of the septal branch without evidence of plaque rupture. No balloon angioplasty or stent implantation was required because the flow delay in the septal branch disappeared after the intravascular ultrasound procedure. Myocardial perfusion-metabolism mismatch, as assessed by resting thallium-201 and iodine-123-beta-methyl-p-iodophenyl-pentadecanoic acid, was seen in the mid-septal region

Establishment of a reborn MMV-microarray technology: realization of microbiome analysis and other hitherto inaccessible technologies

BACKGROUND: With the accelerating development of bioscience, the problem of research cost has become important. We previously devised and developed a novel concept microarray with manageable volumes (MMV) using a soft gel. It demonstrated the great potential of the MMV technology with the examples of 1024-parallel-cell culture and PCR experiments. However, its full potential failed to be expressed, owing to the nature of the material used for the MMV chip. RESULTS: In the present study, by developing plastic-based MMVs and associated technologies, we introduced novel technologies such as C2D2P (in which the cells in each well are converted from DNA to protein in 1024-parallel), NGS-non-dependent microbiome analysis, and other powerful applications. CONCLUSIONS: The reborn MMV-microarray technology has proven to be highly efficient and cost-effective (with approximately 100-fold cost reduction) and enables us to realize hitherto unattainable technologies

Comparison of Clinical and Radiological Results of Posterolateral Fusion and Posterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion in the Treatment of L4 Degenerative Lumbar Spondylolisthesis

Study DesignMulticenter analysis of two groups of patients surgically treated for degenerative L4 unstable spondylolisthesis.PurposeTo compare the clinical and radiographic outcomes of posterolateral fusion (PLF) and posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF) for degenerative L4 unstable spondylolisthesis.Overview of LiteratureSurgery for lumbar degenerative spondylolisthesis is widely performed. However, few reports have compared the outcome of PLF to that of PLIF for degenerative L4 unstable spondylolisthesis.MethodsPatients with L4 unstable spondylolisthesis with Meyerding grade II or more, slip of >10° or >4 mm upon maximum flexion and extension bending, and posterior opening of >5 degree upon flexion bending were studied. Patients were treated from January 2008 to January 2010. Patients who underwent PLF (n=12) and PLIF (n=19) were followed-up for >2 years. Radiographic findings and clinical outcomes evaluated by the Japanese Orthopaedic Association (JOA) score were compared between the two groups. Radiographic evaluation included slip angle, translation, slip angle and translation during maximum flexion and extension bending, intervertebral disc height, lumbar lordotic angle, and fusion rate.ResultsJOA scores of the PLF group before surgery and at final follow-up were 12.3±4.8 and 24.1±3.7, respectively; those of the PLIF group were 14.7±4.8 and 24.2±7.8, respectively, with no significant difference between the two groups. Correction of slip estimated from postoperative slip angle, translation, and maintenance of intervertebral disc height in the PLIF group was significantly (p<0.05) better than those in the PLF group. However, there was no significant difference in lumbar lordotic angle, slip angle and translation angle upon maximum flexion, or extension bending. Fusion rates of the PLIF and PLF groups had no significant difference.ConclusionsThe L4–L5 level posterior instrumented fusion for unstable spondylolisthesis using both PLF and PLIF could ameliorate clinical symptoms when local stability is achieved

Effects of pleasant sound on overnight sleep condition : A crossover randomized study

It is desirable to improve sleep quality since poor sleep results in decreases in work productivity and increases in risks of lifestyle-related diseases. Sleep spindles in sleep EEG are waveforms that characterize non-REM sleep Stage 2 (Stage N2). Music therapy has been adopted as a non-pharmacological therapy for sleep quality improvement; however, few studies mention the relationship between music during sleep and spindles. We conducted a crossover randomized study to investigate music\u27s effects on spindles and sleep parameters. Polysomnography (PSG) was performed on 12 adult males with sleep difficulties over three nights, during which they were exposed to three different acoustic environments–silent, white noise, and pleasant sounds–throughout the night, in a crossover randomized setting. Half of the participants with large WASO were defined as the sleep maintenance difficulty group. We investigated whether pleasant sounds shortened sleep onset latency (SOL) and increased the number of spindles (SN) and spindle density (SD) compared to white noise, using silent as the reference. The spindles were detected using the previously reported automatic spindle detection algorithm. After one patient was excluded due to data corruption, a total of 11 participants, including the sleep maintenance difficulty group (n = 5), were analyzed. For all participants, SOL was not significantly shorter with pleasant sound than with white noise (p = 0.683); for the sleep maintenance difficulty group, SOL tended to be shorter with pleasant sound than with white noise (p = 0.060). Compared to white noise, the SN increased in pleasant sound for 7 of 11 (4 of 5 in the sleep maintenance difficulty group), and SD increased for 5 of 11 (3 of 5 in the sleep maintenance difficulty group). The results suggest that all-night background sound exposure may affect SN and SD. Future research should investigate whether background sound exposure reduces sleep-related distress, achieves sound sleep, or improves daytime psychomotor function

Research on the expectations of the situation of future information technology（IT） in the medical and welfare fields and a future career and employment among students of the Department of Health Informatics

本研究は、新潟医療福祉大学医療情報管理学科学生の2014年度卒業研究の一環として行われ、2つの質問、25年後の医療福祉現場におけるIT技術の予測及び25年後の学生自身の就職・仕事に関する予測（期待）に対する無記名の自由回答を用いて同科学生の意識を調査・分析し、同科教育上の改善情報を得ることを目的とした。調査方法は全学年（1～4年生）への自記式の無記名自由記載アンケート方式で、得られた質的データを質的分析ソフト ： KH Coderを用いて分析し、合わせて量的分析も併用した。アンケート回収率は全学年で47.8％であった。25年後のITに関しては、学年を追うに従い医療やITに関連する語の増加と変化傾向がみられた。また語「診療情報管理士」の出現度が自身の未来の仕事への回答と比して低い傾向がみられた。25年後の就業について男性は女性と比べて、高い年収、社長や部長といった高い役職志向があり、一方、女性は男性が用いない「パート」という語を多数使用することがそれぞれ統計的に有意となった。このことに象徴されるように女性は男性に比べて悪く言えば夢がなく、良く言えば地に足がついた現実志向を持っていると考察された。本分析によって明らかにされた「ITの進歩を予測するものの、多くの学生が自身の未来の仕事に位置付ける診療情報管理士の業務とITとの結びつきが弱い」という現象は現行の教育上の問題点と考えられた。加えて、学生が就職先を決める際に重視するとされる幾つかの判断基準、すなわち「こだわり」のうち本科学生は資格の専門性と就業希望との関連が希薄ではないかと考察された。今後の課題として、就職に有利な資格という視点のみならず診療情報管理士は医療・福祉現場のIT化に不可欠な資格という意識の醸成を、同科教育の中で取り入れられる必要があることが示された。This study was performed as part of the 2014 fiscal year graduation work carried out by the students of the Department of Health Informatics, Niigata University of Health and Welfare. The data was collected from all grade students （1-4） using anonymous open-ended questions asking: Q1） the situation of future information technology （IT） in the medical and welfare fields after 25 years （“25 years IT”）, Q2） their future career and employment after 25 years（ “25 years JOB”）.The purpose of this study was to obtain the information contributing to the improvement of the educational system of the department through the analyses of this consciousness research.The data was analyzed using KH Coder, a free software for quantitative content analysis or text mining.The questionnaire recovery was 47.8% in all grades. For “25 years IT”, the words related to medical care or IT increased as the grade went up. For “25 years JOB”, there was desire for a high yearly income and post such as the president or the director among male students, whereas the term “part-time employment” was frequently used only by female students. These differences between genders were statistically significant and characterizes female students being more practical but less ambitious about their future than male students.The following educational problems were emerged through the analyses.a) Though many students believed in more advanced information technology in the future and considered Health Information Manager （HIM） as their future career, they did not think that HIM plays a core role in the promotion of IT in the medical or health and welfare fields.b) In addition, it was indicated that there was a lack of desire among students to utilize their specialized skill as HIM in their work.According to this study, it is considered to be necessary that the educational system of the department should foster not only a viewpoint that qualifications such as HIM should be acquired just because it gives an advantage for employment, but also, and more importantly, an awareness of the indispensability of such qualifications for the progress of IT in medical or health and welfare fields

Analysis of gut microbiome, host genetics, and plasma metabolites reveals gut microbiome-host interactions in the Japanese population

Interaction between the gut microbiome and host plays a key role in human health. Here, we perform a metagenome shotgun-sequencing-based analysis of Japanese participants to reveal associations between the gut microbiome, host genetics, and plasma metabolome. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) for microbial species (n = 524) identifies associations between the PDE1C gene locus and Bacteroides intestinalis and between TGIF2 and TGIF2-RAB5IF gene loci and Bacteroides acidifiaciens. In a microbial gene ortholog GWAS, agaE and agaS, which are related to the metabolism of carbohydrates forming the blood group A antigen, are associated with blood group A in a manner depending on the secretor status determined by the East Asian-specific FUT2 variant. A microbiome-metabolome association analysis (n = 261) identifies associations between bile acids and microbial features such as bile acid metabolism gene orthologs including bai and 7β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase. Our publicly available data will be a useful resource for understanding gut microbiome-host interactions in an underrepresented population.Tomofuji Yoshihiko, Kishikawa Toshihiro, Sonehara Kyuto, et al. Analysis of gut microbiome, host genetics, and plasma metabolites reveals gut microbiome-host interactions in the Japanese population. Cell Reports 42, 113324 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2023.113324

Insights into Land Plant Evolution Garnered from the Marchantia polymorpha Genome.

The evolution of land flora transformed the terrestrial environment. Land plants evolved from an ancestral charophycean alga from which they inherited developmental, biochemical, and cell biological attributes. Additional biochemical and physiological adaptations to land, and a life cycle with an alternation between multicellular haploid and diploid generations that facilitated efficient dispersal of desiccation tolerant spores, evolved in the ancestral land plant. We analyzed the genome of the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, a member of a basal land plant lineage. Relative to charophycean algae, land plant genomes are characterized by genes encoding novel biochemical pathways, new phytohormone signaling pathways (notably auxin), expanded repertoires of signaling pathways, and increased diversity in some transcription factor families. Compared with other sequenced land plants, M. polymorpha exhibits low genetic redundancy in most regulatory pathways, with this portion of its genome resembling that predicted for the ancestral land plant. PAPERCLIP

On the physics of thermal-stability changes upon mutations of a protein.

It is of great interest from both scientific and practical viewpoints to theoretically predict the thermal-stability changes upon mutations of a protein. However, such a prediction is an intricate task. Up to now, significantly many approaches for the prediction have been reported in the literature. They always include parameters which are adjusted so that the prediction results can be best fitted to the experimental data for a sufficiently large set of proteins and mutations. The inclusion is necessitated to achieve satisfactorily high prediction performance. A problem is that the resulting values of the parameters are often physically meaningless, and the physicochemical factors governing the thermal-stability changes upon mutations are rather ambiguous. Here, we develop a new measure of the thermal stability. Protein folding is accompanied by a large gain of water entropy (the entropic excluded-volume (EV) effect), loss of protein conformational entropy, and increase in enthalpy. The enthalpy increase originates primarily from the following: The energy increase due to the break of protein-water hydrogen bonds (HBs) upon folding cannot completely be cancelled out by the energy decrease brought by the formation of protein intramolecular HBs. We develop the measure on the basis of only these three factors and apply it to the prediction of the thermal-stability changes upon mutations. As a consequence, an approach toward the prediction is obtained. It is distinguished from the previously reported approaches in the following respects: The parameters adjusted in the manner mentioned above are not employed at all, and the entropic EV effect, which is ascribed to the translational displacement of water molecules coexisting with the protein in the system, is fully taken into account using a molecular model for water. Our approach is compared with one of the most popular approaches, FOLD-X, in terms of the prediction performance not only for single mutations but also for double, triple, and higher-fold (up to sevenfold) mutations. It is shown that on the whole our approach and FOLD-X exhibit almost the same performance despite that the latter uses the adjusting parameters. For multiple mutations, however, our approach is far superior to FOLD-X. Five multiple mutations for staphylococcal nuclease lead to highly enhanced stabilities, but we find that this high enhancement arises from the entropic EV effect. The neglect of this effect in FOLD-X is a principal reason for its ill success. A conclusion is that the three factors mentioned above play essential roles in elucidating the thermal-stability changes upon mutations