思春期の喫煙と母親の喫煙の関係

Objective: To determine the effect of family smoking habits on adolescent smoking experience for information for anti-smoking strategies. Subjects and Methods: We analyzed data from 4776 junior high school students and 5047 high school students responding to the “Survey on Prevention of Life-Style Related Diseases of Children” conducted in Nara Prefecture of Japan in 2004. The chi-square test determined the odds ratios (ORs) for smoking experience rates of the two groups of students according to the smoking habits of their fathers, mothers, older brothers, and older sisters. Logistic regression analysis was also performed for smoking experience according to school year, sex, and family smoking habit. Results: The OR for smoking in junior high school students with a father as the only smoking family member against all other cases was 0.60, and the OR with a mother as the only smoking family member was 2.50. The OR with a smoking father against cases with no smoking family members was 1.23, and the OR with a smoking mother against cases with no smoking family members was 3.50. The OR for smoking in high school students with a father as the only smoking family member against all other cases was 0.76, and the OR with a mother as the only smoking family member was 2.66. The OR with a smoking father against cases with no smoking family members was 1.59, and the OR with a smoking mother against cases with no smoking family member was 3.26. All these ORs showed significance. Conclusion: Maternal smoking was associated with a particularly high risk of smoking experience in junior high and high school students. Prevention of maternal smoking should be given high priority to reduce smoking rates in adolescents.博士（医学）・甲第624号・平成26年12月3日© 2014 Morikawa Hideko et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

悪性食道狭窄に対する金属ステント療法

Self-expandable metallic stents were used for palliative treatment of malignant esophagogastric strictures. Twelve patients, nine men and three women, with a mean age of 73.1 years old (range, 48-87 years old) had dysphagia due to esophagogastric strictures with advanced malignant tumors. A total of 13 expandable metallic stents were placed, four non-covered Ultraflex stents (nitinol stents), two non-covered Wallstents and seven covered Wallstents. The strictures were caused by esophageal carcinoma (n=7), gastric carcinoma with lymphnode metastasis (n=2), lung carcinoma with mediastinal lymphnode metastasis (n=2), and cardioesophageal carcinoma (n=1). All stents were placed with fluoroscopic and endoscopic guidance. No technical failure or procedural critical complications occurred and the dysphagia was relieved in all patients. The mean dysphagia score was 0.58±0.52 (standard deviation) before treatment and 3.25±0.97 after insertion. Complications included chest and epigastric pain in four, gastroesophageal reflux in two, tumor ingrowth in one, and food impaction in one. Six complications easily managed with medical, endoscopic, or radiologic intervention. At the end of this study, eight patients were dead with a mean survival of 28.3 weeks (range, 4-96 weeks), and four patients were alive with a mean follow up of 35.5 weeks (range, 8-98 weeks). In our experience, self-expandable metallic stents provide relatively safe and long-term palliation in patients with malignant esophagogastric obstruction

Proposal of air compressing device using walking vibration energy regeneration for pneumatic driven assistive device

Pneumatically driven wearable assistive devices for walking have been developed recently. These devices can achieve flexible assistance without control; however, they require large and heavy air compressors for activation. In this study, a pneumatically driven source using vibration energy regeneration from walking was developed. The aim was to activate the cylinder using vibrations due to walking and compressed air. A mass element, which is connected to a human body via a spring and a cylinder, vibrates along with the human gait cycle. Next, a prototype was developed and tested. In walking experiments, stored pressure was measured at several gait cycles and masses for comparison. Results indicate that the gait cycle period and masses affect the stored pressure; the highest pressure recorded was 0.08 MPa

Irradiation Accelerates Plaque Formation and Cellular Senescence in Flow‐Altered Carotid Arteries of Apolipoprotein E Knock‐Out Mice

[Background] Chronic inflammation through cellular senescence, known as the senescence‐associated secretory phenotype, is a mechanism of various organ diseases, including atherosclerosis. Particularly, ionizing radiation (IR) contributes to cellular senescence by causing DNA damage. Although previous clinical studies have demonstrated that radiotherapy causes atherosclerosis as a long‐term side effect, the detailed mechanism is unclear. This study was conducted to investigate the relationship between radiation‐induced atherosclerosis and senescence‐associated secretory phenotype in murine carotid arteries. [Methods and Results] Partial ligation of the left carotid artery branches in 9‐week‐old male apolipoprotein E‐deficient mice was performed to induce atherosclerosis. The mice received total body irradiation at a dose of 6 Gy using gamma rays at 2 weeks post operation. We compared the samples collected 4 weeks after IR with unirradiated control samples. The IR and control groups presented pathologically progressive lesions in 90.9% and 72.3% of mice, respectively. Plaque volume, macrophage accumulation, and phenotype switching of vascular smooth muscle cells were advanced in the IR group. Irradiated samples showed increased persistent DNA damage response (53BP1 [p53 binding protein 1]), upregulated cyclin‐dependent kinase inhibitors (p16INK4a and p21), and elevated inflammatory chemokines expression (monocyte chemotactic protein‐1, keratinocyte‐derived chemokine, and macrophage inflammatory protein 2). [Conclusions] IR promoted plaque growth in murine carotid arteries. Our findings support the possibility that senescence‐associated secretory phenotype aggravates atherogenesis in irradiated artery. This mice model might contribute to mechanism elucidation of radiation‐induced atherosclerosis

Mechanisms Underlying the Comorbidity of Schizophrenia and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

The mortality rate of patients with schizophrenia is high, and life expectancy is shorter by 10 to 20 years. Metabolic abnormalities including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are among the main reasons. The prevalence of T2DM in patients with schizophrenia may be epidemiologically frequent because antipsychotics induce weight gain as a side effect and the cognitive dysfunction of patients with schizophrenia relates to a disordered lifestyle, poor diet, and low socioeconomic status. Apart from these common risk factors and risk factors unique to schizophrenia, accumulating evidence suggests the existence of common susceptibility genes between schizophrenia and T2DM. Functional proteins translated from common genetic susceptibility genes are known to regulate neuronal development in the brain and insulin in the pancreas through several common cascades. In this review, we discuss common susceptibility genes, functional cascades, and the relationship between schizophrenia and T2DM. Many genetic and epidemiological studies have reliably associated the comorbidity of schizophrenia and T2DM, and it is probably safe to think that common cascades and mechanisms suspected from common genes' functions are related to the onset of both schizophrenia and T2DM. On the other hand, even when genetic analyses are performed on a relatively large number of comorbid patients, the results are sometimes inconsistent, and susceptibility genes may carry only a low or moderate risk. We anticipate future directions in this field

Microwave characterization of tantalum superconducting resonators on silicon substrate with niobium buffer layer

Tantalum thin films sputtered on unheated silicon substrates are characterized with microwaves at around 10 GHz in a 10 mK environment. We show that the phase of tantalum with a body-centered cubic lattice ($\alpha$-Ta) can be grown selectively by depositing a niobium buffer layer prior to a tantalum film. The physical properties of the films, such as superconducting transition temperature and crystallinity, change markedly with the addition of the buffer layer. Coplanar waveguide resonators based on the composite film exhibit significantly enhanced internal quality factors compared with a film without the buffer layer. The internal quality factor approaches $2\times 10^7$ at a large-photon-number limit. While the quality factor decreases at the single-photon level owing to two-level system (TLS) loss, we have identified the primary cause of TLS loss to be the amorphous silicon layer at the film-substrate interface, which originates from the substrate cleaning before the film deposition rather than the film itself. The temperature dependence of the internal quality factors shows a marked rise below 200 mK, suggesting the presence of TLS-TLS interactions. The present low-loss tantalum films can be deposited without substrate heating and thus have various potential applications in superconducting quantum electronics.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures + Supplementary Material (7 pages, 5 figures