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Biomedical subjects

H Kashima

Publications and source records attributed to H Kashima.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2007

Changes in regional cerebral blood flow during acute electroconvulsive therapy in patients with depression: positron emission tomographic study.

BACKGROUND: Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is widely used to treat psychiatric disorders such as depression, its precise neural mechanisms remain unknown. AIMS: To investigate the time course of changes in cerebral blood flow during acute ECT. METHOD: Cerebral blood flow was quantified serially prior to, during and after acute ECT in six patients with depression under anaesthesia using [(15)O]H(2)O positron emission tomography (PET). RESULTS: Cerebral blood flow during ECT increased particularly in the basal ganglia, brain-stem, diencephalon, amygdala, vermis and the frontal, temporal and parietal cortices compared with that before ECT. The flow increased in the thalamus and decreased in the anterior cingulate and medial frontal cortex soon after ECT compared with that before ECT. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest a relationship between the centrencephalic system and seizure generalisation. Further, they suggest that some neural mechanisms of action of ECT are mediated via brain regions including the anterior cingulate and medial frontal cortex and thalamus.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Corticobasal degeneration presenting with nonfluent primary progressive aphasia: a clinicopathological study.

A 62-year-old woman initially presented with slowly progressive nonfluent aphasia with minimal intellectual involvement. Echolalia and personality change were prominent whereas parkinsonian features and signs suggesting parietal lobe dysfunctions were not present. The patient's language deficit was consistent with transcortical motor aphasia. She did not manifest extrapyramidal signs. The patient was diagnosed as having Pick's disease or frontal lobe dementia. She died at age 65, 2 years and 9 months following disease onset. Neuropathological findings including cytoskeletal abnormalities, however, were clearly distinct from those of classical Pick's disease and were consistent with those reported in corticobasal degeneration (CBD). The distribution of her cortical lesions was accentuated in the frontal language-related area. The clinical manifestations in CBD are diverse, and primary progressive nonfluent aphasia should be considered as an initial symptom of CBD. Neuropathological examination of such patients should include cytoskeletal abnormality studies.

Aphasia, Primary Progressive↗
PubMed2001

Functional relevance of human adh polymorphism.

This article represents the proceedings of a symposium at the 2000 ISBRA Meeting in Yokohama, Japan. The chairs were C. J. Peter Eriksson and Tatsushige Fukunaga. The presentations were (1) 4-Methylpyrazole as a tool in the investigation of the role of ADH in the actions of alcohol in humans, by Taisto Sarkola and C. J. Peter Eriksson; (2) ADH2 polymorphism and flushing in Asian populations, by Wei J. Chen, C. C. Chen, J. M. Ju, and Andrew T. A. Cheng; (3) Role of ADH3 genotypes in the acute effects of alcohol in a Finnish population, by Hidetaka Yamamoto, Kathrin Kohlenberg-Müller, and C. J. Peter Eriksson; (4) Clinical characteristics and disease course of alcoholics with different ADH2 genotypes, by Mitsuru Kimura, Masanobu Murayama, Sachio Matsushita, Haruo Kashima, and Susumu Higuchi; (5) ADH2 polymorphism, alcohol drinking, and birth defects, by Lucinda Carr, D. Viljoen, L. Brooke, T. Stewart, T. Foroud, J. Su, and Ting-Kai Li; and (6) ADH genotypes and alcohol use in Europeans, by John B. Whitfield.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

The cost of juvenile-onset recurrent respiratory papillomatosis.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the medical costs and the number of quality-adjusted life years lost owing to juvenile-onset recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (JORRP). DESIGN: We examined hospital and physician charges for JORRP surgical procedures in Maryland in 1994 adjusting for inflation and the cost-charge ratio. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on treatment intensity for JORRP were augmented with a review of treatment records for 18 patients with JORRP. Sensitivity analyses were performed. To illustrate the application of our cost estimates, we compare the costs of JORRP to the costs of the surgical procedures that would be necessary to prevent it. RESULTS: We find that the present value at birth of the cost of a single case of JORRP is $201,724 (range, $61,822-$474,334). The annual cost for a single case of JORRP is $57,996 (range, $32,407-$94,114). The annual cost of JORRP in the United States is between $40 million and $123 million depending on the prevalence. Cesarean section (CS) for women with condyloma has been suggested as a potential strategy to prevent JORRP, but its efficacy remains to be determined. Our results suggest that if only 1% of the CSs actually prevented JORRP, this strategy would be a cost-effective means to prevent JORRP. CONCLUSIONS: Studies to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the efficacy of CS and the effect of both CS and JORRP on families need to precede consideration of a policy of CS for women with clinically evident genital condyloma. Patients should be kept thoroughly informed about the role of CS for the prevention of JORRP and the nature of the remaining uncertainties.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1999

Current trends in cognitive rehabilitation for memory disorders.

Progress in the neuropsychology of memory disorders has provided a foundation for development of cognitive rehabilitation for amnesic patients. Accumulating evidence in the past two decades suggested that certain training techniques could be beneficial to many amnesic patients, such as teaching and acquisition of domain-specific knowledge, motor coding, reality orientation, and meta-cognition improvement. In this article we review and discuss the current trends in cognitive rehabilitation of memory disorders and provide a future direction in this emerging field. In addition, our experience in the successful rehabilitation of Korsakoff syndrome patients is also introduced.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗
PubMed1998

Memory for subject performed tasks in patients with Korsakoff syndrome.

We examined the ability of alcoholic Korsakoff patients to remember verbal and action-related information. Eight Korsakoff patients and eight alcoholic control subjects learned action phrases in either subject-performed tasks (SPTs) or verbal tasks (VTs). Free recall and recognition tests were then administered. Despite the severe anterograde amnesia observed in Korsakoff patients for VTs, their memory performance for SPTs was similarly facilitated over VTs as was the case with alcoholic controls. Domains preserved in this amnesic syndrome may account for the benefit seen when using SPTs in Korsakoff patients. The therapeutic utilization of action events for memory rehabilitation is discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Prospective and retrospective studies of recovery in aphasia. Changes in cerebral blood flow and language functions.

Prospective and retrospective language evaluations and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scans were performed in order to study the relationship between post-stroke recovery from aphasia and changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF) in groups of patients who had made a good recovery and those who had not. For the prospective study, 20 right-handed patients with aphasia secondary to an acute cerebrovascular accident (CVA) in the left middle cerebral artery territory received language evaluations with a Japanese Standard Language Test of Aphasia (SLTA), and SPECT scans performed twice, at a mean of 3.2 and a mean of 9.2 months post-onset. Only one slice of SPECT data was analysed. A significant correlation was observed between the severity of the initial language deficit and initial CBF on the left side, but not the right. Initial CBF was not a predictor for future language recovery in either hemisphere. There was a correlation between the change in the left mean hemispheric CBF (but not the right) and the change in the overall SLTA severity rating from 3 to 9 months post-stroke. In the retrospective study, 16 right-handed patients with residual aphasia secondary to CVA in the left middle cerebral artery territory received SLTA and SPECT at a mean of 82.8 months post-onset. The patients had also received initial language evaluation with SLTA at a mean of 6.5 months post-onset. In contrast to the prospective study, the results demonstrated that the mean left hemispheric CBF at approximately 7 years post-onset did not differ between good and poor recovery groups. However, the mean right hemispheric CBF of the good recovery group was higher than that of the poor recovery group in the frontal and the thalamic regions, and also in the left frontal region. The results of these complementary studies suggest that the initial language recovery within the first year post-onset may be linked primarily to functional recovery in the dominant hemisphere, where an increase in CBF was observed at 9 months post-onset. The increased perfusion adjacent to the lesion may be crucial for early recovery in aphasia. Subsequent language recovery and the long-term recovery in aphasia may be related to slow and gradual compensatory functions in the contralateral hemisphere, specifically in the homotopic frontal and thalamic areas.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

'Alice in Wonderland' syndrome as a precursor of depressive disorder.

A 54-year-old Japanese businessman who was found to exhibit the 'Alice in Wonderland' syndrome and went on to develop a depressive disorder is described. Lengthening and shortening of time experience continued intermittently for about 3 months, and metamorphopsia, distortion of body image, and the quick-motion phenomenon (alteration in time sense) persisted for almost 2 days without interruption. There were no abnormal physical findings. The authors review studies on 'Alice in Wonderland' syndrome and suggest that depressive illness may be a causal factor.

Body Image↗
PubMed1998

[Analysis of air pollution and prevalence rate of allergic diseases among elementary school children in Kawaguchi and Hatogaya city].

Kawaguchi and Hatogaya City are located on the northern edge of Tokyo. We analysed between air pollution and prevalence rate of allergic diseases among elementary school children in this area. A prevalence rate of allergic diseases in 1996 May and June was as follows; bronchial asthma 13.5%, atopic dermatitis 24.5%, allergic rhinitis and/or conjunctivitis 22.8%, urticaria 12.4%, food allergy 7.8% and drug allergy 2.2%, respectively. Air pollution of this area was analysed to check the levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and suspended particulate matters (SPM). NO2 pollution was relatively high in urban area, and SPM pollution was especially high around the highways. SO2 pollution was lower than the environmental standard. No relationship was found between the prevalence rate of bronchial asthma, atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis and/or conjunctivitis and air pollution, but it was found that these diseases are slightly related to population density (p < 0.1, p < 0.01, p < 0.1, respectively).

Air Pollutants↗
PubMed1997

Apolipoprotein E epsilon 4 allele distribution in Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome with or without global intellectual deficits.

Recent genetic studies show that the apolipoprotein E (ApoE) epsilon 4 allele is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Whether this allele is associated with other dementing diseases is the next important question. The information could provide a clue to the pathogenetic role of ApoE. In the present study, patients with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS) of alcoholic etiology were divided into two groups according to the severity of intellectual deficits, i.e., those of "classical" Korsakoff patients with preserved intellectual function other than amnesia and those with global intellectual deficits. Genotyping showed that the frequency of ApoE epsilon 4 allele was significantly higher in the patients with global deficits, suggesting the involvement of this allele in the intellectual decline of WKS. In contrast, distributions of other two markers, alpha 1-antichymotrypsin and presenilin-1, did not differ between the two groups. These results added further support to the notion that the consequence of acute insult to the brain is influenced by the ApoE genotype, and suggested ApoE's role in the development of a certain group of "alcoholic dementia."

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗
PubMed1997

Performance characteristics of chronic schizophrenia on attention tests sensitive to unilateral brain damage.

The aims of this study were to investigate the lateralization hypothesis of schizophrenia, comparing chronic schizophrenics with unilateral brain-damaged subjects and normal controls, using attentional tests sensitive to the unilateral brain damage. Three attentional tests with different modes of stimuli, two vigilance tasks that require the self-paced or nonself-paced responses of subjects and one divided attention task, were administered to 28 chronic schizophrenics, 26 right and 24 left unilateral brain-damaged subjects, and 20 normal controls. The results indicated that schizophrenics performed a possible right-hemisphere damages pattern and also a left pattern in part, with failure of all tasks to show either pattern related to a number of differences between the three tasks. Furthermore, the attention deficits of schizophrenics are less than those of brain-damaged subjects but are clearly abnormal compared with the normal controls.

Attention↗
PubMed1997

[Autobiographical memory loss following herpes encephalitis].

We report a patient with prominent autobiographical memory (ABM) impairment, and discussed possible mechanisms of her deficits. The patient was a 36-year-old woman who suffered from herpes simplex encephalitis in November 1994. Four months after the onset, the neuropsychological examination disclosed that her intelligence, attention, language and frontal lobe functions were normal. Moderate anterograde amnesia was evident for visual materials, and she showed difficulties in retrieving visual images. Deficits in verbal learning were minimal. In contrast, her retrograde amnesia (RA) was severe. Further analyses clarified that memory for public events and personal semantic memory were relatively well preserved whereas ABM was severely impaired with no evidence of temporal gradient. Her performance on the ABM questionnaire was even worse than that of alcoholic Korsakoff patients. Interestingly, however, deficits in memory for public events also emerged when questions were presented with pictures instead of ordinary verbal questionnaires. The results suggest that her principle deficits consisted in utilizing visual information of the past events. Her access to and manipulation of the past visual representation/images were impaired. Consequently, her deficits were almost exclusive to ABM because visual information is most crucial for ABM. This material specific ABM impairment demonstrated in the present patient could be differentiated from nonspecific retrograde amnesia observed in typical focal RA patients. MRI, SPECT and PET demonstrated that the present patient had lesions basically in the right hemisphere, specifically in the medical temporal area including the hippocampus.

Adult↗
PubMed1995

[A case of diffuse brain injury involving the medial part of the brain--its difference from diffuse axonal injury].

A 30-year-old male clinico-pathological case survived for 1 year and 9 months after being hit by a truck while riding on his motorbike on Aug. 21, 1988. On admission, his consciousness level was 5 according to the Glasgow Coma Scale, and a traumatic intraventricular hemorrhage and cerebral contusion were revealed by CT scanning. He underwent immediately an operation in order to drain blood from the ventricles at which time a right side dominant quadriplegia was noted. He made a gradual improvement and by January 1989 was able to tell us his name and address correctly. However, he remained incontinent and bedridden owing to the contracture of joints. He was put on rehabilitation exercises in March 1989 which trained him to operate a wheelchair. In April 1990 he regained urinary control, but was remarkably devoid of will power, perseverance and memory. He expired of pneumonia on May 11, 1990. At autopsy, his brain weighed 1180g. The cerebral convexity was discolored, especially the rectal gyri and bilateral olfactory bulbs were brownish-yellow. Old gross contusional scars were observed on the left rectal and orbital gyri, and the 3rd ventricle and inferior horns of the lateral ventricles were enlarged. Holzer's method revealed fibrillary gliosis in the corpus callosum, fornix, cingulate gyrus and a part of the caudate nucleus adjacent to the thalamus. Microscopically, axons were seen to be disrupted in the corpus callosum as well as in the anterior commissure, having the appearance of macrophages. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Axons↗
PubMed1995

[Cognitive dysfunction following anterior communicating artery aneurysm rupture. Comparison with alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome on neuropsychological performance].

The present study aims to compare neuropsychological performance of patients following anterior communicating artery aneurysm rupture (ACoA) with that of patients with alcoholic Korsakoff syndrome (AKS). Fifteen ACoA patients and ten age-and education-matched AKS patients were included in the study. All the patients were tested at least one year post onset of their illness at a stable condition. The WAIS and forward digit span scores of AKS were also matched to ACoA, and simple attention and general intelligence were well preserved both in ACoA and AKS. Frontal function as measured by the Wisconsin card sorting test (Keio version) (KWCST) was equivalently impaired in the two groups. Anterograde memory as measured by Wechsler memory scale subtests, serial seven word learning test, Rey auditory verbal learning test, and logical memorizing test (Luria's paired word-picture association), was more severely impaired in AKS than ACoA in contrast to the comparable attention, intelligence, and frontal function: (1) memory tasks with low correlations to KWCST (serial word learning tasks and paired verbal associates), reflecting primary simple serial memorizing, and (2) memory tasks with high correlations to KWCST (logical memory and logical memorizing), reflecting higher and complicated strategic mnemonic activities. However, the correlations between these anterograde memory subtests and KWCST were substantially equivalent in ACoA and AKS. This suggests that the differences in anterograde amnesia demonstrated in ACoA and AKS may be of quantitative, not of qualitative property. The extent of deficits in semantic encoding as measured by Wickens' release from proactive interference paradigm (PI release) was also milder in ACoA than AKS. Both AKS and ACoA failed to show PI release in contrast to normal PI release demonstrated in age-matched ten healthy subjects. PI release in ACoA, however, was in between AKS and healthy subjects. The results were interpreted in the light of a recently postulated hypothesis that a combination of frontal lobe damage and memory impairment is crucial for causing a deficit in semantic encoding. The extent of damage in the memory circuit in ACoA may be variable, which may result in milder degree of anterograde amnesia and semantic encoding than AKS in the present study.

Alcohol Amnestic Disorder↗
PubMed1994

[Encephalomyelitis with cavitary necrosis of the white matter. A clinico-pathologic study].

The authors report the clinico-pathological study of an encephalomyelitis with necrotic cavitation of the white matter occurring in a 61-year-old female. The disease of sudden onset progressed slowly to the death, 20 months after the onset of the first symptoms. They stress the rarity of the entity and the difficulties to establish the diagnosis clinically. The nosological situation of the condition is discussed and compared with the previously reported cases.

Brain↗