Biomedical subjects

Y Nishimoto

Publications and source records attributed to Y Nishimoto.

222 records · Page 13Linked to original sources

PubMedDate not supplied

Improving symptoms of senile dementia by a night-time spa bathing.

In our medical and welfare facilities, many patients with senile dementia require aid in taking a bath. In most institutions, patients usually take a bath in the daytime within the working hours of the staff. However, most of these patients used to take a bath in the evening or at night at their homes. Some patients even fall asleep after daylight bathing. Thus, we studied the stabilizing effects of night-time spa bathing on symptoms associated with dementia. Ten patients (two male and eight females, aged 75-88) in special nursing institution for the aged, were enrolled in this study. They were all assessed as +4 on the Karasawa's clinical criteria for grading dementia. For 9 weeks, night-time spa bathing was performed at 18:00-19:00 twice a week. Except for the night-time spa bathing period, the bathing hour was 14:00-15:00 as usual. The observations of symptoms including restlessness, wandering and aggression were carried out ten times daily along with those on sleeping condition five times daily, to compare symptoms and conditions during 2 weeks of baseline daytime bathing periods, 9 weeks of night-time bathing periods and 2 weeks of daytime bathing periods, totaling 13 weeks. The results showed that sleeping conditions were ameliorated in more than 60-90% of the subjects. Their sleeping conditions began to improve 2 weeks after the start of night-time spa bathing with a remarkably improvement 4-6 weeks after the start. Restlessness was recognized in six subjects, wandering in eight and aggression in four at baseline, and 75-100% of the subjects with such symptoms improved markedly.

Journal Article↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Ontogeny of influence of clonidine on high potassium-induced release of noradrenaline and specific [3H]clonidine binding in the rat brain cortex.

A high (20 mM) K+-induced, Ca2+-dependent release of L-[3H]-noradrenaline (NA) from cerebral cortex slices was detected in rats on day 18 of gestation. Depolarization-evoked release (% of total radioactivity) increased with age between day 18 of gestation and day 70 of postnatal life. Clonidine (0.1 microM) significantly (p less than 0.05) reduced a high K+-induced L-[3H]NA release on days 7 and 70 but not on day 1. Both KD and Bmax of specific [3H]clonidine binding to cerebral cortex membranes rapidly increased between days 1 and 7, followed by a gradual increase to the adult level. Presynaptic alpha 2-adrenoceptors which regulate NA release seems to become sensitive to alpha 2-agonists and to reach functional maturity between days 1 and 7 after birth in the cerebral cortex of rats.

Aging↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Diabetes mellitus and its vascular complications in Japanese migrants on the Island of Hawaii.

Japanese migrants and their offspring on the island of Hawaii and Japanese living in Hiroshima were examined for diabetes mellitus and its vascular complications. the same methods and investigators were used in both locations. Death certificates of Japanese and Caucasians dying on the island during the past 26 yr were analyzed. Diabetes, defined as a venous serum glucose concentration of at least 200 mg/dl 2 h after a 50-g oral glucose load, was significantly more common in the Hawaiian Japanese than in the Hiroshima Japanese subjects. This suggests that diabetes is more prevalent in Japanese in Hawaii than in Japan, although lack of knowledge about the total population of Japanese migrants in Hawaii makes this generalization uncertain. The proportion of deaths attributed to diabetes was much higher in Japanese migrants and their offspring in Hawaii than in Japan. During the 1950s, the proportional death rate from diabetes was about half as large in Japanese Hawaiians as in Caucasian Hawaiians, but it increased to become 1.6 times the Caucasian rate during the 1970s. A nutritional study revealed that the total caloric intake was similar in Japanese in Hawaii and Hiroshima, although the estimated level of physical activity was less in the Hawaiian subjects. Consumption of animal fat and simple carbohydrates (sucrose and fructose) were at least twice as high in Hawaiian as in Hiroshima Japanese. Conversely, Hiroshima Japanese consumed about twice the amount of complex carbohydrate as the Hawaiian Japanese. These observations support the hypothesis that a high fat, high simple carbohydrate, low complex carbohydrate diet and/or reduced levels of physical activity increase risk of diabetes. The proportion of deaths attributed to ischemic heart disease was higher in both diabetic and nondiabetic Japanese Hawaiians than in diabetic subjects in Japan. The rates were similar for Japanese and Caucasians in Hawaii. There was no evidence of an environmental influence on the development of microangiopathy (retinopathy) in diabetes, as the prevalence of diabetic retinopathy (stratified for diabetes duration) was similar in Japanese subjects in Hawaii and in Japan, and it was similar to previous reports from England. On the other hand, diabetes alone did not appear to account for the greater prevalence of macroangiopathy in Hawaiian Japanese than in Hiroshima. Thus environmental factors, possibly including diet, appear to be involved in the development of macrovascular complications of diabetes.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Total organic carbon as an index for specification of water for injection.

Determination of organic compounds present as contaminants in purified water is of great importance. Total organic carbon (TOC) may be a useful parameter for evaluating the purity of water. This paper describes and compares the analytical results for solutions of 12 model compounds obtained by 3 methods: total organic carbon (TOC) analysis, determination of potassium permanganate consumption, and UV spectroscopy. TOC analysis gave values corresponding to the expected amounts of organic carbon for all the model compounds, whereas the other 2 methods gave highly variable results.

Carbon↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Calcium mobilization during nicotine-induced cell death in human glioma and glioblastoma cell lines.

Nicotine dose-dependently induced cytotoxicity in human glioma (KG-1-C) and glioblastoma (GBS-1, T98G) cell lines, but could not induce internucleosomal DNA cleavage, in contrast to apoptosing human myelogenous leukemic cell lines. Human glioma/glioblastoma cell lines thus might have a chromatin structure resistant to endonuclease digestion. Nicotine induced a rapid increase in the intracellular calcium concentration. Confocal experiments with Fluo-3 fluorescence revealed that nicotine elevated the free Ca2+ concentration in both nuclear and cytoplasmic regions of the cells, and the elevation of Ca2+ in the nuclear region was more pronounced than that of the cytoplasmic region. The present study suggests that nuclear accumulation of Ca2+ is an important initial step for cell death induction by nicotine.

Apoptosis↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Uncoupling of incorporation of ascorbic acid and apoptosis induction.

Exposure of human promyelocytic leukemic HL-60 cells to millimolar concentration of sodium ascorbate induced apoptotic cell death. The extent of apoptosis induction was a positive function of temperature at the time of exposure. The incorporation of [1-14C] ascorbic acid into the cytosolic fraction of HL-60 cells was also temperature-dependent, and competitively inhibited by active analogs (L-ascorbic acid, sodium L-ascorbate, D-isoascorbic acid, sodium 6-beta-O-galactosyl-L-ascorbate, sodium 5,6-benzylidene-L-ascorbate), but not by inactive analogs (L-ascorbic acid-2-phosphate magnesium, L-ascorbic acid 2-sulfate). Calcium depletion, which had considerably reduced the apoptosis-inducing activity of sodium ascorbate, did not affect the intracellular incorporation of [14C] ascorbic acid. These data suggests that cell death might not be simply induced by the intracellular incorporation of ascorbate, but rather initiated by the rapid elevation of intracellular Ca2+ concentration, possibly mediated by an as yet unidentified temperature-sensitive mechanism.

Apoptosis↗