Effect of sarpogrelate on cardiovascular disorders

The present article, dedicated to Dr NS Dhalla on the occasion of the jubilee of his life’s work, is a brief review of articles based on the authors’ studies of sarpogrelate conducted in collaboration with Dr NS Dhalla. These studies on the effects of sarpogrelate on cardiovascular disorders have been ongoing for more than 10 years, and 10 articles have been published to date.     

Comprehensive Tool to Assess Oral Feeding Support for Functional Recovery in Post-acute Rehabilitation

Objective

To determine the influence of the Kuchi-kara Taberu (KT) index on rehabilitation outcomes during hospitalized convalescent rehabilitation.

Sinomenine and magnoflorine,major constituents of Sinomeni Caulis et Rhizoma,show potent protective effects against membrane damage induced by lysophosphatidylcholine in rat erythrocytes

The effects of the water extract of Sinomeni Caulis et Rhizoma (SCR-WE) and its major constituents, sinomenine (SIN) and magnoflorine (MAG), on moderate hemolysis induced by lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) were investigated in rat erythrocytes and compared with the anti-hemolytic effects of lidocaine (LID) and propranolol (PRO) as reference drugs. LPC caused hemolysis at concentrations above the critical micelle concentration (CMC), and the concentration of LPC producing moderate hemolysis (60 %) was approximately 10 μM. SCR-WE at 1 ng/mL–100 μg/mL significantly inhibited the hemolysis induced by LPC. SIN and MAG attenuated LPC-induced hemolysis in a concentration-dependent manner from very low to high concentrations (1 nM–100 μM and 10 nM–100 μM, respectively). In contrast, the inhibiting effects of LID and PRO on LPC-induced hemolysis were observed at higher concentrations (1–100 μM) but not at lower concentrations (1–100 nM). Neither SIN nor MAG affected micelle formation of LPC, nor, at concentrations of 1 nM–1 μM, did they attenuate the hemolysis induced by osmotic imbalance (hypotonic hemolysis). Similarly, SCR-WE also did not modify micelle formation or hypotonic hemolysis, except at the highest concentration. These results suggest that SIN and MAG potently protect the erythrocyte membrane from LPC-induced damage and contribute to the beneficial action of SCR-WE. The protective effects of SIN and MAG are mediated by some mechanism other than prevention of micelle formation or protection of the erythrocyte membrane against osmotic imbalance.

     

Triglyceride Deposit Cardiomyovasculopathy with Massive Myocardial Triglyceride which Was Proven Using Proton-magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

The patient was a 73-year-old man with a history of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, rheumatoid arthritis, repeated percutaneous coronary intervention and percutaneous peripheral intervention procedures. He was frequently admitted to our hospital for congestive heart failure with orthopnea. The myocardial washout rate of iodine-123-β-methyl iodophenyl-pentadecanoic acid was defective on scintigraphy. He was diagnosed with triglyceride deposit cardiomyovasculopathy (TGCV). Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H-MRS) indicated the level of myocardial triglyceride (TG) content to be extremely high (4.92%). This is the first report to confirm a massive accumulation of TG in the myocardium of a patient with TGCV using ¹H-MRS noninvasively.     

Effect of radioactivity outside the field of view on image quality of dedicated breast positron emission tomography: preliminary phantom and clinical studies

Annals of Nuclear Medicine - Semi-quantitative positron emission tomography (PET) values, such as the maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), are widely used to identify malignant lesions and...