The efficacy of a serum carboxyterminal pyridinoline cross-linked telopeptide of type I collagen as a quantitative screening marker for bone metastases in patients with urological malignancies

In order to ascertain whether carboxyterminal pyridinoline cross-linked telopeptide of type I collagen (ICTP) might be useful as a serum screening parameter for bone metastases from non-prostate urological malignancies as well as prostate cancers, as series of 210 patients were examined. In addition to ICTP, serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and also prostate specific antigen (PSA) in the prostate cancer cases were assayed using commercial kits. The areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were 0.7846 for ICTP (cut-off point 9.6 microg/l), 0.8304 for ALP in prostate cancer cases, and 0.8278 for ICTP (cut-off point 10.6 microg/l), and 0.7139 for ALP in non-prostate cancer cases. While significance was only observed for ICTP and PSA in prostate cancer cases, borderline significance was also evident with ICTP for non-prostate malignancies, and with ALP for prostate cancer case. The results suggest that serum ICTP may be useful in combination with ALP as a quantitative clinical marker for low cost screening for bone metastases in patients with all types of urological malignancies.     

Autoimmune interstitial nephritis induced in inbred mice. Analysis of mouse tubular basement membrane antigen and genetic control of immune response to it.

Purified murine tubular basement membrane (TBM) antigen (molecular weight, 32,000) induced interstitial lesions in Brown Norway (BN) rats. TBM antigen prepared from mice of 3 inbred strains--BALB/c, C3H/He, and C57BL/6--and outbred ddY mice possessed both antigenicity and nephritogenecity. Using these TBM antigens, the roles of humoral and cellular immunity in the development of interstitial nephritis (IN) and the genetic control of the induction of IN in inbred mice were investigated. BALB/c mice were highly susceptible to IN and showed a high antibody response and a high lymphocyte proliferative response to syngeneic and allogeneic TBM antigen, whereas C57BL/6 mice did not. C3H/He mice, in which minimal interstitial lesions developed, showed a high antibody response but a low proliferative response of T cells to TBM antigen. TBM antigen sensitized T cells induced interstitial lesions, but anti-TBM antisera did not do so. Thus, the development of IN seemed to be related closely to cellular immunity. Further studies with their hybrids, backcrosses, congenic mice, and recombinant mice suggested that the induction of IN and the immune response to TBM antigen are controlled by 1 or a few dominant genes, whose loci are within, or closely linked to, the H-2 complex.     

The prognosis of hepatitis B inactive carriers in Japan: a multicenter prospective study

Journal of Gastroenterology - Hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-negative inactive carriers, the majority of hepatitis B virus (HBV) carriers, are considered to have a good prognosis. The...     

Age-related cortical thinning in schizophrenia

Although the effects of aging on the neural correlates of schizophrenia have been researched for many years, no clear conclusion has been reached. While some studies have demonstrated progressive age-related gray matter reductions in schizophrenia, other studies have not found evidence of progression. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the influence of aging on global or regional cortical thickness differs between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. This study aimed to confirm previous reports of reduced cortical thickness in schizophrenia, and to investigate the effects of age on global and regional cortical thickness. Eighty-three patients with schizophrenia (six first-episode patients and 77 chronic patients; age range=18-55 years) and 90 age-, gender- and education-matched healthy controls (age range=19-56 years) underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using a 3-Tesla scanner. Surface-based analysis was applied to assess cortical thickness in the whole brain. The patient group exhibited both global and regional cortical thinning in regions including the prefrontal and temporal cortices. The correlation between age and cortical thickness showed a similar pattern in patients and controls, both globally and regionally. These results suggest that the reduction of cortical thickness in schizophrenia might not be progressive over the course of the illness, indicating that pathological processes occur in a relatively limited period of time around the onset of illness.