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A man in his 70s visited our department for dyspnea with pulmonary infiltrate that was unresolved by antibiotics. He had been taking Sansoninto for five years and doubled its dose a month ago. After discontinuing Sansoninto without any additional medications, his symptoms gradually disappeared, and pulmonary infiltration improved. Drug lymphocyte stimulation tests showed a positive result for Sansoninto. We diagnosed this patient with Sansoninto-induced lung injury. Sansoninto is a combination drug that consists of sansonin, bukuryo, senkyo, chimo, and kanzo. This paper reports the first case of Sansoninto-induced lung injury and discusses the mechanism considering its components.

The author found conscription inspection records for each municipality in Iwate Prefecture in 1928 and 1929. From these data, 4207 men from 17 areas or municipalities were analyzed. The average height of the subjects from Morioka, the prefectural capital, and two coastal towns/villages was 161 cm, which was taller than the national average of 160 cm. However, that of three inland areas was 159 cm. People in inland areas at that time ate little meat, eggs, milk, and fish, with poor medication, which probably contributed to their short stature. Poverty in rural areas seemed to be more serious than the deterioration of the living environment due to urbanization in Japan.

Dietary nitrate has several beneficial effects, including blood pressure reduction and improved oxygen consumption efficiency, but in order to do so it must first be reduced to nitrite by oral bacteria. Veillonella spp., a strictly anaerobic group, are the most prevalent nitrate-reducing bacteria in the oral cavity. In response to some early studies that have hinted at inter- and intra-individual variation in salivary nitrate-nitrite conversion capacity, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the incidence of and variation in the Veillonella species V. atypica, V. dispar, and V. rogosae by direct PCR and to assess salivary nitrate-nitrite conversion capacity and its reproducibility after dietary nitrate consumption in 24 elderly individuals. V. atypica, V. dispar, and V. rogosae were detected in 10 (41.7%), 24 (100%), and 14 (58.3%) participants, respectively. The coefficients of correlation between the first and second experiments on increased nitrate/nitrite were 0.637 and 0.583, respectively, both of which were statistically significant (P 1.0 mM Δ nitrite). The data suggested that V. dispar was the most prevalent species, being present even in individuals producing low levels of salivary nitrite.

Dietary nitrate is reduced to nitrite and nitric oxide by microbial flora, and this activity is beneficial to vascular health. It has been reported that this bacterial process is inhibited by chlorhexidine mouthwash, although the effects of other products are largely unknown. This study examined the effects of several treatments on salivary nitrate/nitrite and nitrate-reducing bacteria. Twelve university staff and students performed mouth-washing with water (control), essential oil, 0.35% povidone-iodine, or 0.0025% chlorhexidine and then ate 100 g lettuce (110 mg nitrate content), followed by collection of saliva and tongue bacteria at the baseline, and 1, 5, and 10 h thereafter. The individual treatments were separated by an interval of one week. Salivary nitrate/nitrite was measured by the calorimetric method, and a representative nitrate-reducing bacterial species, Veillonella dispar, was detected and semi-quantified using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay. Significant increases in salivary nitrate/nitrite were observed for all treatments (all P < 0.05). The PCR assay showed that water, essential oil, and povidone-iodine mouthwash had little effect, whereas V. dispar DNA bands were markedly inhibited after washing with chlorhexidine. These results suggest that essential oil and povidone-iodine mouthwash have little effect on oral nitrate-reducing activity. Salivary nitrite production was not reduced by chlorhexidine, but the fainter band of V. dispar DNA suggests that longer daily use might blunt this nitrate-reducing activity.

Dietary nitrate has several beneficial effects, including blood pressure reduction and improved oxygen consumption efficiency, but in order to do so it must first be reduced to nitrite by oral bacteria. Veillonella spp., a strictly anaerobic group, are the most prevalent nitrate-reducing bacteria in the oral cavity. In response to some early studies that have hinted at inter- and intra-individual variation in salivary nitrate-nitrite conversion capacity, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the incidence of and variation in the Veillonella species V. atypica, V. dispar, and V. rogosae by direct PCR and to assess salivary nitrate-nitrite conversion capacity and its reproducibility after dietary nitrate consumption in 24 elderly individuals. V. atypica, V. dispar, and V. rogosae were detected in 10 (41.7%), 24 (100%), and 14 (58.3%) participants, respectively. The coefficients of correlation between the first and second experiments on increased nitrate/nitrite were 0.637 and 0.583, respectively, both of which were statistically significant (P0.01). In both experiments, 6 participants produced relatively low levels of nitrite (0.5 mM Δ nitrite) while 7 produced relatively high levels (1.0 mM Δ nitrite). The data suggested that V. dispar was the most prevalent species, being present even in individuals producing low levels of salivary nitrite.

Summary Background The cross-sectional visual rating scale (c-VRS) is an easy and effective method of evaluating medial temporal atrophy (MTA). In evaluating longitudinal morphological change, c-VRS cannot express slight changes as precisely as volumetry. Methods We selected 87 people ≤65 years old from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative database. Their high resolution magnetic resonance images, brain structural volume data, and cognitive performances, were downloaded. We evaluated the temporal lobe atrophy in the baseline images, and the longitudinal alterations by judging the widening of the parahippocampal cerebrospinal fluid space one year and two years later. These results from c-VRS and longitudinal VRS (l-VRS) were also compared with the volume data derived from the FreeSurfer. Results The cross-sectional and longitudinal visual rating assessments showed significant differences between mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and cognitively normal subjects. In a receiver operating characteristic (ROC), the longitudinal assessment showed higher sensitivity/specificity and area-under curve than did the cross-sectional assessment. Conclusions Our findings demonstrated that longitudinal visual rating is a useful tool for detecting longitudinal morphological alterations caused by MCI, and would improve diagnostic accuracy.

Graphene has been studied as a candidate for electrochemical capacitor electrodes owing to its good electronic conductivity and theoretically high specific surface area. Chemically-derived graphene, or reduced graphite oxide (rGO) nanosheets, have advantages including moderate surface area, high volumetric density and scalability. In order to fully take advantage of the 2D nanostructure, the complex pore structure and fundamental capacitive behavior particularly in a monolayer state needs to be better understood. In this study, a series of thin films with 1 to 10 mono-layers of rGO were were fabricated by layer-by-layer deposition as simplified model electrodes with well-defined, countable graphene layers.[1] Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and cyclic voltammetry were conducted in neutral and acidic electrolytes in order to investigate the (pseudo)capacitive behavior of chemical graphene. A transmission line model (TLM) was adopted to simulate the electrochemical impedance data. The model structure is composed of layers of rGO with slit pores with lateral size the same as the gold substrate (1×1 cm) (Fig. 1). The equivalent circuit inside the interlayer gaps can be expressed as Z TLM (Fig. 2), which has a total impedance according to the de Levie model, -Equation 1- where X is the length of the slit pore along the ion penetration direction, Z* is the impedance per unit length in the slit pores, Z** is the impedance per unit area, l is the total length of perimeter of cross-section of the slit pores, j is the imaginary unit and, ω (=2πf, where f is frequency) is the angular frequency. The length of the slit pore along the ion penetration direction for all samples is equal to the geometric size of the electrode (X=1 cm) and the perimeter of the slit pores is l =2 cm × n layers. C TLM and R*TLM were obtained from TLM-simulation of (PDDA/rGO)10 reduced either by gas phase H2 or chemical reduction with N2H4. In Na2SO4, the frequency response will reflect only the electric double- layer capacitive behavior with no contribution from pseudo-capacitance. (PDDA/rGO)10-H2 shows a C TLM of ~25 μF/cm2 at 0.2-1.0 V and ~10 μF/cm2 at 1.2 V. (PDDA/rGO)10-N2H4 shows C TLM of 12-20 μF/cm2 between 0.2-1.2 V. R*TLM was higher for the N2H4-reduced (O/C=0.10) film compared to the H2-reduced counterpart (O/C=0.21). Samples with lower O/C have lower ionic conductivity due to lower hydrophobicity and higher electronic conductivity. Thus, R*TLM is suggested to be dominated by ionic conductivity. (PDDA/rGO)10-H2, with higher O/C and lower electronic conductivity, has higher C TLM and lower R TLM. These results imply that leaving a certain amount of surface functionalities seems to be advantageous for non-Faradaic electric double layer charging, which can be due to better wettability of the surface. R*TLM is higher in Na2SO4 compared to that in H2SO4, which can be attributed to the lower ionic conductivity of the electrolyte in the slit pores. In H2SO4, R*TLM for the H2-reduced samples (O/C=0.21) shows slightly higher values compared to the N2H4-reduced counterparts (O/C=0.10). From the results, we conclude that R*TLM is influenced more by ionic conductivity in Na2SO4, and more by the electronic conductivity of rGO in H2SO4. [1] Z. Lei, T. Mitsui, H. Nakafuji, M. Itagaki, and W. Sugimoto, J. Phys. Chem. C, 118(13), 6624–6630 (2014). Figure 1