The purpose of this study is to investigate the prevalence of and to classify the types of silicosis patients who were working at that time as migrant workers in the eastern part of Toyama Prefecture. Migrant workers are known in Japanese as “dekasegi” This term refers to workers who migrate seasonally from their home towns to areas where work is more available.
Questionnaires were sent to all male inhabitants aged 30 or over in the selected five areas. Eighty-seven percent of the questionnaires were answered and returned. Based on the results, 482 inhabitants were selected as migrant workers with experience in jobs where they were exposed to large amount of dust. Chest roentgenography and subjective symptoms were examined in these subjects.
The results obtained were follows;
(1) Eight hundred and eighty-five of the respondents (41%) had worked as migrant workers.Of these, 580 men (66%) had worked in jobs with exposure to dust.
(2) Of the 482 migrant workers whose jobs exposed them to dust, 424 silicosis cases (88%) were found by chest roentgenographic examination. Silicosis is classified into four types according to the national Pneumoconiosis Law on the basis of chest roentgenographic findings. These patients included 195 cases of type 1, 123 cases of type 2, 59 cases of type 3 and 47 cases of type 4 silicosis.
(3) The prevalence of disease symptoms in the silicosis patients included ; cough 39%, phlegm 40%, shortness of breath 41%, palpitations 17% and wheezing in 20% of the cases. The silicosis patients showed a higher frequency of respiratory disease symptoms than those dust-exposed workers who did not evidence signs of silicosis.
(4) The silicosis patients were found in 98% of the migrant workers whose exposure to dust lasted a period of more than 20 years, 89% in men whose work was between 10 and 19 years and 76 % in men who had worked less than 10 years.
(5) The silicosis in 297 cases (70% of the total number of disease patients) was first detected during the examinations in the course of this research.

Objective: Early life events connected with the risk of later disease can occur not only in utero, but also in infancy. In study of the developmental origins of health and disease, the relationship between infantile growth patterns and adolescent body mass index and blood pressure is one of the most important issues to verify.
Materials and Methods: We analyzed the correlation of current body mass index and systolic blood pressure of 168 female college students with their growth patterns in utero and in infancy.
Results: Body mass index and systolic blood pressure in adolescence showed positive correlations with changes in weight-for-age z scores between 1 and 18 months but not with those between 18 and 36 months. Stepwise multiple regression analysis showed that both change in weight-for-age z scores from 1 to 18 months and body mass index at 1 month were significantly and independently associated with systolic blood pressure in adolescence. Body mass index at 36 months was positively correlated with body mass index in adolescence, while body mass index at birth was negatively correlated with body mass index in adolescence.
Conclusion: Our findings shows that restricted growth in utero and accelerated weight gain in early infancy are associated with the cardiovascular risk factors of high systolic blood pressure and high body mass index in adolescence. In Japan, an increasing proportion of low birth weight infants and accelerated catch-up growth after birth have been observed in recent decades. This might be an alarming harbinger of an increase in diseases related to the developmental origins of health and disease in Japan.

As a method of agility measurement under wide current use, the repeated side step is well-known. At present in Japan, a duration of 20 seconds is employed to test agility ; but it is often reported that the factor of endurance is included in this. When a diagnosis involving agility is made based on the performance of exercise, the duration of the time of measurement was controlled in order to avoid the mixing of other factors and to ensure measurement of as few factors as possible. The distance of step was made flexible according to the age. Since a constant distance makes the longitudinal tracing easier, the distance of step was also studied.
Side steps were tested and duration of measurement was examined based on determinations in 1857 subjects, Junior and Senior school boys and girls and male university students. During the 20 seconds of measurement, scores were recorded every 5 seconds to study the time course of the fluctuations of scores. Taking into consideration factors of endurance such as the endurance of the lower extremity system, the knee test was conducted to see the relationship between scores of the repeated side step and knee test values. As to the distance of the step, 200 high school girls were tested over a distance of 100cm ×2 and 120cm ×2, for 10 seconds each.
As to the time of measurement, the average score during the first 10-15 seconds after start tended to decrease. In the time course of fluctuations of the scores in each subject, a decrease in the fall of scorse was seen about 10 seconds after the start in approximately 55% of the test subjects.
Based on the assumption that the endurance of the lower extremity system participates in this, high and low groups with a significant difference in the endurance of the lower extremity at the level of P<0.001 were compared. While no difference was seen in the slope of the score increase over a 10-second period from the start, changes of scores were distinctly different between 10 and 20 seconds, the lower values in the low group being obvious. The endurance of the lower extremity system was then studied in the two groups with high and low scores in the side step between 10 and 20 seconds. In the group with high scores, the endurance of the lower extremity was high : and a significant difference at P<0.01 was noted in this index.
These results would definitely indicate that mixing of other factors is unavoidable under the current measurement duration of 20 seconds
As to the distance of the step, scores are apparently different even in the same test subject, depending upon the distance of the step. The scores are also different depending upon the body length.
In both of the two groups, however, the scores for each different distance of the step showed a high correlation between each other, giving a correlation coefficient of γ= 0.88 in the group with high body length and γ= 0.82 in the group with low body length, indicating a high correlation.
Based on the diagnosis of agility and performance of exercise, in order to obtain the results of measurement of as simple a factor as possible, the agility time measurement is corrected to 10 seconds ; and the distance of the step is made constant at 100cm×2 regardless of the age, to a distance without unnatural effort even by a primary school pupil, in order to obtain a better diagnosis and tolerance for exercise for the desirable development and maintenance of agility.
The influence of body height on the score should be studied in the future.

A simple method of evaluation and measurement of endurance of the whole body for exercise prescription for sportsmen was previously reported. In the present study, a method of loading for general population was deviced and is the subject of the present communication.
The site of loading was divided into relatively localized portions of the lower extremity, upper extremity and trunk.
By substituting the kneeling exercise with step test, individual difference in body height was corrected.