Choto-san was administered to 6-week-old spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) at the usual dose used for humans and at a 10-times higher dose, and its effects on blood pressure and the autonomic nervous system were examined. Significant blood pressure elevation was noted in the SHRs administered with the 10-fold dose, but no such changes were observed in the SHRs that were administered the usual human dose. Since the urinary levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline and the granulocyte count significantly increased in the 10-fold dose group, the elevation in blood pressure in this group appears to be attributable to stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system. Accelerated sympathetic nervous activity is noted in SHRs during the growing stage, and the excessively high dose of Choto-san probably further stimulated the sympathetic nervous activity.

The autofluorescence visualization method(AVM)uses blue excitation light to assist in the diagnosis of epithelial dysplasia. It detects epithelial dysplasia as a black area,which is known as fluorescence visualization loss(FVL). In this study, we evaluated the detection accuracy for epithelial dysplasia of the tongue using the objective AVM and assessed its possible clinical utility. Seventy-nine tongue specimens clinically suspected to have leukoplakia or squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) were analyzed. First, the AVM was subjectively performed using the Visually Enhanced Lesion scope (VELscope), and the iodine-staining method was then performed. After biopsy, the histopathological results and the luminance ratio between the lesion and healthy tissue were compared, and a receiver operating characteristic curve was created. The cutoff value for the objective AVM was determined; the lesion was considered FVL-positive or -negative when the luminance ratio was higher or lower than the cutoff value,respectively. The histopathological diagnoses among the 79 specimens were SCC (n=30),leukoplakia with dysplasia (n=34),and leukoplakia without dysplasia (n=15). The cutoff value of the luminance ratio was 1.62, resulting in 66 FVL-positive and 13 FVL-negative specimens. The luminance ratio was significantly higher in the epithelial dysplasia-positive than -negative group (P<0.000 1). The objective AVM showed much higher consistency between histopathological results than did the two methods (kappa statistic=0.656). In conclusion, objective autofluorescence visualization has a potential as an auxiliary method for diagnosis of epithelial dysplasia.