Blessed with a mild climate and located conveniently, Shizuoka Prefecture is the nation's leading tea and orange growing center. It also produces rice, vegetables and melons in large quantities.
This paper reports on the findings obtained in an investigation of the role of women in farming, their amount of work, and living and health conditions in the central part of Shizuoka Prefecture.
For the sake of comparision, this region was divided into the three areas different from each other in production structure and living environment.
The area in and around Shizuoka City, the capital of the prefecture was designated as Area A, where tea, orange and rice are principal products. Area B is a flat-land district where mixed farming is dominant and rice, tea and vegetables are grown. Area C is a hilly, wooded area. The major farm products are tea and mushrooms.
More than 80% of women are engaged in farm work, and espeically in the tea-pricking season 90% work out in the terraced fields.
It was found that about 3% of the women surveyed are suffering injuries caused by farm implements and machinery. More than 90% said they have engaged in the spraying of pesticides, and 8 to 19% of them said they had subjective symptoms of intoxication after spraying.
The findings of medical examinations for anemia, cardiovascular disease, liver function, stomach cancer, uterine cancer and so on will be discussed in this report.

This is a review of the results of mass screenings for early detection of stomach diseases conducted during the past 10 years from 1971 to 1980 and similar disease prevention schemes undertaken by 25 prefectures in 1980. The materials we used are the statistics presented at the 1981 general meeting of the Japanese Association of Rural Medicine and the 1979 and 1980 survey findings on mass screenings prepared by the Japanese Society of Adult Disease Prevention.
1. The number of people who receivea group stomach examination during a year increased from 128, 169 in 1971 to 274, 905 in 1980.
2. Of the total number of persons who underwent stomach checkups during 1980, 16.0% were urged to get intensive medical examination.
3. Those who actually got intensive exams accounted for 76.3% of those tho were required to receive such exams. This ratio varies greatly from 27.0% to 92.9% according to prefectures.
4. Stomach cancer was found in 255 people. This represents 0.093% of the total number of the examinees and includes 113 persons with early gastric cancer (44.1% of the total stomach cancer cases). Among other diseases detected in the mass screenings are gastro-polyp (1, 151 cases, 0.42%), gastric ulcers (2, 301 cases, 0.84%) and duodenal ulcers (1, 285 cases, 0.47%). Altogether, 13, 730 or 4.99% of the total number of the examinees were found that they have ailments.
5. The methods employed in mass screening, intensive medical examination, procedures after examination and follow-up study differ from prefecture to prefecture.
So it is difficult to obtain the exact picture of health conditions of rural inhabitants from the data we used.

This is a report on the precision controlled gastric mass screenings conducted under the sponsorship of the Welfare Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives in Nagano Prefecture and the assessment test using some samples of radiographic stomach images.
Physicians and x-ray technicians participated in the test and interpreted in their own ways the radiographs of 30 healthy cases and 20 cases of cancer of the stomach. Experienced physicians and technicians made better scores on the test than those less experienced in reading radiographs. Physicians read a little better that technicians in checkups of different parts regardless of years of experience, but the difference was not significant. In terms of FP and FN percentages (?), physicians scored 40.5% and 20.8% on the first tryout, and 34.0% and 29.0% on the second tryout.
The 1988 mass screening found 67.4% of cancer in antral and angular areas and 23.8% on the lesser curvature side of the angular area.
Grade 5 means that “No doubt about the existence of cancerous lesions.” In the 1983 screening, 25% of the grade 5 cases turned out to be nothing wrong upon close examination. The figure went down to 5.9% in the 1988.

Background: Alopecia areata (AA) is considered complex genetic and tissue-specific autoimmune disease. We recently discovered a nonsynonymous variant in the coiled-coil alphahelical rod protein 1 (CCHCR1) gene within the AA risk haplotype. And a water avoidance stress test on CCHCR1 knockout mice induced AA-like lesions. Objective: To investigate the difference clinical findings of AA in patients with the CCHCR1 variant and without. Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of the data from 142 AA patients. Among these patients, 20 (14.1%) had a variant of CCHCR1. We evaluated the sex distribution of the patients, age at onset, distribution of the clinical types, prevalence of a positive family history of AA, prevalence of association of AA with atopic dermatitis, response to steroid therapy, and recurrence rate. We used multivariate logistic regression analysis and Fisher’s exact test for statistical analysis. We also investigate electron microscopic observations of hair samples with the CCHCR1 variant and without. Results: The results showed a significant correlation between the CCHCR1 variant and the recurrence rate compared with the variant-negative group (p=0.0072). Electron microscopy revealed abnormalities in the hair shaft structure and hair cuticle in patients with the CCHCR1 variant (p=0.00174). Conclusion Our results suggest that AA with CCHCR1 variant is clinically characterized by a high recurrence rate and hair morphological abnormality.

A 78-year-old woman who had a history of left deep venous thrombosis was referred to our hospital with a sudden hemoptysis. Thoracic computed tomography showed a solitary pulmonary nodule in the right lower lobe. Based on her medical history of deep venous thrombosis, she was tentatively diagnosed as having pulmonary embolism and successfully treated by inserting an inferior vena cava filter and anticoagulant therapy with warfarin [Please confirm whether previous sentence is correct]. However, the lung nodule on thoracic computed tomography was still depicted four months later. With suspicion of a malignant tumor, including possible lung cancer, a right segmentectomy was performed. Pathological assessment of the resected specimen showed the tumor was derived from the right bronchial wall, but was not ruptured into the intratracheal lumen, as well as coexistence with intraalveolar hemorrhage near the tumor. The lung nodule was diagnosed as bronchial schwannoma. Thus, the origin of the hemoptysis was found to be pulmonary embolism due to deep vein thrombosis, and not by bronchial schwannoma, which was also present in the lung.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Noninvasive objective monitoring is advantageous for optimizing treatment strategies in patients inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Fecal calprotectin (FCP) is superior to traditional biomarkers in terms of assessing the activity in patients with IBD. However, there are the differences among several FCP assays in the dynamics of FCP. In this prospective multicenter trial, we investigated the usefulness of FCP measurements in adult Japanese patients with IBD by reliable enzyme immunoassay using a monoclonal antibody. METHODS: We assessed the relationship between FCP levels and disease or endoscopic activity in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC, n=64) or Crohn’s disease (CD, n=46) compared with healthy controls (HCs, n=64). RESULTS: FCP levels in UC patients strongly correlated with the Disease Activity Index (rs =0.676, P < 0.0001) and Mayo endoscopic subscore (MES; rs =0.677, P < 0.0001). FCP levels were significantly higher even in patients with inactive UC or CD compared with HCs (P=0.0068, P < 0.0001). The optimal cutoff value between MES 1 and 2 exhibited higher sensitivity (94.1%). FCP levels were significantly higher in active UC patients than in inactive patients (P < 0.001), except those with proctitis. The Crohn’s Disease Activity Index tended to correlate with the FCP level (rs =0.283, P=0.0565). CONCLUSIONS: Our testing method using a monoclonal antibody for FCP was well-validated and differentiated IBD patients from HCs. FCP may be a useful biomarker for objective assessment of disease activity in adult Japanese IBD patients, especially those with UC.
Adult* ; Antibodies, Monoclonal ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group* ; Biomarkers ; Colitis, Ulcerative ; Crohn Disease ; Humans ; Immunoenzyme Techniques ; Inflammatory Bowel Diseases* ; Leukocyte L1 Antigen Complex* ; Methods ; Multicenter Studies as Topic ; Proctitis ; Prospective Studies*