No abstract available.
Yersinia enterocolitica* ; Yersinia*

No abstract available.
Animals ; Cattle* ; Yersinia enterocolitica* ; Yersinia*

No abstract available.
Snake Bites* ; Snakes*

The effects of dehydration on vasopressin and oxytocin immunoreactive neurons in the hypothalamus was investigated by using a immunohistochemistry. Adult Mongolian gerbil[Meriones unguiculates] were deprived of drinking water. Dehydrated animals were sacrificed on the 7th, 14th and 21st day of water retriction. The results are as follows : 1. The body weights were decreased about 1.8% daily. On the 21st day of dehydration, they were shown up to 45% compare to the control. 2. In the hypothalamus of the control group, majority of vasopressin and oxytocin immunoreactive neurons were located in the supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei. 3. Changes due to dehydrated stimulation were mainly observed in vasopressin immunoreactive neurons. And these changes in supraoptic nuclei were more severe than those in paraventricular nucleus. Size of vasopressin immunoreactived cells and of areas were increased as to proceed the dehydration. The numbers of those were increased on the 7th day of dehydration, and then they were continously decreased. 4. Although oxytocin immunoreactive neurons were slightly changed in numbers during dehydration, they were not shown conspicuous changes compare to vasopressin immunoreactive neurons. Thus it is appeared that vasopressin secretory neurons in the hypothalamus of Mongolian gerbil are affected by osmotic stress induced dehydration while oxytocin neurons may be affected by other factors.
Adult ; Animals ; Body Weight ; Dehydration* ; Drinking Water ; Gerbillinae* ; Humans ; Hypothalamus* ; Immunohistochemistry ; Neurons* ; Osmotic Pressure ; Oxytocin* ; Paraventricular Hypothalamic Nucleus ; Supraoptic Nucleus ; Vasopressins* ; Water

No abstract available.
Humans ; Langerhans Cells* ; Prognosis*

Uterine serosal pregnancy is an extremely rare form of ectopic pregnancy. This is a report of a 35-year-old primigravida woman who was diagnosed with uterine serosal pregnancy via laparoscopic intervention. A 35-year-old woman (gravida 1, para 0) was referred from a local clinic for a ruptured left tubal pregnancy at amenorrhea 5+0 weeks with elevated serum beta human chorionic gonadotropin (16,618 mIU/mL). A pregnancy on the left posterior wall of the uterine serosa was diagnosed during the operation and successfully treated with laparoscopic surgery as a conservative management strategy to enable fertility preservation. With the advantages of ultrasonography and laparoscopy, an early diagnosis of a primary abdominal pregnancy located on the left posterior wall of the uterine serosa was made, prior to the occurrence of severe intra-abdominal massive hemorrhage, which was then treated laparoscopically as a conservative management strategy enabling the preservation of fertility.
Adult ; Amenorrhea ; Chorionic Gonadotropin ; Early Diagnosis ; Female ; Fertility ; Fertility Preservation ; Hemorrhage ; Humans ; Laparoscopy ; Pregnancy* ; Pregnancy, Abdominal ; Pregnancy, Ectopic ; Pregnancy, Tubal ; Serous Membrane ; Ultrasonography

OBJECTIVE: Ontology is becoming a core research field in the realm of medical informatics. The objective of our ongoing research is to explore the potential role of Formal Concept Analysis(FCA) in a context-based ontology building support in a medical domain. The concept hierarchy plays an important role as the backbone of ontology, but its construction is a complex and time-consuming process. We present a novel approach to the automatic acquisition of taxonomies or concept hierarchies from clinical documents. METHODS: Our approach is based on FCA, a mathematical tool used in data analysis and knowledge engineering. It provides methods to group objects and attributes into concepts, pairs of object-sets(clinical documents) and attribute-sets(fields contained in the clinical documents), such that the binary relation can be presented in a concept lattice. Based on the FCA, we have applied out approach for 8 clinical documents used in a university hospital. As a result of our experiments, we can extract 15 concepts with 7 common fields that can be shared with 8 clinical documents. RESULTS: We show how FCA can be used to classify clinical documents and acquire a concept hierarchy for the medical domain out of the clinical documents with maximal property factorization. CONCLUSION: The whole of our work is based on the concept lattice of which allows to construct a "well defined" ontological concept hierarchy. As an application of this approach, we presented some results of classification of clinical documents with maximally factorized common fields. We have shown that FCA can be useful method to classify and analyze various medical data by constructing concept hierarchy. From that concept hierarchy, we can acquire well-structured facts and knowledges in medical domain.
Classification* ; Medical Informatics ; Statistics as Topic

BACKGROUND: Immunologic and inflammatory responses of cardiopulmonary bypass(CPB) influence postoperative mortality and morbidity with multiple organ injury. It has been reported that ischemia/reperfusion induced-myocardial injury during CPB is causative of release of inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6(IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha). The purpose of this study was to detect the time course of the activated cytokine and troponin-T(TnT), and to examine the correlation between such parameters during CPB. MATERIAL AND METHOD: The serial samples were collected from arterial blood via radial arterial catheter in 23 patients who are underwent open heart surgery (OHS) with CPB, the IL-6, TNF-alpha and TnT were checked. RESULT: (1) IL-6, TNFalpha- and TnT concentration increased significantly during CPB with a peaking level of CPB-off (p 0.05). (2) IL-6 had highly positive correlation with aortic cross clamping time and total bypass time(r=0.80, 0.78; p 0.05, respectively). (3) There was no correlation among IL-6, TNF-alpha and TnT. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, these data showed that elevated production of serum IL-6 during CPB was attributable to ischemia/reperfusion induced-myocardial damage. IL-6 will become a new and sensitive biological marker in assessment of myocardial damage during OHS with CPB. However, further studies will be needed to apply IL-6 in more patient population.
Biomarkers ; Cardiopulmonary Bypass* ; Catheters ; Constriction ; Cytokines ; Heart* ; Humans ; Interleukin-6* ; Mortality ; Thoracic Surgery* ; Trinitrotoluene ; Troponin T* ; Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha*

Single unit responses of the ventral posterior medial (VPM) thalamic neurons to stimulation were monitored in anesthetized rats during activation of contralateral primary somatosensory (SI) cortex by GABA antagonist. The temporal changes of afferent sensory transmission were quantitatively analyzed by poststimulus time histogram (PSTH). Mainly, afferent sensory transmission to VPM thalamus was facilitated (15 neurons of total 23) by GABA antagonist (bicuculline) applied to contralateral cortex, while 7 neurons were suppressed. However, when ipsilateral cortex was inactivated by GABA agonist, musimol, there was significant suppression of afferent sensory transmission of VPM thalamus. This suppressed responsiveness by ipsilateral musimol was not affected by bicuculline applied to contralateral cortex. These results suggest that afferent transmission to VPM thalamus may be subjected to the interhemispheric modulation via ipsilateral cortex during inactivation of GABAergic neurons in contralateral SI cortex.
Animals ; Bicuculline ; GABA Agonists ; GABA Antagonists ; GABAergic Neurons ; gamma-Aminobutyric Acid ; Neurons ; Rats ; Somatosensory Cortex* ; Thalamus*

PURPOSE: To investigate the regional changes in gray matter volume by using optimized voxel based morphometry in the whole brain of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and to determine its correlation with cognitive function. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Nineteen patients with AD (mean mini mental state examination (MMSE) score = 20.4) and 19 age-matched control subjects (mean MMSE score = 29) participated in this prospective study. T1-weighted 3D-SPGR scans were obtained for each subject. These T1-weighted images were spatially normalized into study-specific T1 template and segmented into gray matter, white matter and CSF. After the images were modulated and smoothed, all of the gray matter images were compared with control images by using voxel-wise statistical parametric test (two-sample t-test). RESULTS: In patients with AD, total gray matter volume was significantly smaller than normal control (552+/-39 mL vs. 632+/-51 mL, p<0.001). Significant gray matter loss was seen in both the hippocampus and amygdala complexes, and the parahippocampi and frontoparietal cortices (p<0.01, family wise error corrected). Left cerebral atrophy was more prominent than the right. Loss of gray matter volume in both the superior frontal gyri and left inferior temporal gyrus had a strong correlation with lower MMSE score. CONCLUSION: Optimized VBM was able to visualize pathologic changes of AD in vivo. In AD there was widespread gray matter volume loss in the frontoparietal lobes as well as the medial temporal lobes and had a strong correlation between volume loss of specific cortical areas and MMSE score.
Alzheimer Disease* ; Amygdala ; Atrophy ; Brain ; Hippocampus ; Humans ; Prospective Studies ; Temporal Lobe