No abstract available.
Carcinoma, Papillary* ; Thyroid Gland* ; Tretinoin*

Certine heavy metals which may lead peoples to poisonous status are widely used in industry and their used have been increasing along with rapid industrialization of this country. Such an increasement of metal uses aggravates the status of environmental pollution affecting foodstuffs which are the most important life supporting factor of animal and human being. Concerning the safety measures to minimize food-borne transmission of such hazardous metals, surveillance is the backbone of them and probably more so with a potential problem such as intoxication. Theoretically, this surveillance should include the determination of levels of heavy metal toxicants in foods, the determination of food consumption patterns and typical total diet, and the estimation of total load the metal contaminant from all sources of exposure including air, water, and occupational sources. In recent year, actually, such estimates on the total daily intake of some heavy metals from foods have been made in several developed countries and a wide variation of date by season, locality, and research method was recognized. Also in this country, this kind of research data is vitally needed to make up for the serious shortage or lack of references to estimate the total amount of heavy metal intake of the people. In this study, a modification model for estimation of the total daily intake of cadmium copper, nickel, zinc, and lead through foods was applied and concentrations of the above metals in crops cultivated in this country were measured with atomic absorption spectrophotometer to get the following results. 1.Level of heavy metal concentration in crops. Generally, the levels of such metals in essential crops such as rice, cucumber, radish, chinese cabbage, apple, pear, grape, and orange are similar or lower than those in Japan and other developed countries. By the way, a striking result on cadmium concentration was increasement of its concentration in rice from 0-0.035ppm in 1970 to 0.11ppm in this study. However, the value is still far below the Japanese Permissible Level of 1.0ppm. 2. Estimation of total daily intake per from foods. A new model for estimation was devised utilizing levels of metal concentration in food, amount of food consumed, and other food factors. Based on the above method, the daily intake of cadmium was estimate to be 70.53 microgram/man/day in average which was as high as the Limit Value of ILO/WHO(up to 71.4 microgram/man/day). Also, 3.89mg of Zinc, 1.65mg of cuppor, 0.32mg of lead were given as the total daily intake per capita by this research. 3. Efficacy of washing or skinning to decrease the amount of metals in crops. After washing the crops sufficiently with commercial linear alkylate sulfonate, the concentration of heavy metals could bae reduced to 50-80% showing decreasement rate of 20-50%. Also, after skinning the fruits, decreasement rate of the heavy metal concentration showed 0-50%.
Absorption ; Animals ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Brassica ; Cadmium ; Citrus sinensis ; Copper ; Developed Countries ; Diet ; Environmental Pollution ; Fruit ; Humans ; Japan ; Metals ; Metals, Heavy ; Nickel ; Pyrus ; Raphanus ; Seasons ; Skin ; Strikes, Employee ; Vitis ; Water ; Zinc

HIV-1 tat, a strong transactivator, is essential for the HIV-1 replication and AIDS progression. The Tat function is markedly inhibited by human anti-oncogene p53. This work was initiated to identify the p53-associated inhibitory mechanism on tat-mediated transactivation. Inhibitory function of P53 was confirmed by co-transfection of tat-expressing Jurkat cells with LTR-CAT plasmid, or H3Tl cells (LTR-CAT integrated HeLa cells) with different ratio of pSV-tat/pCDNA-p53 plasmids. Results from the direct protein-protein .interaction between soluble p53 and tat, and yeast two-hybrid experiments showed that the co-suppression mechanism is unlikely to be due to the direct interaction. CAT activity was not affected by tat in Jurkat cells which were transfected with p53-promoter-CAT or p53-enhancer-CAT, suggesting that the tat-mediated p53 suppression is not directly associated with p53-promoter. Finally, we have tested protein kinase activity in p53-tranfected Jurkat cells, which might phosphorylate HIV-1 tat, resulting in inhibition of tat function. Some of our data lead us to assume that the p53-mediated tat inhibition is likely to be associated with p53-associated, signaling-mediated phosphorylation of tat, resulting in the dysfunction of tat. This study is now under investigation.
Animals ; Cats ; Genes, Tumor Suppressor ; HIV-1* ; Humans ; Jurkat Cells ; Phosphorylation ; Plasmids ; Protein Kinases ; RNA Interference ; Trans-Activators ; Transcriptional Activation ; Yeasts

PURPOSE: We compared the first postoperative diagnostic and post-therapy scans of patients who received therapeutic doses of I-131, to investigate the difference in clinical outcomes between patients with concordant findings of diagnostic and post-therapy scans and patients with discrepant (more lesions in post-therapy scan) findings. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The first postoperative diagnostic and post-therapy radioiodine scans of one hundred forty three patients with well differentiated thyroid carcinoma were reviewed. Diagnostic scans were obtained following ingestion of 185 MBq of I-131 and post-therapy scans were obtained after therapeutic dose of 3.7~9.3 GBq of I-131. Successful ablation was defined as no radioiodine uptake on diagnostic radioiodine scan and normal range of serum thyroglobulin level (<10 ng/ml) during serum TSH elevation. RESULTS: Discrepant scan findings were noted in 25 (17.5%) patients. Twenty-two patients (15.4%) showed more lesions in post-therapy scan and 3 patients (2.1%) showed stunning effect. Nine (64.3%) of 14 patients with distant metastasis revealed metastatic lesion(s) only on post-therapy scan. Stunning effect was considered as sublethal damage in 1 patient and treatment by a diagnostic dose in 2 patients. Ablation was achieved in 52.4% (75/143) of all patients. Ablation rate and mean cumulative radioiodine dose were not different statistically between concordant and discrepant groups. CONCLUSION: There were 17.5% difference between diagnostic and post-therapy scan findings when using 185 MBq of I-131 as a diagnostic dose. However, 64.3% of distant metastases were revealed only on post-therapy scan. Ablation rate and mean cumulative radioiodine dose were not different statistically between concordant and discrepant groups. The stunning effect was considered as not only sublethal damage but also treatment by a small diagnostic dose of radioiodine.
Eating ; Humans ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Reference Values ; Thyroglobulin ; Thyroid Gland* ; Thyroid Neoplasms*

Lumbar ligimentum flava obtained from 21 patients of spinal stenosis and 10 patients who underwent surgery for vertebral fracture(control group) were studied with hematoxylin-eosin stain, Verhoff s elastic stain, and immunohistochemical stains for S-100 protein ad fibronectin. The chondroid metaplasia of ligamentum flavum found more frequently and widely in the group of spinal stenosis compared with control group. The elastic fibers were decreased in number and irregu- larly arranged at the bone attached area in the group of spinal stenosis. There was tendency to increase the amount of fibronectin in the stroma of the ligamentum flavum in the group of spinal stenosis. Above findings suggest that chondroid metaplasia and changes of the elastic fiber in the peripheral area of the ligamentum flavum are able to contribute the pathogenesis of spinal stenosis.
Coloring Agents ; Elastic Tissue ; Fibronectins ; Humans ; Ligamentum Flavum ; Metaplasia ; S100 Proteins ; Spinal Stenosis

Computed tomographic (CT) scans of 46 jaundiced patients were studied to determine the value of CT in the diagnosis of biliary pathology. AII ofthe 12 cases of medical jaundice had positive CT correlation. Of the 34 cases of proven surgical jaundice, 97 .8% were correctly identified by CT. In detecting the level of obstruction, the cases were divided into four groups by anatomica l segments, according to the number of visualized low density ringlike structures produced by dilated bile duct. All of the correctly diagnosed surgical jaundice was 91.2%. The presence of stones or mass, the level of obstruction and the relative size and shape of visualized distal ring had proved to be the most important variables in etiological diagnosis of surgical jaundice. The results indicate that CT is useful and highly accurate in differenting between surgical (obstructive) jaundice and medical (non-obstructive) ajundice, and determining the level of obstruction and the etiology of surgical jaundice.
Bile Ducts ; Diagnosis ; Humans ; Jaundice ; Jaundice, Obstructive ; Pathology

No abstract available.
Sinusitis*

No abstract available.
Dust* ; Mastoid*

No abstract available.
Humans ; Infertility* ; Luteinizing Hormone, beta Subunit*

So called pseudosarcoma of the esophagus is an extremely rare polypoid malignant tumor and a number of cases, totaling 19 cases have been reported in world literatures until 1985. The presenting case is an unique one of pseudosarcoma of the esophagus and we illustrated all microscopic features with mapping, immunoperoxidase stain for cytokeratin and electron microscopic findings to clarify the histogenesis of spindle cells. It is postulated that the spindle cells of pseudosarcoma are transformed from squamous carcinoma cells based on (1) morphological similarity between squamous epithelial cells and spindle cells, (2) positive reaction of immunoperoxidase staining for cytokeratin in the adjacent normal esophageal mucosa, squamous cell carcinoma, spindle cells and giant cells and (3) presence of transformation zone.