PURPOSE: To seek adequate sequence of MR angiography (MRA) on developmental venous anomaly in the brain. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We collected ten cases who demonstrated developmental venous anomaly on MR image. Eight patients among them, both 3D time-of-flight (TOF) with or without Gadolinium-DTPA enhancement and phase contrast(PC) were performed: TOF without enhancement in five, TO F with enhancement in six, and PC with 10 cm/sec in five, PC with 30 cm/sec in three, and PC with 5 cm/sec velocity encoding (VNEC) in two cases. RESULTS: On enhanced 3D TOF, both dilated collecting veins and medullary veins were well depicted in five of six cases, however, the signal intensity of the collecting and medullary veins are less than arteries. Dilated hyperintense collecting veins were well demonstrated on 3D PC with below the 10cm/sec VNEC in all seven cases, but the medullary veins were poorly defined. Unenhanced 3D TOF IVIRA could not reveal any dilated collecting and medullary veins in all five cases. CONCLUSION: Enhanced 3D TO F could demonstrate the collecting and medullary veins of developmental venous anomaly, however, 3D PC with below the 10 cm/sec VN EC could showthe dilated collecting and larger draining veins. We considered that combined enhanced 3D TOF MRA and PC with VENC 10cm/sec can substitute for conventional anglogram in the diagnosis of developmental venous anomaly.
Angiography* ; Arteries ; Brain ; Central Nervous System Venous Angioma* ; Diagnosis* ; Humans ; Veins

BACKGROUND : A discussion of the chronologic trends of operative indications of breast masses for proper management of breast masses is desirable. METHODS : A retrospective analysis of 882 patients with breast masses who underwent operations at Kangnam General Hospital from January 1986 to December 1997 was done. All the lesions were classified according to for age, size of the mass, and the pathologic result. Concurrently, the distributions of the different masses were retrospectively analyzed for each one-year time period. RESULTS : The most prevalent age group was the third decade (28.6%) followed by the fourth decade (25.3%) and the fifth decade (24.4%). The most common lesion was fibroadenoma (38.7%), followed by mammary dysplasia (22.6%) and malignancy (18.3%). In fibroadenoma, the most common pathologic type was intracanalicular (34.9%), and the juvenile type occurred in significantly younger patients compared to other types (19.2 vs 29.2 years of age). In mammary dysplasia, the most common pathologic type was fibrous (74.4%), and the epithelial hyperplasia and adenosis types were occurred in older patients compared to the other types (39.1 and 41.0 vs 33.5 and 35.4 years of age). As the chronologically changing pattern of the pathologic types, the number of mammary dysplasia had a decreasing tendency and fibroadenoma had a relatively increasing one, and the reason may be the effect of fine-needle aspiration cytology. CONCLUSIONS : The result of this study shows that the distribution of the disease in terms of age and frequency is almost the same as that of other reported results. The trend of the disease types in terms of the time period shows that the operation rate for fibroadenomas is increasing while the rate for mammary dysplasia is decreasing. This tendency might come from the decreasing use of surgical biopsy for mammary dysplasia.
Biopsy* ; Biopsy, Fine-Needle ; Breast* ; Fibroadenoma ; Fibrocystic Breast Disease ; Hospitals, General ; Humans ; Hyperplasia ; Retrospective Studies

BACKGROUND: Recently Live blood analysis was populated in korean society. so we evaluated clinical utility of Live blood analysis, as compared the Live blood analysis result of patients who have confirmed diagnosis of disease with that of controls who have no known health problems. METHODS: We carried out Live blood analysis to patients(n=30) who was entered to an admission in Yongdong severance hospital from February 2000 to March 2000 and to controls(n=30) who worked in that hospital at same time. We examined 3 abnormal finding; rouleau formation, spicule, protoplast, which were often observed in Live blood analysis. RESULTS: At comparison of patient group and control group, rouleau formation was observed in 27 patients except 3 patients and it was observed in all 30 controls. Spicule was observed 2in 9 patients except 1 patients and it was observed in all 30 controls. Protoplast was observed in 16 patients and 13 controls. There was no difference between patients and controls in observing 3 abnormal finding. CONCLUSION: We conclude that Live blood analysis may have no clinical significance.
Complementary Therapies ; Diagnosis ; Humans ; Protoplasts

To improve our understanding of the relationship between soil higher fungi (belonging to Ascomycota and Basidiomycota) and Abies koreana, we surveyed A. koreana soil fungal communities in a forest in Mt. Halla, Jeju Island, Korea by next-generation sequencing (Illumina Miseq). To confirm the soil higher fungal communities, we collected two types of soils from a defined plot: soils with dead (AKDTs) and living A. koreana (AKLTs), respectively. Soil fungi were classified into 2 phyla, 19 classes, 64 orders, 133 families, 195 genera, and 229 OTUs (895,705 sequence reads). Nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) showed significantly different soil higher fungal communities between AKDTs and AKLTs (p < .05). In addition, the saprophyte composition was significantly affected by A. koreana status (p < .05). The proportion of the mycorrhizal Clavulina spp. was different between soils with AKDTs and AKLTs, suggesting that Clavulina spp. may be a crucial soil fungal species influencing A. koreana. This study will lead to a better understanding of the ecological status of A. koreana in Mt.Halla. In addition, this study could be useful for the conservation and management of A.koreana habitats.

No abstract available.
Humans

Situs inversus totalis (SIT) is very rare autosomal recessive condition, and patients with SIT have complete mirror image reversal of the thoracic and abdominal viscera. There have been no case reports of esophageal bezoar in a patient with situs inversus totalis. Bezoars are retained concretions of indigestible foreign material, including food material, vegetable material and hair, and they are usually founded in the stomach, small intestine and rectum. Esophageal bezoars are very rare, but they are known to occur in patients with anatomical defects or esophageal motility disorders. The treatment of esophageal bezoar is usually based on endoscopic fragmentation and extraction, dissolution with papain, cellulose, pancreatic enzyme and/or Coca cola. We report here on a case of an endoscopically treated primary esophageal bezoar in a patient with situs inversus totalis, and the patient experienced no complications from the treatment.
Bezoars ; Cellulose ; Coca ; Cola ; Esophageal Motility Disorders ; Hair ; Humans ; Intestine, Small ; Papain ; Rectum ; Situs Inversus ; Stomach ; Vegetables ; Viscera

BACKGROUND: Previous studies suggest that systemic administration of agmatine, endogenous ligand for imidazoline receptors has anti-hypernociceptive effects in experimental animal. However the peripheral effects of agmatine on inflammatory pain have not yet been elucidated. Here we examined the effects of intra-articular injection of agmatine in the induction and maintenance phase of arthritic pain. In addition, we sought to determine the potential contribution of imidazoline and alpha(2)-adrenergic receptors to the antinociceptive effects using clonidine which is mixed alpha(2)-adrenoceptor and imidazoline receptor agonist. METHODS: To induce arthritis in rats, 2% lambda-carrageenan (50microliter, in saline) was injected into the joint of the right hind limb under enflurane anesthesia. Either agmatine (10, 50, 100microgram/40microliter) or clonidine (10, 50, 100microgram/40microliter) was injected into the knee joint cavity immediately before or 4 hr after carrageenan injection. Weight load tests were performed to measure pain-related behavior in freely walking rats. RESULTS: The intraarticular injection of agmatine into the knee joint had no effects in the both phase of induction and maintenance of arthritic pain at any dose tested. However, injection of clonidine reversed arthritic pain, when injected 4 h after carrageenan injection. CONCLUSIONS: In rats, agmatine has no peripheral effect on inflammatory pain and imidazoline receptors in the periphery may not contribute to the anti-inflammatory pain.
Agmatine ; Anesthesia ; Animals ; Arthritis ; Carrageenan ; Clonidine ; Enflurane ; Extremities ; Imidazoline Receptors ; Inflammation ; Injections, Intra-Articular ; Joints ; Knee ; Knee Joint ; Rats ; Walking

Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) has been used to detect deleted regions of a specific chromosome in cancer cells. LOH on chromosome 16q has been reported to occur frequently in progressed hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Liver tissues from 37 Korean HCC patients were analyzed for LOH by using 25 polymorphic microsatellite markers distributed along 16q. Out of the 37 HCC patients studied, 21 patients (56.8%) showed LOH in various regions of 16q with at least one polymorphic marker. Puring the analysis of these 21 LOH cases, 6 patients showed interstitial LOHs in which the boundary of the LOH region was defined. With two rounds of LOH analysis, five commonly occurring interstitial LOH regions were identified; 16q21-22.1, 16q22.2 - 22.3, 16q22.3, 16q23.2 and 16q23.3 - 24.1. Among the five LOH regions the 16q23.3 - 24.1 region has been reported to be related with chromosome instability. A complete physical map, which covers the 3.2 Mb region of 16q23.3 - 24.1 (D16S402 and D16S486), was constructed to identify novel candidate tumor suppressor genes. We provide the minimally tiling path map consisting of 28 BAC clones. There was one gap between NT_10422.11 and NT_019609.9 of the human genome sequence contig (NCBI sequence build 33, April 29, 2003). This gap can be filled by sequencing the R-1425M20 clone which bridges these sequence contigs.
Carcinoma, Hepatocellular ; Chromosomal Instability ; Clone Cells ; Genes, Tumor Suppressor ; Genome, Human ; Humans ; Liver ; Loss of Heterozygosity ; Microsatellite Repeats

Fifteen percent of patients with Cushing's syndrome could be accompanied with nonpituitary tumors that secrets ACTH-the ectopic ACTH syndrome. Among them, bronchial carcinoid is one of the rare causes of the ectopic ACTH syndrome. We experienced a 60-year-old woman who showed conditions of weight gain, generalized edema, hypokalemia, diabetes mellitus, and right middle lung mass. Histologically, the tumor was diagnosed with bronchial carcinoid and was confirmed as an ectopic ACTH syndrome through immunohistochemical staining of ACTH. After resection of the lung mass, blood sugar, electrolytes, generalized weakness, and blood pressure improved.
ACTH Syndrome, Ectopic* ; Adrenocorticotropic Hormone ; Blood Glucose ; Blood Pressure ; Carcinoid Tumor* ; Cushing Syndrome ; Diabetes Mellitus ; Edema ; Electrolytes ; Female ; Humans ; Hypokalemia ; Lung ; Middle Aged ; Weight Gain

BACKGROUND/AIMS: While endoscopic resection could be considered as the best choice for the treatment of small rectal carcinoid, the colonoscopic biopsies performed at the time of detection may lead to scar and ulcer formation and cause unpredicted difficulty in the endoscopic resection. This study was evaluated to analyze the relationship between the post-biopsy scar and the limitation of submucosal elevation for the endoscopic resection of rectal carcinoids. METHODS: Twenty two cases of rectal carcinoid which received prior biopsies before the endoscopic resection were retrospectively compared with 20 non-biopsied cases. All two groups were treated by endoscopic resection from January 2000 to December 2007. There was no difference in the clinical characteristics and endoscopic findings such as size and location between the two groups. RESULTS: The limited submucosal elevation was experienced in 17 cases (77%) in the biopsy group, significantly more frequent than 9 cases (45%) in the non-biopsy group (p=0.03). The colonoscopic findings which contribute to difficult submucosal elevation were the depressive scar formation after biopsy, the size less than 5 mm in the biopsy group, active ulcer formation after biopsy. Regarding the resection method, endoscopic submucosal dissection was frequently adopted (23% vs. 5%) in the biopsy group. The frequency of endoscopic piecemeal resection in biopsy group was higher than non-biopsy group (23% vs 10%), and all cases were subsequently resected by other endoscopic methods. CONCLUSIONS: The post-biopsy scar can interfere with successful submucosal elevation for endoscopic resection of rectal carcinoids. The number of forcep biopsy should be minimized in the diagnostic colonoscopy when endoscopic resection is planned rectal carcinoids.
Adult ; Aged ; Biopsy ; Carcinoid Tumor/*pathology/surgery ; Cicatrix/pathology ; Colonoscopy ; Female ; Humans ; Intestinal Mucosa/surgery ; Male ; Middle Aged ; Rectal Neoplasms/*pathology/surgery ; Risk Factors