An epidemiolgical survey as well as a case study on the skin hazards due to dithiocarbamate fungicides, such as Maneb and Manzeb (Mancozeb), were carried out. The results were summarized as follows;
1. From the epidemiological survey, the incidence rate of skin lesions due to the dithiocarbamates in three areas were 42.4%(39/92), 43.3%(113/261) and 27.6%(42/151), respectively.
2. The skin lesions appeared generally in face, hands and nape of neck and collar areas and also in covered areas of the body such as breast, back and so forth.
3. By patch testing with a dithiocarbamate “Maneb” the positive reactions in 40 cases tested were observed in 18%, 23% and 15% of the subject with 0.1%, 0.05% and 0.025% preparations, respectively.
The results suggested that allergic type of contact dermatitis is involved in the skin hazard due to the dithiocarbamate fungicides.

In the farm household of “vegetable planting by plastic green house”, “mandarin orange”, “rush (igusa)”, “dairy-farming” and “silk worm”, measurement of energy expenditure in agricultural work and analysis of daily working hours were conducted at the busy season of each crops. The results are as follows:
The energy consumption per day are estimated respectively to be 3300 Cal for male and 2900 Cal for female in the household of the “plastic green house”; 3500 and 2500 Cal in the “mandarin orange”, 3800 and 3600 Cal in the “rush”, 3300 and 2700 Cal in the “dairy-farming”, 3400 and 2700 Cal in the “silk worm”.
The agricultural machines and tools are mainly operated by male and so attached muscular works not yet machanized are carried by female. And management of animals or crops specially required prudent care have a tendency to be also carried by female. Then the average relative metabolic rate (RMR) a working day is relatively higher in female than male, except “mandarin orange”.
In the “rush harvesting” and “dairy-farming”, having the most development of the agricultural mechanization it seems obviousely to be rising the labor efficiency, but because of expansion of management scale and decreasing number of employee the reduction of work load for a worker is not necessory obvious.

Mass health survey was conducted to discuss the relationship between obesity and some factors of agricultural managements and living and working conditions among 349 pairs of housewives and their husbands selected from the rural communities in Kumamoto prefecture.
The prevalence rates of obesity (20% over of the Minowa's standard weights) were 13.1% for housewives of farmers, 13.7% for their husbands and 15.6 % for housewives of non-farmers, 9.2% for their husbands. The significant correlationship was found in the degree of obesity by Minowa's standard between housewives and their husbands (r= 0.1566, P<0.05).
Being compared the prevalence of obesity according with the kinds of each household's producting crops, peoples of the household of “shiitake: cortinellus shiitake”, “vegetables by plastic greenhouse”, “tabacco” and “animal husbandary ” were more likely to be obese and, inversely, those of “barley”, “vegetables in upland” and “sericulture” were less, than those of “rice”, “mandarin orange” and “forestry”. In the household of “vegetables by plastic greenhouse”, “rice”, “barley”, “mandarin orange” and “vegetables in upland” husbands were more obese than housewives and, inversely, in the household of “shiitake” and “forestry” housewives were more obese than husbands.
Peoples of fishing households were less likely to be obese than those of the farm households and/or other profession. Among the households of non-farmers it was noteworthy that higher prevalence rates of obesity were found in housewives than husbands, being inverse finding in the farmers case.
The results suggested that the agricultural management and it's labor conditions, as well as the level of agricultural economics, might strongly affect the occurrence of obesity in the Japanese rural community.

In order to study whether there is any relation between the cause of anemia in rural women and environmental factor from the epidemiological standpoint, we have followed up the seasonal change of the blood properties (GB, Hb, Ht, R, Serum iron) of 3 groups of women in different working and living circumstances.
The results revealed a remarkable tendency to increase the values of the blood properties excluding serum iron in winter and to decrease in summer. The degree of seasonal change was found to be greater in rural women than that in factory workers. And among the factory workers, the married had more change than the unmarried, the rural residents than the urban. And among the rural women, only the establishmental gardeners who were especially busy in winter showed a tendency to decrease the values of the blood properties in winter.
From these data, we can see that the seasonal change of the burden of agricultural work and the change of dietary life actually have direct influence on the change of the blood properties.

Nowadays the agricultural production system in the farm area has remarkably been changed and this has influenced the farmers in many aspects of life.
We tried by epidemiologic cross-sectional survey to ascertain the health level of 6, 597 farmers, who are self-supporting and middle class in the sixty-seven different districts of Kumamoto Prefecture. It is noticeable that judging from the difference of districts, the health level of the farmers who have a big gricultural production is low, and judging from the difference of the class, that of the farmers who have other jobs besides agriculture is low, too In general, the health level of males is relatively higher than that of females, but the health level of males is higher than that of females, depending on the class difference.
Generally speaking, we noticed that the health level of female is very low, and at the same time the variation of the health level of females is more remarkable than that of males, depending on the quality of the district in which they live.
These resutls of these investigations should be utilized as the basic materials source for a prospective survey of changing farm village from now.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a major extraintestinal manifestation in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), regarded as an independent risk factor for VTE according to reports from Western countries. However, the incidence and risk factors of VTE in Asian IBD patients are not fully understood. We aimed to reveal the incidence and risk factors of VTE in Japanese IBD inpatients. METHODS: The incidence of VTE in inpatients with IBD (n=340), gastrointestinal cancers (n=557), and other gastrointestinal diseases (n=569) treated at our hospital from 2009 to 2013 was retrospectively investigated. The characteristics and laboratory data of IBD inpatients with and without VTE were compared in univariate and multivariate analyses. Clinical courses of VTE in IBD were surveyed. RESULTS: VTE was detected in 7.1% of IBD inpatients, significantly higher than in gastrointestinal cancer inpatients (2.5%) and inpatients with other gastrointestinal diseases (0.88%). The incidence of VTE in ulcerative colitis (UC) patients (16.7%) was much higher than that in those with Crohn's disease (3.6%). In the univariate analysis, the risk factors were an older age, central venous catheter, prednisolone, surgery, low serum albumin, high serum C-reactive protein and D-dimer. According to a multivariate analysis, >50 years of age and surgery were the only risk factors. The in-hospital mortality rate of IBD inpatients with VTE was 4.2%. CONCLUSIONS: The incidence of VTE with IBD, especially UC, was found to be high compared with other digestive disease, which was almost equivalent to that of Western countries. The efficacy of prophylaxis needs to be investigated in Asian IBD patients.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group* ; C-Reactive Protein ; Central Venous Catheters ; Cohort Studies* ; Colitis, Ulcerative ; Crohn Disease ; Gastrointestinal Diseases ; Gastrointestinal Neoplasms ; Hospital Mortality ; Humans ; Incidence* ; Inflammatory Bowel Diseases* ; Inpatients* ; Multivariate Analysis ; Prednisolone ; Retrospective Studies* ; Risk Factors* ; Serum Albumin ; Venous Thromboembolism*