Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to K Umetsu.
An infant fatality following accidental ingestion of ajmaline is described. Ajmaline was determined by thin-layer chromatography and infrared spectrophotometry, and quantitated by high performance liquid chromatography. The ajmaline concentration in blood was 5.5 micrograms/mL. The toxicological data relevant to the interpretation of case findings are presented.
Human serum orosomucoid (ORM) exhibits a high variability. Several alleles including a duplicated ORM1 gene (ORM1*2.1) have been identified at two functional ORM loci, ORM1 and ORM2. In this study a modified isoelectric focusing, in which glycerin was omitted from gels, was used to differentiate a new variant ORM1 5 from ORM2 3. The ORM1 5 band was always observed together with the ORM1 2 band. The simultaneous expression could be explained in terms of an additional duplicated ORM1 locus haplotype, ORM1*5.2, whose average frequency was .016 in two Japanese populations. The ORM2*6 found at a polymorphic frequency (.023) was demonstrated to be in association with ORM1*2, indicating the close proximity between ORM1 and ORM2 loci.
A 37-year-old woman died after 18 days from her starting to take sulindac for low back pain. Based on her clinical course and the autopsy findings, the cause of her death was Lyell syndrome (toxic epidermal necrolysis) induced by sulindac. This case is described together with the legal aspects of medical malpractice to which it gave rise.
It has been demonstrated that the genetic polymorphism of human serum orosomucoid (ORM) is controlled by polymorphic ORM1 and monomorphic ORM2 loci. In this study a Japanese family was encountered in which several members had puzzling electrophoretic patterns consisting of four bands. The ORM patterns were due to the products of a duplicated ORM1 locus haplotype (ORM1 2.1) or the products of new variant alleles at the ORM2 locus. The ORM1 2.1 haplotype is very common in the Japanese population, occurring at an allele frequency of 0.16. The increased occurrence of ORM12-1 and the heterogeneity in band intensity among ORM12-1 phenotypes could be explained in terms of a duplicated gene ORM1 2.1. The ORM2 locus proved to be polymorphic, with six alleles in the Japanese population.
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We examined the lymphocyte mitogenicity of a novel beta-D-galactoside-specific lectin from the beetle Allomyrina dichotoma, named allo A. Allo A was mitogenic to spleen cells of various strains of mice and rats and to human peripheral blood lymphocytes. When the selectivity of mitogenicity to T or B lymphocytes was examined with mouse spleen cells, allo A was selectively mitogenic to T-enriched spleen cells, which indicates that allo A is a T cell mitogen. Thymocytes from non-treated mice hardly responded to allo A, while those from cortisone-treated mice did to a great extent, indicating that allo A is mitogenic to mature thymocytes. The lymphocyte activation with allo A was inhibited by lactose, but not by melibiose, N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, or methyl-alpha-D-mannoside, which suggests that cell surface molecules containing beta-D-galactosyl residues are of importance in the structure of allo A receptors on the cell surface.
This study is based on an examination of lung tissue from 11 cases of traumatic immediate death with fracture. According to our investigation, pulmonary bone marrow embolic phenomena, such as megakaryocytes associated with fat globules in pulmonary arterioles and a megakaryocyte embolism in a pulmonary capillary, develop in most traumatic immediate death cases with fracture. From the results, we suggest that these pulmonary bone marrow embolic phenomena can be certain evidence of antemortem violence in traumatic immediate death cases.
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Allo A lectin from the beetle, which is beta-D-galactose specific, reacts to haptoglobin but not to hemoglobin. The use of allo A-Sepharose for typing haptoglobin in bloodstains helped eliminate hemoglobin from the bloodstain extract and presented highly resolved haptoglobin patterns by disc gel electrophoresis. This method is simple and rapid for typing haptoglobin in bloodstains and can be easily used in forensic science laboratories.
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Experiments were carried out on 30 dogs to investigate the course of respiration during obstructive asphyxia. They were asphyxiated by occlusion of the exposed trachea. Intrathoracic pressure, blood pressure in the femoral artery, electrocardiogram and electroencephalogram readings were registered. In most cases, the respiration course during the dyspnea stage by occlusion of the trachea generally had an inspiratory character. In a few animals, when the trachea was occluded in the expiratory phase, there were a few positive expiratory respirations with moderate inspiratory movement and thereafter the respirations were inspiratory during the dyspnea stage. The terminal respirations, which occurred 1-2 min before the circulatory breakdown, were generally inspiratory, but in a few dogs they were expiratory.
Desialyzed plasma specimens were phenotyped for alpha 2HS-glycoprotein (AHS) using polyacrylamide isoelectric focusing (IEF) in the range pH 5-6 in 2.5 M urea, followed by immunoblotting. The technique used in this study is easy to perform and can differentiate the gene products of all the currently known variants of alpha 2HS-glycoprotein except for AHS 4.
Orosomucoid (ORM) phenotyping was performed by isoelectric focusing and immunoprinting. The band patterns of desialyzed ORM indicated that the ORM system is controlled by two structural loci ORM1 and ORM2. In a total of 253 samples from two Caucasoid populations, five phenotypes determined by three polymorphic alleles, ORM1*1, ORM1*2, and ORM1*3 were identified. The ORM1*3 was characteristic of the Caucasoids. The ORM2 locus was monomorphic.
Allomyrina dichotoma lectin (allo A) with a specificity to beta-D-galactose was used to fractionate human alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) by affinity electrophoresis. AFP from cord sera and serum of a patient with fulminant hepatitis showed single bands with a high affinity for allo A. Some patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and patients with gastric cancer and yolk sac tumor had two additional AFP bands, one weakly reactive and the other nonreactive with allo A. Patterns of AFP bands obtained with Ricinus communis agglutinin-I (RCA-I) and erythroagglutinating phytohemagglutinin from Phaseolus vulgaris were entirely different from those obtained with allo A. Of the two common bands reactive with RCA-I, the weakly reactive one was relatively intense in some malignant patients and the strongly reactive one was detected in patients with extrahepatic tumors. Thus, affinity electrophoresis with those lectins provides a potentially useful adjunct for the discrimination between benign and malignant conditions with increased serum levels of AFP.
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Under certain circumstances, even a good swimmer may drown during swimming exercise. Two cases of drowning, a survivor and a dead, during swimming exercise in swimming-pool are described. These cases and experimental researches with dogs indicate that the initial aspiration of water may cause extremely low heart rate and low blood pressure by reflex vagal inhibition, which deprive a good swimmer of his consciousness and make him drown.
The genetic types of orosomucoid (ORM) were analyzed by isoelectric focusing (IEF) on polyacrylamide gels and subsequent print lectinofixation with a lectin from the beetle, allo A. In this paper, the newly devised print lectinofixation for ORM typing is described. This technique is faster, easier to perform, and has been found to be a useful tool in population genetics and forensic medicine. The results of typing for two alleles, ORM 1 and ORM 2 are described for a population of Northern Japan (n = 500).