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Masanori Hirano

Publications and source records attributed to Masanori Hirano.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Efficacy and safety of Helicobacter pylori eradication therapy with omeprazole, amoxicillin and high- and low-dose clarithromycin in Japanese patients: a randomised, double-blind, multicentre study.

OBJECTIVE: Seven-day administration of omeprazole 40 mg/day + amoxicillin 1500 mg/day + clarithromycin 800 mg/day is currently approved in Japan for the eradication of Helicobacter pylori infection. We investigated the efficacy and safety of an omeprazole-based triple therapy regimen in combination with amoxicillin and low-dose clarithromycin in Japanese patients. METHODS: Patients were randomly assigned to either the low-dose group (omeprazole 40 mg/day + amoxicillin 1500 mg/day + clarithromycin 400 mg/day) or the high-dose group (omeprazole 40 mg/day + amoxicillin 1500 mg/day + clarithromycin 800 mg/day). A total of 288 patients were allocated to the low-dose (143) and high-dose (145) groups and were treated twice daily for 1 week. RESULTS: For the full-analysis set, H. pylori eradication rates were 81.1% (116/143 patients, 90% confidence interval [CI] 74.9, 86.3) in the low-dose group and 80.0% (116/145 patients, 90% CI 73.7, 85.3) in the high-dose group. Per-protocol eradication rates were 81.7% (103/126 patients, 90% CI 75.1, 87.2) and 84.1% (90/107 patients, 90% CI 77.1, 89.6), respectively. When patients with non-susceptibility to clarithromycin were excluded, eradication rates were >80% for both gastric and duodenal ulcers in the two groups. The results suggested that eradication rates were affected more by susceptibility to clarithromycin than to amoxicillin. Both regimens were well tolerated. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that an omeprazole-based triple-therapy regimen with clarithromycin 400 mg/day was as effective as that with clarithromycin 800 mg/day for H. pylori eradication.

Adult↗
PubMed2006

Effect of niobium on the structure and photoactivity of anatase (TiO2) nanoparticles.

Anatase-type TiO2 nanoparticles doped with 0-30 mol% niobium were directly formed from precursor solutions of TiOSO4 and NbCl5 under mild hydrothermal conditions at 120-180 degrees C for 5 h using the hydrolysis of urea. When the niobium content increased from 0 to 30 mol%, the crystallite size of anatase increased from 8.5 to 19 nm. The band gap of anatase was slightly decreased by making solid solutions with niobium. Their photocatalytic activity and adsorptivity were evaluated separately by the measurement of the concentration of methylene blue (MB) remained in the solution after maintained in the dark or under UV-light irradiation. To form anatase-type solid solutions by doping 5-15 mol% niobium into TiO2 was effective for improvement of the photoactivity of TiO2. The photocatalytic activity (the photooxidation rate) and the adsorption amount of MB for the sample containing 15 mol% niobium became more than approximately nine times and six times as much as those of the hydrothermal anatase-type pure TiO2, respectively.

Light↗
PubMed2004

Genomic organization of the mouse Msh4 gene producing bicistronic, chimeric and antisense mRNA.

By degenerate PCR and screening of mouse testis cDNA library, we have identified seven cDNAs from the meiotic recombination gene Msh4. Variant alpha and probably beta are likely involved in meiotic DNA recombination. Other variants have distinctive structures; variant epsilon, theta; and iota form a bicistronic operon, while variant delta contains antisense RNA for the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) chaperon Hspa5 gene and small open reading frame (ORF) identical to epsilon ORF2. Analysis of the exon-intron structures revealed unusual genomic organizations: the first three exons of delta and the first exon of epsilon are respectively mapped to the Hspa5 locus on chromosome 2 and the Pcbp3 locus on chromosome 10; the remaining exons of both variants are mapped to the Msh4 locus on chromosome 3. The first exon of variant beta is located on chromosome 16, while the others are located on chromosome 3. Synthesis of these mRNAs is assumed to require interchromosomal trans-splicing alone (beta and epsilon) or in combination with converse-splicing (delta). Most Msh4 variant mRNAs are mainly expressed in testis, but a small amount of each variant except for epsilon is also expressed in brain, heart, thymus, ovary and embryonic head. Enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) fusion experiments showed that all the ORFs are translated, and most of those proteins are localized to a particular subcellular compartment. It also appeared that expression of variant delta induces cell death. This study suggests that the dynamic interchromosomal (intergenic) trans-splicing generates functional diversity of the mouse Msh4 gene.

Alternative Splicing↗
PubMed2004

RACE using only a gene-specific primer: application of a template-switching model.

This article describes a simple method for accurate rapid amplification of complementary deoxyribonucleic acid (cDNA) ends (RACE), the distinctive feature being that only a gene-specific primer is used, without an anchor or adapter primer. Under these conditions, Thermus aquaticus (Taq) polymerase synthesizes cDNA ends exactly, so that amplified products obtain a characteristic structure: a terminal inverted repeat composed of a gene-specific primer and occasionally several nucleotides from its 3' flanking sequence. These structures suggest a hypothetical mechanism of cDNA end synthesis in which Taq DNA polymerase synthesizes a sequence complementary to the gene-specific primer at the 3' end of the daughter strand by switching the template to the 5' terminal region through circularization of the DNA. As a result, the targeted cDNA will be efficiently amplified with only a single gene-specific primer. This technique, which provides highly specific amplification of the 5' and 3' ends of a cDNA, is especially useful for isolation of cDNA when the corresponding messenger ribonucleic acid is scarce.

Animals↗