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Biomedical subjects

Noboru Takekoshi

Publications and source records attributed to Noboru Takekoshi.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

[Acute heart failure].

Acute heart failure is a life-threatening medical emergency and appropriate management can reduce the morbidity and mortality of heart failure. Despite advances in treatments, the number of deaths has increased steadily. Therefore, the guideline was assigned to convey to the physicians the virtue of medical management with recent trends in pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments. Japanese new guidelines for the management of acute heart failure have been published from the Japanese Circulation Society in October, 2000, which was partially based on ACC/AHA guideline in 1995 but prepared under consideration of medical benefits system and health care system in Japan. We expect that the guideline would be revised to make it more useful with continual advances in the management strategies in the future.

Acute Disease↗

Myocardial distribution of (18)F-FDG and (99m)Tc-sestamibi on dual-isotope simultaneous acquisition SPET compared with PET.

A dual-isotope simultaneous acquisition (DISA) single-photon emission tomography (SPET) protocol with fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)F-FDG) and a technetium-99m labelled flow tracer is attractive because it permits assessment of both myocardial glucose utilisation and flow within a single study. Differences in physical and physiological characteristics between (18)F-FDG and the (99m)Tc-labelled flow tracer, however, may cause differences in myocardial activity distribution between the agents. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between the myocardial distribution of (18)F-FDG and a (99m)Tc-labelled flow tracer on DISA SPET in comparison with nitrogen-13 ammonia/(18)F-FDG positron emission tomography (PET). Nine normal volunteers without cardiac disease and ten patients with known coronary artery disease (CAD) underwent (13)N-ammonia/(18)F-FDG PET and (99m)Tc-sestamibi/(18)F-FDG DISA SPET. Using a semiquantitative polar map approach, the left ventricular myocardium was divided into nine segments, and relative regional activity was calculated for each segment. A segment was considered to have concordant uptake between (18)F-FDG and flow tracer if the difference in measured regional activity between the tracers was < or =10% of peak activity, and the percentage of concordant segments was calculated for each subject. There was a good overall concordance of myocardial activity between the agents on DISA SPET (84.0%+/-14.8%) in normals, which was comparable to that seen on PET (86.4%+/-14.5%, NS vs DISA SPET). However, the myocardial activity distributions of (18)F-FDG and flow tracer were not identical in that reduced flow tracer activity was seen in the basal segments on DISA SPET in both normals and CAD patients. It is concluded that there is good overall concordance of activity between (18)F-FDG and flow tracer in normal myocardium on DISA SPET, which is comparable to that on PET, supporting the use of combined (99m)Tc-flow tracer/(18)F-FDG imaging for the detection of viable myocardium. However, there is a difference in the myocardial activity distribution between the agents in both normals and CAD patients, the difference being particularly evident in the basal segments. Therefore, careful image interpretation that takes into consideration the different normal activity distribution between the tracers and/or a tracer-specific normal database is necessary for comparison with patient studies.

Adult↗

Coronary disease morphology and distribution determined by quantitative angiography and intravascular ultrasound--re-evaluation in a cooperative multicenter intravascular ultrasound study (COMIUS).

Although previous studies have demonstrated that even quantitative coronary angiography (QCA) can not provide accurate disease morphology, there has not been a systematic comparison of disease morphology determined by QCA and intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), particularly in Japanese patients. Therefore, the present study prospectively examined patients in a multicenter cooperative study. A total of 491 coronary sites from 562 patients (446 men, 116 women; mean age, 64+/-11 years) who underwent coronary interventions were enrolled. The target lesions (>50% diameter stenosis) were evaluated pre-operatively by both QCA and IVUS operating at 30-40 MHz and the percent area stenosis, eccentricity index (EI) and lesion length were determined. The minimal (min) and maximal (max) distances from the center of the stenotic lesion to the outline of the vessel wall were measured, and the EI was calculated by the formula: [(max - min)/max]. By QCA, lesion length was determined by measuring the distance between the proximal and distal shoulders of the lesion. When the lesions were observed by IVUS with a motorized pull-back system, the length was calculated by multiplying the time for observation of the disease and 0.5 or 1 mm/s. Although the severity of the stenosis determined by QCA (86+/-10%, mean +/- SD) did not differ from that by IVUS (83+/-13%), there was no correlation between them (r=0.32, y=0.25x+65) and the correlation did not improve when lesions with remodeling, enlargement (n=176) or shrinkage (n=79) were omitted from the calculation. The EIs by QCA and IVUS were 0.51+/-0.26 and 0.52+/-0.22, respectively (NS), and there was no correlation between them (r=0.30, y=0.36x+33). However, when the lesions with remodeling were excluded, the correlation greatly improved (r=0.80, y=0.84x+10.6, p<0.05). Lesion length determined by QCA (12.4+/-6.1 mm) was significantly shorter than that by IVUS (16.3+/-8.9 mm, p<0.01). These results demonstrate that coronary angiography significantly misinterprets disease morphology in terms of severity, eccentricity and length, in part because of vessel remodeling that can be accurately determined only by IVUS.

Aged↗

Cholesterol absorption inhibitors in development as potential therapeutics.

Drugs that lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol through their actions in the gastrointestinal tract have been used for > 30 years. Bile acid sequestrants have very excellent safety profiles but their poor tolerability means they have limited clinical use. Recently developed new compounds are better tolerated in clinical trials and show greater benefit in reducing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level, as compared to "older" sequestrants. Cholesterol absorption inhibitors and bile acid transporter inhibitors have recently been reported to show clinical efficacy and safety as novel gut-acting drugs for lowering cholesterol. Further advances in our understanding of the cholesterol absorption mechanism will provide novel therapeutic targets, such as the ATP-binding cassette transporter. This approach in the treatment of lowering cholesterol appears to play a more significant role in the clinical field of atherosclerotic vascular disease.

Animals↗