Biomedical subjects

Yoko Konagaya

Publications and source records attributed to Yoko Konagaya.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2007

[Development of the Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS) in Japanese].

In recent years, population of elder people has increased in Japan, following augmentation of the number of people with dementia in Japan. Then it is important to detect cognitive impairment in early stage for adequate treatment, care and prevention. We studied 135 subjects, 49 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 86 healthy controls using Telephone Interview for Cognitive Status (TICS), and developing Japanese version of the TICS (TICS-J). The sensitivity and the specificity of the TICS-J to differentiate AD patients from healthy controls was 98.0% and 90.7%, respectively. Pearson's correlation coefficiency between the TICS-J and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) was 0.858 (p < 0.001). On the receiver operating curves, the area under the curve for the TICS-J was 98.7% (95% CI: 97.5%-100%). These results indicate that TICS-J is sensitive and specific instrument for differentiating AD patients from healthy controls.

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PubMed2003

A clinical and pathological study of a Japanese case of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Parkinsonism-Dementia Complex with family history.

This report concerns a Japanese family with neuropathological findings consistent with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/parkinsonism-dementia complex (ALS/PDC) in the Island of Guam. The proband was a 68-year-old woman with an 8-year history of parkinsonism which was followed by psychiatric symptoms and neurogenic amyotrophy 5 years after the onset. She had a family history of parkinsonism associated with dementia in all of her three siblings. They grew up in the Hobara village, a focus of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the Kii Peninsula of Japan in their childhood. Their parents were not consanguineous nor natives of the Kii Peninsula. The brain weight was 1040 g and there were mild frontal lobe atrophy, moderate atrophy of pes hippocampi, decoloration of the substantia nigra and locus coeruleus, and atrophy of the anterior root of the spinal cord. The microscopic examinations revealed degeneration of CA1 portion of the hippocampus to the parahippocampus gyrus, substantia nigra, locus coeruleus and spinal anterior horn with Bunina bodies. The spinal pyramidal tracts also mildly degenerated. Neurofibrillary tangles (NFT) were observed in the cerebral cortex, especially in the cortices from hippocampus to lateral occipitotemporal gyri, basal nucleus of Mynert, basal ganglia, thalamus, substantia nigra and widespread regions of the central nervous system through the brainstem to spinal cord including the nucleus of Onufrowitcz. In spite of a small amount of the senile plaques in the cerebral cortex and Lewy bodies in the substantia nigra and locus coeruleus, abundant NFT were distributed mainly in the third layer of the cerebral cortex, which is the characteristic feature of ALS/PDC. Thus, this was likely to be an ALS/PDC case outside the Guam Island. A tau mutation was not found on DNA analysis.

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PubMed2002

Progressive cerebral atrophy in multiple system atrophy.

Nine patients with multiple system atrophy (MSA) were studied based on MRI findings of cerebral hemispheric involvement. The age at onset was 56.4+/-8.6 (mean+/-S.D.) years, duration of illness at the first MRI study 2.1+/-1.1 years, duration of illness at the last study 9.7+/-2.6 years, and the follow-up duration 7.6+/-2.3 years. Controls were 85 neurologically intact persons (60.2+/-11.1 years age). In the MRI study, measurements of the ratio of each area to the intracranial area were performed for the cerebral hemisphere, frontal, temporal and parietal-occipital lobes. A significant progression of atrophy to under the normal limit was observed in the cerebrum, frontal and temporal lobes. Besides the typical pathological lesions in MSA, five autopsied patients revealed frontal lobe atrophy with mild gliosis, mild demyelination and glial cytoplasmic inclusions (GCIs). One of these patients showed remarkable frontal lobe atrophy with degenerative changes in the cerebral cortex. We observed the involvement of the cerebral hemisphere, especially the frontal lobe.

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PubMed2002

[Quantitative MRI study of progressive cerebral atrophy in multiple system atrophy].

We investigated cerebral atrophy in multiple system atrophy (MSA) by quantitative analysis of MRI. The subjects were 28 patients with MSA (14 striato-nigral degeneration; SND, 14 olivo-ponto-cerebellar atrophy; OPCA. 106 MRI examinations were performed totally) and 85 normal persons for control. The ratios of the ventral pons to the infratentorial space in the sagittal section, the putamen, cerebrum, frontal lobe and parietal & occipital lobes to the intracranial space in the horizontal section, and the temporal lobe to the intracranial space in the coronal section were measured. In the early stage of the disease, OPCA showed significant atrophy of the ventral pons compared with SND, and conversely, SND demonstrated significantly smaller putamen than that in OPCA. According to the progression of the disease, the atrophy of these neural tissues progressed, which resulted in no significant differences between SND and OPCA. The cerebral atrophy was observed in 17 MSA patients. The atrophy of the frontal lobe was much frequent and prominent to that in the temporal lobe and parietal & occipital lobes. SND showed higher incidence of the cerebral atrophy than OPCA in the early stage of the disease. In long period follow-up cases, one case showed cerebral atrophy in earlier stage, and another case in late stage. We indicated the involvement of the cerebral hemispheres in MSA, especially the frontal lobe.

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