Epidemiological studies have indicated a possible association between extremely low-frequency magnetic field (ELF-MF) exposure and the risk of nervous system diseases. However, laboratory studies have not provided consistent results for clarifying this association, despite many years of studies. In this study, we have systematically investigated the effects of 50 Hz MF exposure on DNA damage an...

Materials and methods This was a 3-month, randomized, double-blind, parallelgroup, multicenter study with a 2-3-week open-label, run-in period of mometasone furoate (MF) 400 μg twice-daily (BID). Subjects (≥12 years) were randomized to MF/F (200/10 μg or 400/10 μg BID) or MF (400 μg BID). The primary endpoint was the area under the curve (AUC) of the change in serial FEV1 (0-12 hours) for MF/F ...

Lymphatic filariasis is a major tropical disease caused by the parasite Brugia malayi. Microfilariae (Mf) circulate in the peripheral blood for 2-3 hours in synchronisation with maximal feeding of the mosquito vector. When absent from the peripheral blood, Mf sequester in the capillaries of the lungs. Mf are therefore in close contact with vascular endothelial cells (EC) and may induce EC immun...

BACKGROUND There is a need for consensus concerning reference methods to be used for calibration of commercial free-thyroxine (FT(4)) assays. METHODS Three different potential reference techniques were investigated for adsorption of T(4) to membrane materials, including any in vitro solid surfaces to which T(4) might adsorb, and for efficient separation of the T(4)-binding proteins from the f...

A significant proportion of patients treated for acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) suffer from worsening renal function, which is often associated with medical therapy resistance and poor outcome. In this setting, haemofiltration has been used for more than 30 years, despite inconclusive evidence for its advantages. In the last decade, a major technological advances have made available a...

Digital image processing (DIP) of bacterial smears is a new method of analysing the composition of the gut microbial flora. This method provides the opportunity to compare and evaluate differences in the complex highly concentrated anaerobic fraction of gut microbial flora, based on micromorphological differences. There is ample evidence that this fraction can be characterized as related or unr...

Infection of cynomolgus monkeys with microfilariae (Mf) of Onchocerca lienalis was studied as a model for human ocular onchocerciasis. Normal monkeys and immunized monkeys were given intracorneal/subconjunctival, intracameral, or intravitreal injections of Mf or bovine serum albumin (control). Selected animals were given diethylcarbamazine citrate (DEC) orally (15 mg/kg) daily after the ocular ...

BACKGROUND Among the various types of folliculitis, differentiation of Malassezia folliculitis (MF) from other forms of folliculitis is important because it is usually treated with antifungal agents. OBJECTIVE We attempted to find a method to enhance the detection rate of MF, and examined the differences in the clinical manifestation between MF and non-MF (NMF). METHODS We performed a retro...

Low-rank matrix factorization (MF) is an important technique in data science. The key idea of MF is that there exists latent structures in the data, by uncovering which we could obtain a compressed representation of the data. By factorizing an original matrix to low-rank matrices, MF provides a unified method for dimension reduction, clustering, and matrix completion. In this article we review ...

Fluid overload (FO) is a common complication for pediatric patients in the intensive care unit. When conventional therapy fails, hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis is classically used for fluid removal. Unfortunately, these therapies are often associated with cardiovascular or respiratory instability. Ultrafiltration, using devices such as the Aquadex™ system (Baxter Healthcare, Deerfield, IL,...