The structural and functional significance of somatic insertions and deletions in antibody chains is unclear. Here, we demonstrate that a naturally occurring three-amino-acid insertion within the influenza virus-specific human monoclonal antibody 2D1 heavy-chain variable region reconfigures the antibody-combining site and contributes to its high potency against the 1918 and 2009 pandemic H1N1 i...

This study verifies the environmental effects on agraphia in mild cognitive impairment and dementia. We compared elderly Japanese subjects living in Japan and Brazil. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the database of the Prevalence Study 1998 in Tajiri (n=497, Miyagi, Japan) and the Prevalence Study 1997 of elderly Japanese immigrants living in Brazil (n=166, migrated from Japan and living ...

BACKGROUND Complications to femoral artery puncture may result in formation of a pseudoaneurysm (PSA). We investigated whether PSA obliteration may be achieved by compression dressing repair (CDR) and sought to determine the predictors of successful CDR. METHODS Sixty two patients (30 male, mean age 61.0 +/- 12.8) with femoral PSAs due to cardiac catheterization were included in the study. In...

Copper (Cu)-dependent lysyl oxidase (LO) catalyzes crosslinking of collagen and elastin stabilizing the extracellular matrix (ECM). Chronic inhalation of cadmium (Cd), a toxic metal, induces emphysema. To probe mechanisms of Cd injury to the lung, we developed Cd-resistant (CdR) cells from rat fetal lung fibroblasts (RFL6) by chronic exposure to CdCl(2) from 1 to 40 microM and further examined ...

Mining chemical-induced disease relations embedded in the vast biomedical literature could facilitate a wide range of computational biomedical applications, such as pharmacovigilance. The BioCreative V organized a Chemical Disease Relation (CDR) Track regarding chemical-induced disease relation extraction from biomedical literature in 2015. We participated in all subtasks of this challenge. In ...

PURPOSE We conducted the present retrospective study to elucidate regional differences in the quality of secondary screening in the prostate cancer (PCA) screening program by a local municipality in Japan. METHODS Of 115,881 men who attended the PCA screening in 36 municipalities between 2001 and 2011, a total of 6,099 men consulted hospitals for secondary screening. The cancer detection rate...

Recently, we have used synthetic peptides corresponding to the complementarity-determining regions (CDR) of Ig molecules to induce antiidiotypic antisera. Peptide PSH3, representing the third CDR of the IgM rheumatoid factor (RF) Sie heavy (H) chain, induced a private antiidiotype that reacted with only one out of five IgM-RF. Peptide PSL2, corresponding to the second CDR of Sie light (L) chain...

We report a method and preliminary results for merging state mortality data into a hospital Clinical Data Repository (CDR). A broadly inclusive set of potential matches for our CDR patient population was obtained from the state Death Registry at the Virginia Center for Health Statistics (VCHS). For each possible match, a total weighted score was calculated according to the level of agreement be...

The role of the antioxidant defense mechanism in diabetes-induced anomalies was studied in the Cohen diabetes-sensitive (CDs) and -resistant (CDr) rats, a genetic model of nutritionally induced type 2 diabetes mellitus. Embryos, 12.5-day-old, of CDs and CDr rats fed regular diet (RD) or a diabetogenic high-sucrose diet (HSD) were monitored for growth retardation and congenital anomalies. Activi...