961 described in SSc patients with pulmonary fibrosis's or by spontaneous release of interleukin-1 since these alterations may enhance T helper cell function in antibody synthesis. This report emphasizes that antinuclear anti-Scl-70 antibodies may distinguish not only the diffuse cutaneous subset of SSc, but also patients at risk ofdeveloping severe lung disease. REFERENCES 1 Fritzler NJ, Kinse...

Difficulty in the diagnosis of the disease scleroderma may occur at the early stage prior to the development of obvious skin sclerosis. A presumptive diagnosis may be made if Raynaud's phenomenon is accompanied by a positive 'neck test', 'scleroderma' capillary changes in the nailfolds or antinuclear antibodies. Definitive diagnosis may have to be delayed for several years from the onset of Ray...

Scleroderma (SSc) renal crisis has been reported to be associated with anti-RNA polymerase I and III (RNAP I/III) antibodies in Caucasians and the Japanese. However, no report is available for Korean SSc patients. Here, we describe the case of a 65-yr-old female SSc patient who developed renal crisis and whose serum contained anti-RNAP I/III antibodies. She was finally diagnosed as having diffu...

Scleroderma renal crisis (SRC) is an infrequent complication of a rare disease. To date, many aspects of the pathophysiology of SRC are still mysterious. Since SRC biopsies are not frequently encountered in practice, our understanding of the spectrum of histologic changes is derived from a combination of a limited personal experience and data obtained from several relatively small pathologic st...

INTRODUCTION Cutaneous metastasis is an uncommon manifestation of internal malignancy. The rate of cutaneous metastasis in ovarian cancer is 3.5%, andmedian time of survival after appearance of cutaneous metastasis is 4 months. The lesions involved are often described as flesh colored, pink, or violaceous cutaneous or subcutaneous nodules, although reports of non-nodular metastases exist. We re...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate biomechanical properties of skin in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) using the BTC-2000 suction device. METHODS Twenty five patients with limited cutaneous SSc (lcSSc), 20 patients with diffuse disease (dcSSc), and 25 age matched healthy controls were evaluated. Viscoelastic deformation (VED, mm), elastic deformation (ED, mm), ultimate deformation (UD, mm), and pre...

A bifunctional compound 1 was designed and synthesized, in which the donor-π-conjugated-acceptor-cyanoacrylic acid configuration is suited for DSSC, while the tetraoxa-azacrown (donor) part also acts as the recognition unit for e.g. Ca(2+) and the output of DSSC is utilized as signal transduction, demonstrating a new recognition concept using DSSC.

We report the first case of Ru(II) dipyrrinates employed as dyes in dye-sensitized solar cells. These complexes exhibit panchromatic light harvesting that results in significant DSSC current densities, rendering them promising for photovoltaic applications. Adjustment of the lowest excited state energy is required to boost the power conversion efficiency.