Emi Sato

Pulmonary tuberculosis and serum IgE

Several recent studies indicate that mycobacterium or viral infection may reduce IgE levels or suppress atopy or both. The present study was undertaken to investigate whether Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection and its successful treatment down‐regulate serum total IgE levels, a marker of a Th2 response, due to enhancement of a Th1 response in adult patients with tuberculosis (TB). We prospectively studied the changes in serum total IgE and DTH response to tuberculin, a marker of a Th1 response in 10 healthy controls, 20 patients with pulmonary TB, and 19 asthma patients without TB. Measurement of serum total IgE and tuberculin skin tests were performed before initiation of treatment and after successful completion of 6 months treatment in TB patients, and at the corresponding intervals in controls and asthmatics. The initial serum total IgE concentrations were significantly higher in TB patients than in healthy controls (282 ± 26 U/ml (mean ± s.e.m.) in TB patients versus 126 ± 56 U/ml in controls; P = 0·03). However, serum total IgE concentrations significantly decreased (282 ± 26 U/ml before versus 151 ± 12 U/ml after treatment; P = 0·03) and tuberculin indurations significantly increased (23·6 ± 1·8 mm before versus 29·6 ± 2·1 mm after treatment; P = 0·04) in TB patients. In contrast, initial serum IgE concentrations and tuberculin indurations did not differ significantly from post‐observation data in both healthy controls and asthmatics (P > 0·30). The present study confirmed that immune responses to M. tuberculosis down‐regulate a Th2 immune response, and might contribute to the decreased prevalence of allergic disorders.

Folate Deficiency and Risk of Pneumonia in Older People

gression of dementia. 5 Therefore, the low levels of CSF-A 1–42 in AD are likely to reflect progressive accumulation of A in the brain tissue. 5 Our previous study also demonstrated that CSF-A 1–42 levels in AD patients significantly correlated with cerebral glucose metabolism. 6 These results suggest that the CSF-A 1–42 levels may reflect residual brain function in AD patients. Therefore, our findings suggest that reduction in the serum cholesterol levels by lipid-lowering agents such as statins may lead to an increase in the CSF-A 1–42 levels, which might reflect rescue of brain neurons from A -induced neurotoxicity. Further clinical trials of statins aiming at decreasing the risk of developing AD or delaying the progression of AD need to be conducted in a prospective manner.

Multi-level Simulation Study of Crystal Growth and Defect Formation Processes in SiC

The mechanism of layer growth as well as defect formation in the SiC crystal is fundamentally important to derive its appropriate performance. The purpose of the present study is to investigate competitive adsorption properties of growth species on the various 4H-SiC polytype surfaces. Adsorption structure and binding energy of growth species in the experimentally condition on various SiC surfaces were investigated by density functional theory. For the SiC(000-1) and SiC(0001) surfaces, the adsorption energy by DFT follows the orders C > H > Si > SiC2 > Si2C > C2H2. Furthermore, based on the DFT results, amount of adsorption of each species in the experimental pressure condition were evaluated by grand canonical Monte Carlo method. H and Si are main adsorbed species on SiC(0001) and SiC(000-1) surfaces, respectively. The ratio of amount of adsorption of Si to H was depending on the surface structure that might explain different growth rate of the surfaces.