Invited Articles Foreword

Invited Articles

Traditionally, the emotional attachment older adults have to their homes and the economic and health burden caused by residential moves have had a deterrent effect on mobility during old age� in spite of this static general trend, 20% of older europeans change their residential location after the age of 65� Some studies point out that this percentage will increase in the coming decades along wi...

Invited Review Articles

Although many proteases exist in human placenta, their physiological roles are still largely unknown. Our studies showed that these placental proteases metabolize vasoactive and immunomodulating peptides, possibly derived from the fetus, and control the exchange of peptide hormones across the placenta in order to maintain feto-placental homeostasis. We clarified the pregnancy serum oxytocinase ...

Invited Review Articles

Over the last two decades, many attempts have been made to record electroretinograms (ERG) of human macula by several investigators. However, previous ERG responses were not informative enough, because each ERG component could not be evaluated independently. However, we have developed a new system for recording focal macular ERG where we can evaluate all ERG components. This paper reviews what ...

Invited Review Articles

Oculocutaneous albinism (OCA) is a heterogeneous group of autosomal-recessive genetic disorders. The molecular pathogenesis of several types of OCA have been clarified in the ten years since our first report in 1989 on a pathologic mutation of the tyrosinase gene. In this article, a new classification of OCA based on genetic evidence is briefly reviewed, and our study on Japanese patients with ...

Articles in refereed journals / invited contributions to books :