BACKGROUND Rectal washout can prevent local recurrence after anterior resection of rectal cancer. Few studies have focused particularly on the association between irrigation fluids volume or agents and the risk of local recurrence after anterior resection of rectal cancer. OBJECTIVE To estimate the association between irrigation fluids types, volumes of rectal washout and risk of local recurr...

UNLABELLED Accelerated cardiac washout of (123)I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG), which is clinically used as an index of cardiac neuropathy in diabetes, is ascribed to decreased norepinephrine reuptake into synaptic vesicles. However, accelerated washout frequently contrasts with preserved early tracer uptake, whose significance remains undetermined. The aim of this study was to investigate in ...

PURPOSE We conducted a comparative study to optimize the scanning and inhalation protocols for xenon CT cerebral blood flow (CBF) examination (Xe CT), with the aim of improving the practical performance of Xe CT as a routine clinical examination. MATERIALS AND METHODS Four different inhalation protocols, including 3-min, 6-min, and 8-min wash-in protocols, and a 3-min wash-in/5-min washout pr...

UNLABELLED In vitro studies have demonstrated that (99m)Tc-methoxyisobutylisonitrile ((99m)Tc-MIBI) is a transport substrate of multidrug resistance (MDR)-related proteins. The aim of this clinical study was to evaluate whether (99m)Tc-MIBI scintigraphy was a functional imaging tool for in vivo detection of multidrug resistance-associated protein (MRP) expression in osteosarcoma and to investig...

UNLABELLED This study evaluated the role of (99m)Tc-sestamibi washout in the prediction of pathologic tumor response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in 30 patients with locally advanced breast cancer. METHODS Two (99m)Tc-sestamibi studies were performed before and after chemotherapy for each patient. Early (10 min) and delayed (240 min) planar breast views were acquired after a 740-MBq (99m)Tc-se...

Bacterial leaching represents an unusual problem in biochemical engineering, because the substrate for bacterial growth is not supplied directly, but is a product of another reaction, the leaching of mineral particles. In addition, leaching is a heterogeneous reaction dependent on the particle-size distribution in the feed and on the kinetics of particle shrinkage. In this study, these effects ...

UNLABELLED Left ventricular (LV) systolic function in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is usually normal. Late in the disease, however, LV systolic dysfunction and dilatation are recognized. Although abnormalities in cardiac sympathetic nerve activity in patients with HCM have been demonstrated using (123)I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) myocardial scintigraphy, the changes of cardiac sympathe...

BACKGROUND Chemotherapy with anthracyclines and trastuzumab can cause cardiotoxicity. Alteration of cardiac adrenergic function assessed by metaiodobenzylguanidine labeled with iodine-123 (123I-mIBG) seems to precede the drop in left ventricular ejection fraction. OBJECTIVE To evaluate and to compare the presence of cardiovascular abnormalities among patients with breast cancer undergoing che...

Carnosine (beta-alanyl-L-histidine) is present in high concentrations in human skeletal muscles. The oral ingestion of beta-alanine, the rate-limiting precursor in carnosine synthesis, has been shown to elevate the muscle carnosine content both in trained and untrained humans. Little human data exist about the dynamics of the muscle carnosine content, its metabolic regulation, and its dependenc...