Dokkyo University

About: Dokkyo University is a education organization based out in Saitama, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Blood pressure & Cancer. The organization has 3194 authors who have published 4668 publications receiving 112602 citations. The organization is also known as: Dokkyō Daigaku.

The Global Precipitation Measurement Mission

Abstract: Precipitation affects many aspects of our everyday life. It is the primary source of freshwater and has significant socioeconomic impacts resulting from natural hazards such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, and landslides. Fundamentally, precipitation is a critical component of the global water and energy cycle that governs the weather, climate, and ecological systems. Accurate and timely knowledge of when, where, and how much it rains or snows is essential for understanding how the Earth system functions and for improving the prediction of weather, climate, freshwater resources, and natural hazard events. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission is an international satellite mission specifically designed to set a new standard for the measurement of precipitation from space and to provide a new generation of global rainfall and snowfall observations in all parts of the world every 3 h. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency (JAXA) ...

Dentatorubral and pallidoluysian atrophy expansion of an unstable CAG trinucleotide on chromosome 12p.

Abstract: Dentatorubral and pallidoluysian atrophy (DRPLA) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder characterized by combined systemic degeneration of the dentatofugal and pallidofugal pathways. We investigated a candidate gene and found that DRPLA patients had an expanded CAG trinucleotide repeat in a gene on the short arm of chromosome 12. The repeat size varied from 7–23 in normal individuals. In patients one allele was expanded to between 49–75 repeats or occasionally even more. Expansion was usually associated with paternal transmission and only occasionally with maternal transmission. Repeat size showed a close correlation with age of onset of symptoms and disease severity. We conclude that DRPLA is the seventh genetic disorder known to be associated with expansion of an unstable trinucleotide repeat.

A novel clinical entity, IgG4-related disease (IgG4RD): general concept and details

Abstract: IgG4-related disease (IgG4RD) is a novel clinical disease entity characterized by elevated serum IgG4 concentration and tumefaction or tissue infiltration by IgG4-positive plasma cells. IgG4RD may be present in a certain proportion of patients with a wide variety of diseases, including Mikulicz’s disease, autoimmune pancreatitis, hypophysitis, Riedel thyroiditis, interstitial pneumonitis, interstitial nephritis, prostatitis, lymphadenopathy, retroperitoneal fibrosis, inflammatory aortic aneurysm, and inflammatory pseudotumor. Although IgG4RD forms a distinct, clinically independent disease category and is attracting strong attention as a new clinical entity, many questions and problems still remain to be elucidated, including its pathogenesis, the establishment of diagnostic criteria, and the role of IgG4. Here we describe the concept of IgG4RD and up-to-date information on this emerging disease entity.

Reduced expression of Dicer associated with poor prognosis in lung cancer patients.

Abstract: Emerging evidence suggests that microRNA, which are well-conserved, abundant and small regulatory RNA, may be involved in the pathogenesis of human cancers We recently reported that expression of let-7 was frequently reduced in lung cancers, and that reduced let-7 expression was significantly associated with shorter patient survival Two members of the double-stranded RNA-specific endonuclease family, Dicer and Drosha, convert precursor forms of microRNA into their mature forms using a stepwise process In the present study, we examined expression levels of these genes in 67 non-small cell lung cancer cases, and found for the first time that Dicer expression levels were reduced in a fraction of lung cancers with a significant prognostic impact on the survival of surgically treated cases It should be noted that multivariate COX regression analysis showed that the prognostic impact of Dicer (P=0001) appears to be independent of disease stage (P=0001), while logistic regression analysis demonstrated that the higher incidence of reduced Dicer expression in poorly differentiated tumors remained significant even after correction for other parameters (P=002) Given the fundamental and multiple biological roles of Dicer in various cellular processes, our results suggest the involvement of reduced Dicer expression in the development of lung cancers, thus warranting further investigations of the underlying mechanisms, which can be expected to enhance understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of this fatal cancer