Oita University

About: Oita University is a education organization based out in Ōita, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Helicobacter pylori & Cancer. The organization has 4566 authors who have published 8666 publications receiving 142963 citations. The organization is also known as: Ōita daigaku.

A fatal case of hydrogen sulfide poisoning in a geothermal power plant

Abstract: An adult man entered an oil separator room to remove waste oil from a vacuum pump in a geothermal power plant. He suddenly collapsed and died soon after. Since hydrogen sulfide gas was detected in the atmosphere at the scene of the accident, poisoning by this gas was suspected and toxicological analysis of sulfide and thiosulfate in blood, brain, lung, femoral muscle was made using the extractive alkylation technique combined with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The concentrations of sulfide in these tissues were similar to those previously reported for fatal cases of hydrogen sulfide gas. The concentration of thiosulfate in the blood was at least 48 times higher than the level in control samples. Based on these results, the cause of death was attributed to hydrogen sulfide gas poisoning.

Annual parallax determination toward a new x-ray-emitting class 0 candidate with the water maser in the ngc 2264 star-forming region

Abstract: In our multi-epoch observation of the star-forming region NGC 2264 with the VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry, we detected two water maser features. We have measured the annual parallax of the maser sources for the first time in NGC 2264 and derived 1.356 ± 0.098 mas, corresponding to the distance of pc, which is consistent with its previously reported photometric observations. One of the maser features is located near a dust continuum core, CMM4S, positionally corresponding to the X-ray source FMS2-1269 listed in Flaccomio et al. Re-analyzing Chandra X-ray data, we found that FMS2-1269 is still surrounded by a dense envelope of a H2 column density, 5.4 × 1023 cm–2. We suggest that the maser detected near the CMM4S core is most likely associated with the X-ray-emitting Class 0 candidate FMS2-1269. The other maser feature is found to emerge from a high-velocity outflow of 150 km s–1 and is associated with the 3.6 cm radio continuum source NGC 2264 VLA 3 located close to IRS1.

HE4 Expression Can Be Associated with Lymph Node Metastases and Disease-free Survival in Breast Cancer

Abstract: Background: This study investigated the potential of HE4 to predict disease-free survival for patients with breast cancer. Patients and Methods: One hundred and twenty-nine patients with breast cancer underwent surgery from January 2004 to September 2009. Immunohistochemical analysis (IHC) and RT-PCR were used to determine the expression of HE4 which was compared with the clinicopathological factors or prognosis. Results: A total of 71 of 129 cases (55%) were HE4 positive and two cell lines expressed HE4 protein and mRNA. No correlation was found between HE4 expression by IHC and clinicopathological factors; however, lymph node involvement was closely associated with HE4 expression. Five-year disease-free survival in the HE4-positive group (58.6%) was significantly worse than that in the negative group (85.6%, p=0.04). Conclusion: These data showed that HE4 expression is associated with lymph node involvement and is a possible predictive factor of breast cancer recurrence. Approximately 25-30% of breast cancer patients with negative lymph nodes will develop distant metastases within ten years of surgery (1). In addition, there is a need to find an improved marker to stratify breast cancer patients into different risk groups more accurately than can be achieved with current clinicopathological factors; therefore, low-risk favourable patients can be spared unnecessary treatment, avoiding side-effects and reducing the cost of treatment. Furthermore, it might be possible to separate out high-risk patients and offer them customized (more aggressive) treatment modalities. A new method of gene profiling has recently been provided as a powerful tool for predicting the clinical outcome (2).