The effectiveness of a stroke educational activity performed by a schoolteacher for junior high school students.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to determine whether our stroke education system can help junior high school students acquire stroke knowledge when performed by a schoolteacher. METHODS: A stroke neurologist gave a stroke lesson to 25 students (S group) and a schoolteacher through our stroke education system. After instruction, the schoolteacher performed the same lesson using the same education system to another 75 students (T group). Questionnaires on stroke knowledge were examined at baseline, immediately after the lesson (IL), and at 3 months after the lesson (3M). We analyzed the results of stroke knowledge assessment by linear mixed effects models adjusted for gender and class difference using the student number. RESULTS: We assessed 24 students in the S group and 72 students in the T group. There were no significant differences in the changes of predicted scores of symptoms and risk factors adjusted for gender, class difference, and each student knowledge level until 3M between the 2 groups. Correct answer rates for the meaning of the FAST (facial droop, arm weakness, speech disturbance, time to call 119) at IL were 92% in the S group and 72% in the T group, respectively. At 3M, they were 83% in the S group and 84% in the T group. The correct answer rates of FAST at 3M were not significantly different adjusted for group, gender, class difference, and correct answer rate at IL. CONCLUSIONS: A schoolteacher can conduct the FAST message lesson to junior high school students with a similar outcome as a stroke neurologist using our stroke education system.

Structural basis for the interaction between the first SURP domain of the SF3A1 subunit in U2 snRNP and the human splicing factor SF1.

SURP domains are exclusively found in splicing-related proteins in all eukaryotes. SF3A1, a component of the U2 snRNP, has two tandem SURP domains, SURP1, and SURP2. SURP2 is permanently associated with a specific short region of SF3A3 within the SF3A protein complex whereas, SURP1 binds to the splicing factor SF1 for recruitment of U2 snRNP to the early spliceosomal complex, from which SF1 is dissociated during complex conversion. Here, we determined the solution structure of the complex of SURP1 and the human SF1 fragment using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods. SURP1 adopts the canonical topology of α1-α2-310 -α3, in which α1 and α2 are connected by a single glycine residue in a particular backbone conformation, allowing the two α-helices to be fixed at an acute angle. A hydrophobic patch, which is part of the characteristic surface formed by α1 and α2, specifically contacts a hydrophobic cluster on a 16-residue α-helix of the SF1 fragment. Furthermore, whereas only hydrophobic interactions occurred between SURP2 and the SF3A3 fragment, several salt bridges and hydrogen bonds were found between the residues of SURP1 and the SF1 fragment. This finding was confirmed through mutational studies using bio-layer interferometry. The study also revealed that the dissociation constant between SURP1 and the SF1 fragment peptide was approximately 20 µM, indicating a weak or transient interaction. Collectively, these results indicate that the interplay between U2 snRNP and SF1 involves a transient interaction of SURP1, and this transient interaction appears to be common to most SURP domains, except for SURP2.

Construction of a safety management system for drug use by using an RFID tag.

We constructed a safety management system for narcotic drug use by using an RFID tag with barcode. In this system, RFID tags are mainly used for postscript of information, while barcodes, especially standardized unit drug codes for distribution, are used for drug identification. The outline of the system is described in the present paper.

Feasibility for the enhancement of an online support system for persons with metabolic syndrome, aimed at applications for ischemic heart disease and heart failure.

Previously, we developed of an online support system for persons with metabolic syndrome. In this study, we investigated the possibility of enhancing our system for applications in ischemic heart disease (IHD) and heart failure (HF). The main causes of IHD are obesity, hypertension, arteriosclerosis, hyperglycemia and other metabolic disorders. These conditions are related to lifestyle issues, such as diet and exercise. Dietary management becomes more difficult as the patient's condition worsens. We primarily focused on behavior changes. To raise the user's awareness of food intake, we improved a number of functions of the developed system: an entry of the user's lifestyle information, a calculation of the total calorie intake and a reference of food model pictures in 80 kcal standard quantities. IHD encompasses many of the causes of HF. Management tools appropriate for HF are few. We describe the main functions of our system and promote self-management as a requirement for IHD and HF. We expect that the framework of our system is applicable to the management of patients with chronic HF.

A basic study on application of voice recognition input to an electronic nursing record system -evaluation of the function as an input interface-.

As computerization in the nursing field has been recently progressing, an electronic nursing record system is gradually introduced in the medical institution in Japan. Although it is expected for the electronic nursing record system to reduce the load of nursing work, the conventional keyboard operation is used for information input of the present electronic nursing record system and it has some problems concerning the input time and the operationability for common nurses who are unfamiliar with the computer operation. In the present study, we conducted a basic study on application of voice recognition input to an electronic nursing record system. The voice input is recently introduced to an electronic medical record system in a few clinics. However, so far the entered information cannot be processed because the information of the medical record must be entered as a free sentence. Therefore, we contrived a template for an electronic nursing record system and introduced it to the system for simple information entry and easy processing of the entered information in this study. Furthermore, an input experiment for evaluation of the voice input with the template was carried out by voluntary subjects for evaluation of the function as an input interface of an electronic nursing record system. The results of the experiment revealed that the input time by the voice input is obviously fast compared with that by the keyboard input and operationability of the voice input was superior to the keyboard input although all subjects had inexperience of the voice input. As a result, it was suggested our method, the voice input using the template made by us, might be useful for an input interface of an electronic nursing record system.

A high-speed drug interaction search system for ease of use in the clinical environment.

With the advancement of pharmaceutical development, drug interactions have become increasingly complex. As a result, a computer-based drug interaction search system is required to organize the whole of drug interaction data. To overcome problems faced with the existing systems, we developed a drug interaction search system using a hash table, which offers higher processing speeds and easier maintenance operations compared with relational databases (RDB). In order to compare the performance of our system and MySQL RDB in terms of search speed, drug interaction searches were repeated for all 45 possible combinations of two out of a group of 10 drugs for two cases: 5,604 and 56,040 drug interaction data. As the principal result, our system was able to process the search approximately 19 times faster than the system using the MySQL RDB. Our system also has several other merits such as that drug interaction data can be created in comma-separated value (CSV) format, thereby facilitating data maintenance. Although our system uses the well-known method of a hash table, it is expected to resolve problems common to existing systems and to be an effective system that enables the safe management of drugs.

Development of a health management support system for patients with diabetes mellitus at home.

Recently, a patient with diabetes mellitus (DM) type 2 has been increasing in Japan. The patient should be managed not only by a specialist but also by himself focusing his attention on the improvement of his lifestyle at home. In the present study, we tried to develop a health management support system by which a diabetic patient in early stage can easily enter his daily life information, i.e. the biological information such as the data of blood sugar levels and blood pressure levels etc., the information of exercise and diet and send the information to the medical institution with a personal digital assistant (PDA). Afterwards, the patient can receive health instruction information by the physician in charge for self-care at his home with a PDA. The daily life information sent from the patient is stored in a server installed at the medical institution and analyzed. The physician can obtain the results of analysis by using a PC and send the instruction information necessary for patient management to the patient at home by using e-mail after diagnosing the patient's condition by the system. To evaluate usability of the developed patient information input system with a PDA, an experiment was conducted by corporation of 20 volunteers who were possible self management and whose age's range from 20s to 60s by questionnaire survey. As a result, almost examinees answered that lifestyle information could be easily entered by the sense like a mobile-phone and lots of positive opinions were obtained.