[Clinical evaluation of efficacy and safety of nateglinide in the treatment of type 2 diabetes].

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of nateglinide, a new antidiabetic agent, in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. METHODS: A total of 219 treatment-naïve patients with type 2 diabetes from 6 centers were enrolled in this study and blindly divided into nateglinide group (n = 105) and repaglinide group (n = 114). In all patients, the disease was confirmed for at least three months. The whole observation lasted for 12 weeks. The efficacy indicators measured include glycohemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), fasting blood glucose, and 2 hours postprandial blood glucose, and the safety parameters measured included renal and hepatic function, serum lipids, and blood and urea profiles. RESULTS: Similar decreases in fasting blood glucose, 2 hours postprandial blood glucose, and HbA1 c were found in both nateglinide group and repaglinide group without significant differences. No severe adverse events were noted. The hypoglycemia event reports were not significantly different between these two groups. CONCLUSION: Nateglinide is an effective and safe drug in treating type 2 diabetes.

Scintillating fiber detectors for time evolution measurement of the triton burnup on the Large Helical Device.

Two scintillating fiber (Sci-Fi) detectors have been operated in the first deuterium plasma campaign of the Large Helical Device in order to investigate the time evolution of the triton burnup through secondary 14 MeV neutron measurement. Two detectors use scintillating fibers of 1 mm diameter embedded in an aluminum matrix with a length of 10 cm connected to the magnetic field resistant photomultiplier. A detector with 91 fibers was developed in the Los Alamos National Laboratory and has been employed on JT-60U. Another detector with 109 fibers has been developed in the National Institute for Fusion Science. The signals are fed into a discriminator of 300 MHz bandwidth with a pulse counter module for online measurement and a digitizer of 1 GHz sampling with 14 bits to acquire pulse shape information for offline data analysis. The triton burnup ratio has been evaluated shot-by-shot by the 14 MeV neutron measurement of Sci-Fi detectors which are calibrated by using the neutron activation system and the total neutron measurement of the neutron flux monitor using 235U fission chambers.

High detection efficiency scintillating fiber detector for time-resolved measurement of triton burnup 14 MeV neutron in deuterium plasma experiment.

The behavior of the 1 MeV triton has been studied in order to understand the alpha particle confinement property in the deuterium operation of toroidal fusion devices. To obtain time evolution of the deuterium-tritium (D-T) neutron emission rate where the secondary DT neutron emission rate is approximately 1012 n/s, we designed two high detection efficiency scintillating fiber (Sci-Fi) detectors: a 1 mm-diameter scintillation fiber-based detector Sci-Fi1 and a 2 mm-diameter scintillation fiber-based detector Sci-Fi2. The test in an accelerator-based neutron generator was performed. The result shows that the directionality of each detector is 15° and 25°, respectively. It is found that detection efficiency for DT neutrons is around 0.23 counts/n cm2 for the Sci-Fi1 detector and is around 1.0 counts/n cm2 for the Sci-Fi2 detector.