Extracting the latent needs of dementia patients and caregivers from transcribed interviews in japanese: an initial assessment of the availability of morpheme selection as input data with Z-scores in machine learning.

BACKGROUND: Given the increasing number of dementia patients worldwide, a new method was developed for machine learning models to identify the 'latent needs' of patients and caregivers to facilitate patient/public involvement in societal decision making. METHODS: Japanese transcribed interviews with 53 dementia patients and caregivers were used. A new morpheme selection method using Z-scores was developed to identify trends in describing the latent needs. F-measures with and without the new method were compared using three machine learning models. RESULTS: The F-measures with the new method were higher for the support vector machine (SVM) (F-measure of 0.81 with the new method and F-measure of 0.79 without the new method for patients) and Naive Bayes (F-measure of 0.69 with the new method and F-measure of 0.67 without the new method for caregivers and F-measure of 0.75 with the new method and F-measure of 0.73 without the new method for patients). CONCLUSION: A new scheme based on Z-score adaptation for machine learning models was developed to predict the latent needs of dementia patients and their caregivers by extracting data from interviews in Japanese. However, this study alone cannot be used to assign significance to the adaptation of the new method because of no enough size of sample dataset. Such pre-selection with Z-score adaptation from text data in machine learning models should be considered with more modified suitable methods in the near future.

Safety assessment of herbal supplement components targeting hepatotoxicity and CYP3A4 induction in cell-based assay using HepG2 cells.

Herbal supplements can cause hepatotoxicity and drug interactions via hepatic cytochrome P-450 (CYP) in some cases. However, there is no simple and stable cell-based assay to conduct a screening for hepatotoxicity and CYP induction. In the present study, we selected 14 components of the herbal supplement based on our previous reports and investigated the safety of the herbal supplement components focusing on toxicity and CYP3A4 induction in a cell-based assay using HepG2. The toxicity of the components was examined by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and cell proliferation assays. Then, the CYP3A4 induction of the components were examined by a reporter assay using reporter vectors of CYP3A4. The vector includes the CYP3A4 proximal promoter (CYP3A4PP) and the xenobiotic-responsive enhancer module (XREM) regions. Luteolin (LU) significantly increased LDH activity and decreased cell proliferation activity that suggests LU may cause toxicity in HepG2 cells. Quercetin (QU) increased the transcriptional activity of CYP3A4 (1.5-fold of control) in the reporter assay. However, the induction of QU was slightly in comparison to the validation of the transcriptional activity of CYP3A4 treated with CYP3A4 inducers. The CYP3A4 induction of QU may not involve CYP3A4PP but involves the XREM response. Throughout our results, the method in the present study may be useful for a safety assessment of herbal supplements, primarily focusing on hepatotoxicity and CYP3A4 induction. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Even though there are problems with herbal supplements, studies related to toxicity are not actively carried out. The present methods may apply to the safety assessment for herbal supplements and be useful for the prevention and verification of health hazards caused by herbal supplements (the summary is shown in Figure S2).

Determination of the Awareness about and Need for Health Support Pharmacies as the Provider of Consultation Service about Nutrition Education and Diet-Related Health Promotion by Health Professionals in Japan.

Health support pharmacies (HSPs) have been established as a new category of pharmacies in Japan. In addition to prescriptions, HSPs provide several health services, including consultations on diet/nutrition, health foods, and nursing care. Therefore, not only individuals receiving medications but also community residents should have access to HSPs. However, it is unclear whether people are aware of HSPs. Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the awareness about HSPs and determine the need for their services. To this end, we conducted an online cross-sectional questionnaire survey in 10,000 Japanese adults. Approximately 60.2% of the participants were aware of family pharmacies/pharmacists, and 21.8% of these participants had a family pharmacy/pharmacist. Meanwhile, 2.6% of the participants were aware of HSPs, while 9.2% of the participants had only heard of HSPs. Awareness of HSPs was higher among men and younger individuals than among women and older generations. In addition, only 7.2% of the participants were aware of the location of the HSP in their area of residence. At the time at which this survey was conducted, only 3.5% of the participants were using HSP services, and half of them did not perceive the merits of using these services. However, 44.4% of the participants wished to avail themselves of HSP services in the future, and this desire increased with age. Half of the participants wished to use services that were associated with drugs, and the need for other services, such as consultations on diet/nutrition or health foods, was low. In conclusion, there was low awareness about HSPs among the survey participants. However, from our findings, we gathered that if individuals are aware of HSPs, they will wish to use HSP services. To improve healthy life expectancy, it is important to increase awareness about HSPs and their number.

An educational intervention improved knowledge of dietary supplements in college students.

BACKGROUND: We have previously reported on the prevalence of dietary supplements among college students; it was deduced that their intake of supplements increased according to their grade (i.e., 13.1% in the first grade to 20.5% in the sixth grade). We also reported that some students had experienced adverse events in Japan due to their intake of these supplements. However, awareness of dietary supplements among college students remains limited, even among pharmaceutical students. Being appropriately educated about them is important for pharmaceutical students, both for themselves as well as for their future careers as pharmacists. METHODS: We conducted a lecture-based educational intervention about dietary supplements on 328 college students in Japan-184 from pharmaceutical science and 144 from environmental science or food and life science disciplines. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of an educational intervention on college students' understanding of dietary supplements. The intervention involved a lecture that covered the quality of dietary supplements, how they differed from drugs, and a summary of their adverse events. The lecture was evaluated using a 14-question questionnaire. We then compared the pre- and post-intervention responses to the same questionnaire using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. The questions were assessed using a Likert scale that ranged from "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree"; the latter being the preferred answer. RESULTS: Before the intervention had taken place, the students' understanding of dietary supplements was shown to be deficient. Conversely, post-intervention, their knowledge levels had significantly improved, especially concerning agreement on whether "Dietary supplements are safe because they are just food items". Pre-intervention, 2.7% strongly agreed and 37.5% agreed; post-intervention, 1.2% strongly agreed and 15.6% agreed. On whether "Dietary supplements made from natural ingredients or herbs are safe", at the pre-intervention stage 2.8% strongly agreed and 44.0% agreed and post-intervention, 2.2% strongly agreed and 16.9% agreed. On whether "Dietary supplements made from food items are safe", 4.0% strongly agreed and 43.6% agreed pre-intervention and 0.9% strongly agreed and 16.6% agreed post-intervention. Despite there being a greater number of pharmaceutical students who had a correct understanding of dietary supplements before the intervention, these students still showed improvement after the lecture. CONCLUSION: An intervention in the form of a single educational lecture has the capacity to improve college students' understanding of dietary supplements. It is important for pharmacists to be appropriately educated about dietary supplements when they consult with patients. We will evaluate the long-term effects of the intervention on the alumni (pharmacists) in a subsequent study.

Concomitant Use of Dietary Supplements and Medicines among Preschool and School-Aged Children in Japan.

Dietary supplement use is widespread amongst the general population including in children and adolescents. The ingredients in dietary supplements can interact with medicines when patients take them concomitantly. However, the prevalence of the concomitant use of dietary supplements and medicines in Japan among children remains unclear. To clarify this issue, a nationwide internet survey was administered to 55,038 mothers (25 to 60 years old) of preschool- or school-aged children in Japan. Among them, 7.6% currently provide dietary supplements and 3.2% concomitantly provide dietary supplements and prescription or over-the-counter medicines to their children. The prevalence of concomitant use increased with the children's grade. Among 1057 mothers with 1154 children who were concomitantly using dietary supplements and medicines, 69.1% provided dietary supplements without physician consultation because they considered dietary supplements as only foods and therefore safe. Although the purpose of the use and types of dietary supplement differed between boys and girls, the most popular product was probiotics in both boys and girls. Among concomitant users, 8.3% of mothers gave dietary supplements for treatment of diseases and 4.9% mothers recognized the adverse events of dietary supplements in their child. The findings of this study suggest that mothers' knowledge about the risk of using dietary supplement with medicines is insufficient. Parental education about the safety of dietary supplements and potential risk of drug-supplement interaction is needed.

A Nationwide Survey of the Attitudes toward the Use of Dietary Supplements among Japanese High-School Students.

We previously studied the prevalence of dietary supplement use in Japanese high-school students by conducting a study on mothers. However, there is often a discrepancy between mothers' understanding and children's attitudes. Thus, we conducted an internet survey of high-school students to clarify their attitudes toward the use of dietary supplements. An invitation to the internet survey was e-mailed to registrants of a research company aged 15 to 18 years. A total of 1031 students (276 male, 755 female) answered the questionnaire on a first come, first served basis. The participants were classified according to the purchasers of their supplements: students who purchased supplements themselves were defined as active users, and others were defined as passive users. The prevalence of dietary supplement use was 30.8% in males and 26.7% in females. Among the users, 42.4% of males and 43.8% of females were active users. Males used supplements for health regardless of active or passive use. However, in females, more active users (40.9%) used supplements for weight loss than passive users (20.4%); the corresponding prevalence was 2.3% in our previous report on mothers' understanding of their daughters. The most frequently used source of information for active users was the internet, whereas for passive users it was family. The frequency of adverse events was 9.4% in males and 14.4% in females, with gastrointestinal symptoms being the most commonly experienced events. Our results suggest that dietary education, including healthy eating and the appropriate use of dietary supplements, should be provided to high-school students.

[Personality and dietary supplement use among Japanese female students].

Objectives　The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between dietary supplement use and personality traits among Japanese female students.Methods　A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was administered to 230 female university or junior college students in October and November 2015; 228 students responded. The questionnaires inquired regarding the usage of dietary supplements and attitudes about dietary supplements, as well as the healthy eating literacy (HEL) scale and the Big Five personality traits. In total, 124 respondents completed the survey. The Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test, chi-square test, and Spearman's correlation coefficient were used to examine dietary supplement-personality relationships.Results　Overall, 19.4% of students reported using dietary supplements. Supplement users had high extraversion scores compared with non-users. Attitudes about dietary supplements and HEL were not associated with personality traits.Conclusion　Personality traits influenced dietary supplement use, although limitedly.

[Information sources for causality assessment of health problems related to health foods and their usefulness].

Collecting adverse case reports suspected to be due to health foods and evaluation of the causality are important to secure safety, even if the causal relationship between health foods and reported health problem is uncertain. Case reports are mainly collected at three sites: public health centers, practical living information online network system(PIO-NET), and individual companies. The case reports from the three sources are not dealt with consistently. In this study, we investigated and characterized those case reports from the viewpoint of evaluating causality, using the causality association rating methods, namely, the dendritic and pointed methods, which we reported previously. Information in public health centers comprised 20 reports per year; approximately 40% were from health care providers and contained detailed medical data. PIO-NET information comprised 366 reports per year; 80% were self-reports from users, and few medical details were included. Company information covered 1,323 cases from 13 companies; more than 90% were from users and most of them were complaints. Case reports from public health centers and PIO-NET showed that the largerst number of victims were female aged >60, with allergy and gastrointestinal symptoms. When these case reports from the letter two sources were examined using the causality association rating systems, most were rated as "possible" and only a few were rated as "probable". As specific case reports from different information sources were examined in this study, we were able to identify several points that should be improved in our two rating methods. However, to ensure the safety of health foods, it will be necessary to collect a large number of high-quality case reports for evaluation by a suitable causality rating method, and to integrate those evaluated case reports into a single site.

Prevalence of inappropriate dietary supplement use among pregnant women in Japan.

We investigated the characteristics of dietary supplements and their use by 1,076 Japanese pregnant women, the majority of whom were in mid- to late pregnancy. The subjects completed a self-reported survey on their sociodemographic characteristics, supplement use, and attitudes towards diet. The overall prevalence of supplement use did not change before and after pregnancy (75%); however, daily use increased by approximately twofold with pregnancy (20.2% versus 37.2%). After the onset of pregnancy, supplements containing folic acid were taken for fetal health. Daily users were more likely to be older, have a greater awareness of the risk of neural tube defects (NTD), view supplement use as acceptable, have less diet anxiety, and have more advisers regarding diet. Respondents used supplements containing folic acid alone or with other ingredients. Folic acid intake is recommended to reduce the risk of NTD. However, supplement use began after pregnancy recognition, suggesting a lack of knowledge on the appropriate timing of folic acid use. Information about supplements was obtained mostly from newspapers, magazines, flyers, and stores. These results indicate that more accurate information regarding the optimal timing of folic acid intake and the safety of dietary supplements must be disseminated.