Trend Analysis of Studies on Water Fluoridation Related to Dental Caries in PubMed.

Water fluoridation has been cited as one of the top 10 public health achievements of the 20th century. Herein, we analyzed water fluoridation articles related to dental caries published in PubMed between 1950 and 2016 using informetrics and linguistic methods to investigate trends in the studies. To this aim, queries such as "dental caries and (water fluoridation or fluoridated water)," "dental caries and (fluoride or fluoridation)," and "dental caries" were submitted to PubMed to retrieve information about articles on water fluoridation within the area of dental caries and fluoride - their titles, abstracts, publication dates, author affiliations, and publication journals. This article information was then collected by an automatic web crawler and examined through informetrics and linguistic analyses. It was found that the number of articles concerned with water fluoridation and dental caries was 3,381 and declined over time after 1970. The articles were published by 750 journals - most notably, Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology and Caries Research. With regard to the geographic distribution of the authors, Europe and North America, especially the USA and UK, accounted for 59.9% of the articles published during the years 1987 to 2015, though there was a sharp increase in the number of authors in Oceania and Asia in recent years. In the titles and abstracts of the articles, "community" and "fluorosis" were mentioned more frequently than the other key terms selected in this study, regardless of the period examined. Our findings may allow one to assess how the research on water fluoridation has evolved over the past several decades.

Chronologic trends of cancer-related lymph node research in PubMed: informetrics analysis.

PURPOSE: Given the long history of investigation into cancer and its relevance to the lymph node (LN), it would be meaningful to plot the trends of research on cancer-related LN. METHODS: Queries such as "cancer," "lymph node," and "cancer and lymph node" were submitted to PubMed to collect articles on cancer and LN published between 1945 and 2017. The collected articles were then extracted by an automatic web crawler and examined through informetrics and linguistic analysis. RESULTS: The number of articles related to cancer was 2,795,476 and 127,897 articles (4.6%) were found to be relevant to LN. With regard to cancer types, breast cancer was the most studied (37%), followed by gastric cancer (17%). With regard to the subjects in which the surgeon is interested, LN metastasis (57%) was found to be the topic most discussed, followed by LN dissection (22%) and sentinel LN (17%). Publications on LN metastasis gradually increased over time from 1988 to 2017 although those on sentinel LN and LN dissection have stagnated since the early 2000s. CONCLUSION: Although research on cancer was abundant, only a small portion was dedicated to investigating its relevance to LN. Western countries had led the research on cancer-related LN, but Asian countries began to participate as major players, expanding their contributions. While LN metastasis, one of the major cancer-related LN topics, showed a steady increase, those involved in oncologic surgery such as LN dissection and sentinel LN did not.

Does the endoscopic finding of esophageal metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma progress from submucosal mass to polypoid shape?

BACKGROUND: Esophageal metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is extremely rare; it was not serially followed-up by endoscopy. OBJECTIVE: Our purpose was to report the endoscopic findings according to the progression of esophageal metastatic HCC. DESIGN: Case report. RESULTS: In the review of the cases, submucosal tumor or polypoid mass were the most common endoscopic findings, and the locations of esophageal metastatic tumors are variable. The tumors had progressed from a submucosal mass to a polypoid mass in the current case. LIMITATION: Small number of cases. CONCLUSIONS: The endoscopic findings of esophageal metastasis of HCC may be changed from submucosal mass to polypoid mass.

Thyrotoxic vomiting: a case report and possible mechanisms.

The symptoms related to gastrointestinal (GI) tract are sometimes chief complaints in patients with endocrine disease. Thyrotoxicosis is a rare, but notable cause for unexplained and repeated vomiting. Here, we report an adolescent patient with thyrotoxicosis who was initially presented with repeated vomiting and epigastric pain. A 13-year-old female was referred to a GI outpatient department for evaluation of vomiting and abdominal pain from a pediatric clinic. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy revealed acute gastritis with duodenogastric reflux and suspicious reflux esophagitis of minimal change, but there was no significant improvement after treatment and as a result she was admitted to the emergency room. She was subsequently diagnosed as Graves' disease because an initial laboratory test at the GI outpatient department revealed thyroid stimulating hormone < 0.01 µIU/mL and additional blood tests showed elevated thyroid hormones and positive thyroid stimulating hormone receptor antibody. The vomiting and epigastric pain improved remarkably after treatment with antithyroid drugs. Clinicians should consider the possibility of thyrotoxicosis in patient with unexplained and repeated vomiting.

Increase in D-tagatose production rate by site-directed mutagenesis of L-arabinose isomerase from Geobacillus thermodenitrificans.

Among single-site mutations of L-arabinose isomerase derived from Geobacillus thermodenitrificans, two mutants were produced having the lowest and highest activities of D-tagatose production. Site-directed mutagenesis at these sites showed that the aromatic ring at amino acid 164 and the size of amino acid 475 were important for D-tagatose production. Among double-site mutations, one mutant converted D-galactose into D-tagatose with a yield of 58% whereas the wild type gave 46% D-tagatose conversion after 300 min at 65 degrees C.