These significant findings linking the HPLP-II, university year level, and living with family (yes/no) in university students will enable healthcare providers to develop interventions to assist students in improving their health lifestyles in the university environment and will help in devising suitable education programs.

Meiosis is a unique process that allows the generation of reproductive cells. It remains largely unknown how meiosis is initiated in germ cells and why non-germline cells do not undergo meiosis. We previously demonstrated that knockdown of Max expression, a gene encoding a partner of MYC family proteins, strongly activates expression of germ cell-related genes in ESCs. Here we find that complete ablation of Max expression in ESCs results in profound cytological changes reminiscent of cells undergoing meiotic cell division. Furthermore, our analyses uncovers that Max expression is transiently attenuated in germ cells undergoing meiosis in vivo and its forced reduction induces meiosis-like cytological changes in cultured germline stem cells. Mechanistically, Max depletion alterations are, in part, due to impairment of the function of an atypical PRC1 complex (PRC1.6), in which MAX is one of the components. Our data highlight MAX as a new regulator of meiotic onset.

A large cross sectional survey was carried out using a self administered questionnaire to examine the prevalence of laboratory animal allergy (LAA) and the factors associated with its development. Out of 5641 workers who were exposed to animals at 137 laboratory animal facilities in Japan, 23-1% had one or more allergic symptoms related to laboratory animals. The commonest symptom was rhinitis. About 70% of LAA subjects developed symptoms during their first three years of exposure. Atopy (past and family history), the number of animal species handled, and the time spent in handling correlated significantly with the development ofLAA as did some types of job. A close relation between nasal symptoms and exposure to rabbits and between skin symptoms and exposure to rats were found. LAA subjects developed symptoms most quickly to rabbits.Laboratory animal allergy (LAA) is receiving increased attention and it is now believed that many persons suffer from allergic symptoms related to laboratory animals. Laboratory animal allergy has been recognised as a health problem for those who work with laboratory animals in Japan but there are few epidemiological surveys of LAA with large numbers of subjects.Many studies on LAA have been carried out in the United Kingdom and the United States. " The prevalence of LAA has been rated at between 11 and 30% .'From the viewpoint of prevention, three basic factors associated with the development of LAA have been considered.4"" These are the predisposition Department of Environmental Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Kagoshima University K Aoyama, A Ueda, F Manda, T Matsushita Institute of Laboratory Animal Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Kagoshima University, Sakuragoaka, Kagoshima 890, Japan T Ueda, C Yamauchi of the subject, the allergenicity of the substances derived from animals, and the nature and intensity of exposure.We carried out a large scale survey among 5641 animal handlers in 137 laboratory animal facilities to clarify the size of the problem of LAA in Japan, and to consider the various factors involved in the development of LAA.Subjects and methods A self administered questionnaire was designed by us and contained questions on sex, age, history and family history of allergic diseases, smoking and pet owning history, duration of working with laboratory animals, job titles, job contents, frequency of contact with animals, species, time spent handling animals, and use of protective equipment. Questions dealing with symptoms asked about experience of nasal, eye, respiratory, and skin symptoms and the association between symptoms and laboratory animals. Further, the subjects with symptoms were specifically asked about the time to first symptoms, the relation between the symptoms and animals, species and time of exposure to animals related to symptoms, and about the effectiveness of protective equipment etc. When subjects reported some symptoms, they were systematically questioned about further symptoms.The questionnaire was sent to 164 laboratory animal facilities in Japa...

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Evidence linking the gut-brain axis to Alzheimer's disease (AD) is accumulating, but the characteristics of causally important microbes are poorly understood. We perform a fecal microbiome analysis in healthy subjects and those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD. We find that Faecalibacterium prausnitzii (F. prausnitzii) correlates with cognitive scores and decreases in the MCI group compared with the healthy group. Two isolated strains from the healthy group, live Fp360 and pasteurized Fp14, improve cognitive impairment in an AD mouse model. Whole-genome comparison of isolated strains reveals specific orthologs that are found only in the effective strains and are more abundant in the healthy group compared with the MCI group. Metabolome and RNA sequencing analyses of mouse brains provides mechanistic insights into the relationship between the efficacy of pasteurized Fp14, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial function. We conclude that F. prausnitzii strains with these specific orthologs are candidates for gut microbiome-based intervention in Alzheimer's-type dementia.