MR imaging was accurate for predicting reparable meniscal tears and was sensitive for the determination of nonreparable tears.

No abstract

No abstract

Localized in vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) was performed to evaluate metabolic alterations in the right and left frontal lobe before and after antipsychotic treatment of schizophrenic patients (n = 24) and a group of healthy normal subjects (n = 20). Proton metabolic ratios obtained from the 8 cm³ voxels in the right and left frontal lobes were compared with the clinical assessment for each subject. There was no significant difference in the metabolic ratios between the right and the left frontal lobes in either the schizophrenic group or the control group, indicating no laterality. Compared with those of the normal control group, NAA/Cr ratio of the schizophrenic patients showed significantly lower value. The NAA/Cr ratio of the schizophrenic patients was not changed after antipsychotic treatment. The present study supports the ‘hypofrontality’ hypothesis of schizophrenia.

No abstract

Welder's pneumoconiosis has generally been determined as benign based on the absence of pulmonary function abnormalities in welders with marked radiographic abnormalities. Yet, there have also been several reports on welders with respiratory symptoms, indicating lung function impairment, X-ray abnormalities, and extensive fibrosis. Accordingly, this study attempted to investigate the inflammatory responses and pulmonary function changes in rats during a 60-day welding-fume-inhalation exposure period to elucidate the process of fibrosis. The rats were exposed to manual metal-arc stainless-steel welding fumes (MMA-SS) with total suspended particulate concentrations of 64.8 +/- 0.9 (low dose) and 107.8 +/- 2.6 mg/m3 (high dose) for 2 h per day in an inhalation chamber for 60 days. Animals were sacrificed after the initial 2-h exposure and after 15, 30, and 60 days, and the pulmonary function was also measured every week after the daily exposure. Elevated cellular differential counts were also measured in the acellular bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of the rats exposed to the MMA-SS fumes for 60 days. Among the pulmonary function test parameters, only the tidal volume showed a statistically significant and dose-dependent decrease after 35 to 60 days of MMA-SS welding-fume exposure. When the rats exposed to the welding fumes were left for 60 days to recover their lung function and cellular differentiation, recovery was observed in both the high and low-dose rats exposed up to 30 days, resulting in the disappearance of inflammatory cells and restoration of the tidal volume. The rats exposed for 60 days at the low dose also recovered from the inflammation and tidal volume loss, yet the rats exposed for 60 days at the high dose did not fully recover even after a 60-day recovery period. Therefore, when taken together, the results of the current study suggest that a decrease in the tidal volume could be used as an early indicator of pulmonary fibrosis induced by welding-fume exposure in Sprague Dawley rats, and fibrosis would seem to be preventable if the exposure is short-term and moderate.

Impaired processing of facial information is one of the broad ranges of cognitive deficits seen in patients with schizophrenia. This study aimed to elucidate the differences in brain activities involved in the process of facial working memory (images of neutral faces as mnemonic content) between schizophrenic patients and healthy comparison subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Group comparison analysis revealed aberrant activities from the patient group in several cortical areas, including the left fusiform gyrus, right superior frontal gyrus, bilateral middle frontal gyri/insula, and left middle temporal gyrus. A decreased level of activity in the left fusiform gyrus, along with performance reduction, implicates abnormal processing of facial information in schizophrenia.

Impaired processing of working memory information is one of the cognitive deficits seen in patients with schizophrenia. This study aims at corroborating the differences in the brain activities involved in the process of working memory between patients with schizophrenia and the controls. Twelve patients with schizophrenia and 11 controls participated in the study. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess cortical activities during the performance of a two-back verbal working memory paradigm using the Korean alphabet as mnemonic content. Group analysis revealed that inferior fontal, middle frontal, and superior temporal region showed decreased cortical activities in the patient group compared to those of the controls. This study showed a decreased activation in inferior fontal (BA 47), middle frontal (BA 6), and superior temporal (BA 22/38) neural networks from the patient group and confirmed the earlier findings on the impaired working memory of schizophrenic patients in the fMRI investigation.