The necessity of psychophysiological research in ergonomics has gradually been recognized in Japan. In this paper, frontal midline theta rhythm (Fm-theta) and eyeblinking are recommended as tools in this field, especially for assessing workers' attention concentration, mental workload, fatigue, and interest during VDT work at the workplace and playing video games at home. In experiment 1, Fm-theta and eyeblink rates were measured in 10 Japanese abacus experts (Group E) and 10 normal students (Group C) during a visual search task with VDT. Memory load affected all measures. The amount of Fm-theta appeared more in Group E than Group C, but blink rate was lower in Group E than in Group C. As abacus experts have such highly developed skills in concentration, the result indicates that the amount of Fm-theta would be a good index of attention concentration in VDT workers. The second experiment was done with 10 school-aged children as subjects during three visual tasks: video game, mental test and animation. Amounts of Fm-theta and the degree of blink inhibition were maximum while playing the video game, which all subjects reported they most preferred, and minimum while watching animation, which eight subjects reported to be most boring. An interesting task would seem to provoke Fm-theta and inhibit eyeblink activity. From these two experiments, Fm-theta and eyeblink rate would appear to be good indices of attention concentration and task pleasantness of a mental task using VDT.

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The present study showed an association between metabolic syndrome and depressive symptoms in ambulatory Japanese older people, as in western countries.

This report describes an unusual case of mammary intraductal papillomas coexistent with sentinel lymph node papilloma. A 47-year-old Japanese female underwent 5 needle manipulations and 2 surgical biopsies for recurring papillomas in the right breast over 5 years before having a simple mastectomy. During the mastectomy, the ipsilateral sentinel node was found to be extensively occupied by completely benign papilloma that measured 6 mm in its greatest dimension. The clinical history led us to put forward the working hypothesis that the nodal papillary lesion may develop from the epithelial cells that are displaced from the mammary papillomas during needle procedures and mechanically transported to the sentinel lymph node. To test the hypothesis, we retrieved surgical biopsies (dochectomy and excisional biopsy), mastectomy, and sentinel lymph node specimens for histopathologic, immunohistochemical, and molecular studies. The presence of myoepithelial layer in each papillary tumor was confirmed by immunostains with specific myoepithelial markers, p63 and CD10. The excisional biopsy specimen exhibited displaced fragments of benign epithelial cells within granulation tissue at the needle manipulation site, indicating that iatrogenic epithelial cell displacement did occur in this case. However, loss of heterozygosity at 16p13 and 16q21 was only observed in the papillomas of the dochectomy and the excisional biopsy; no loss of heterozygosity was detected in the papillomas of the mastectomy and the sentinel lymph node. It remains undetermined whether the nodal papilloma was derived from the papilloma of the mastectomy or if it arose de novo from the breast tissue inclusion of the sentinel node.

This study describes the professional risk of acquiring HIV infection while caring for AIDS patients at a teaching hospital in Brazil. Since 1985 we have tested health care professionals (HCP) for HIV-1 antibody after accidents with blood and body fluids from AIDS patients. The blood samples were tested twice using an ELISA FDA approved test and, if positive, we performed Western blot. Two hundred and forty seven health care professionals reported 338 accidents (50% were percutaneous and 22% were mucous membrane exposures to blood). A further 404 HCPs reported no occupational exposure but wanted to be tested. From 247 HCPs with at least one accident, we analyzed 115 with more than 6 months of follow up. None were HIV antibody positive. Nobody received zidovudine as a prophylaxis. Of the 404 HCPs with no accident, 6 (1.5%) were positive and had confirmed risk factors for HIV. Our results support other studies that report a low occupational risk (about 0.4%) of acquiring HIV infection.