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This study examined the effectiveness of heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback intervention for reduction of psychological stress in women in the early postpartum period. On postpartum day 4, 55 healthy subjects received a brief explanation about HRV biofeedback using a portable device. Among them, 25 mothers who agreed to implement HRV biofeedback at home were grouped as the biofeedback group, and other 30 mothers were grouped as the control group. At 1 month postpartum, there was a significant decrease in total Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale score (P < 0.001) in the biofeedback group; this change was brought about mainly by decreases in items related to anxiety or difficulty sleeping. There was also a significant increase in standard deviation of the normal heartbeat interval (P < 0.01) of the resting HRV measures in the biofeedback group after adjusting for potential covariates. In conclusion, postpartum women who implemented HRV biofeedback after delivery were relatively free from anxiety and complained less of difficulties sleeping at 1 month postpartum. Although the positive effects of HRV biofeedback may be partly attributable to intervention effects, due to its clinical outcome, HRV biofeedback appears to be recommendable for many postpartum women as a feasible health-promoting measure after childbirth.

Dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma is a rare, highly malignant variant of chondrosarcoma in which a high-grade sarcoma coexists with a low-grade chondroid tumor. We herein review a case of dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma with an osteosarcoma omit component that occurred in the distal femur of a 38-year-old man. We established the cell line (NDCS-1) from a pleural effusion of the metastatic lung tumor. The cell line was characterized by a the G-banded karyotype, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis, spectral karyotyping, and reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR). The tumor exhibited complex karyotypes and a high frequency of chromosomal amplication with p53 mutation. This tumor revealed an osteoblastic and chondroblastic character in vitro and in severe combined immunodeficiency mice. The expression and phosphorylation of platelet-derived growth factor receptor-beta, which seemed to play a major role in the malignant phenotype of chondrosarcoma, was confirmed by RT-PCR and Western blotting. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the establishment of a human dedifferentiated chondrosarcoma.

Although vaccine failure of mother-to-child transmission was the major cause of chronic HBV infection in children, father-to-child transmission was the second most common mode of transmission. In addition, sibling-to-sibling transmission was found. Unless at-risk individuals and groups can be accurately identified to prevent horizontal transmission, the introduction of universal vaccination is essential for achieving the elimination of HBV infection in Japan.

Objective: To test the hypothesis that the power of the received signal of harmonic power Doppler imaging (HPDI) is proportional to the bubble concentration under conditions of constant applied acoustic pressure, and to determine whether a new quantitative method can overcome the acoustic field inhomogeneity during myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) and identify perfusion abnormalities caused by myocardial infarction. Methods: The relation between Levovist concentration and contrast signal intensity (CI) of HPDI was investigated in vitro under conditions of constant acoustic pressure. MCE was performed during continuous infusion of Levovist with intermittent HPDI every sixth cardiac cycle in 11 healthy subjects and 25 patients with previous myocardial infarction. In the apical views myocardial CI (CI myo ) was quantified in five myocardial segments. The CI from the left ventricular blood pool adjacent to the segment was also measured in dB and subtracted from the CI myo (relative CI (RelCI)). Results: CI had a logarithmic correlation and the calculated signal power a strong linear correlation with Levovist concentration in vitro. Thus, a difference in CI of X dB indicates a microbubble concentration ratio of 10 X/10 . In normal control subjects, CI myo differed between the five segments (p , 0.0001), with a lower CI myo in deeper segments. However, RelCI did not differ significantly between segments (p = 0.083). RelCI was lower (p , 0.0001) in the 39 infarct segments (mean (SD) 218.6 (2.8) dB) than in the 55 normal segments (mean (SD) 215.1 (1.6) dB). RelCI differed more than CI myo between groups. Conclusions: The new quantitative method described can overcome the acoustic field inhomogeneity in evaluation of myocardial perfusion during MCE. RelCI represents the ratio of myocardium to blood microbubble concentrations and may correctly reflect myocardial blood volume fraction. M icrobubble concentration within tissue during myocardial contrast echocardiography (MCE) reflects the myocardial blood volume per unit volume (that is, myocardial blood volume fraction).1 2 The contrast signal intensity (CI) on greyscale B mode harmonic imaging after intravenous injection of ultrasound contrast agents has been suggested to reflect the microbubble concentration 3 4 and is used clinically as a quantitative measure to allow estimation of myocardial blood volume.2 5-8 Harmonic power Doppler imaging (HPDI), which has advantages over B mode imaging in opacification of the myocardium, has been used during MCE.9-14 Although animal experiments have shown that the severity of coronary stenosis can be assessed by quantitative analysis of HPDI, 9 15 some problems remain regarding quantitative assessment of myocardial blood volume with HPDI: the lack of detailed information regarding the relation between microbubble concentration and CI of HPDI; and the inhomogeneity of the insonified ultrasound field during MCE. As CI is dependent on the acoustic pressure, [16][17][18] comparison of myocardial CI (CI myo ) between myocardial...