All clinical trials

Pulmonary tuberculosis is one of the most important infectious diseases in human with high mortality. Early diagnosis followed by antibiotic treatment is the only way for control of the disease. However, most of commercial tuberculosis diagnostic kits are of moderate sensitivity. Oncoprobe Inc. recently developed a tuberculosis diagnostic kit (HR-103) based on detection of antibody against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in serum. The main purpose of this project is to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the kit in detection of pulmonary tuberculosis from saliva, urine, pleura and serum samples.Capilia TB assay and another Immunochromatographic assay such as ESAT-6 and CFP-10 based or other PCR based immunochromatographic assay will be tried to detection tuberculous disease.

The purpose of this study is to determine the degree of endothelial dysfunction and inflammation in calcific aortic valve disease associated with coronary artery disease(CAD). to determine whether there is relationship between calcium metabolism and calcific aortic valve disease associated with CAD.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether mucin is increased during pulmonay exacerbations in adult patients with cystic fibrosis (CF).

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second common cause of death in the Western world, and is very increasing in Japan. Fecal occult blood test (FOBT) is used routinely for CRC screening, which has been shown to reduce the incidence, morbidity, and mortality of CRC. However, there is a need to develop a novel method to improve sensitivity. The investigators reported that Fecal COX-2 assay, one of fecal RNA test, is potentially useful for colorectal cancer screening (Gastroenterology 127; 422-427, 2004). So the investigators planed to compare fecal RNA test with FOBT for detecting colorectal cancer and adenoma.

Measurement of reactive oxygen species production and antioxidant system status before and directly after reperfusion of the transplanted kidney and influence of oxidant stress on kidney function in 2 and 6 weeks.

This study tests the feasibility and reproducibility of patient-specific motion models. These will be used for quantification of safe margin reduction. Patient-specific motion models will be built by post-processing 4D MRI data with non-rigid registration. By comparing these models between visits, model reproducibility will be assessed, and the methodology refined.

The purpose of this study is to create a tissue bank of gynecologic cancers and normal tissue for the study of cancer in order to better understand the changes occurring on a molecular level (DNA, RNA, protein) that lead to the development of cancer.

Our overall objective in this study is to study the role of B cells in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), using a combination of high-throughput experimental and novel bioinformatical techniques. Idiopathic IBD includes Crohn's disease (CD) and Ulcerative Colitis (UC), which are chronic inflammatory disorders of the intestine. IBD is common in developed countries, with up to 1 in 200 of individuals affected by theses diseases. It is currently thought that the disease arises owing to a complex array of genetic, environmental and immunologic susceptibility factors. T cells are thought to cause the lesions, but the B cell population apparently has a significant role as well, through secreting antibodies against certain self-antigens. We believe that a major contribution to the understanding of the pathogenesis of IBD, and especially of the immune pathway leading to CD, can be achieved by analysis of the B cell clones participating in immune responses in the gut, in particular their immunoglobulin (Ig) variable region gene diversity, which has never before been studied in the context of IBD. The adaptive immune system is one of the only two biological systems capable of continuously learning and memorizing its experiences. This is a highly complex, distributed system, in which pathogen recognition, decision-making and action are performed by an interacting network of diverse lymphocytes. Immune learning and memory are embedded in the dynamical states of the complete lymphocyte repertoire, and cannot be understood by studying the behavior of single cell types. This complexity, further increased by the non-linear behavior of each component, can only be elucidated by using theoretical tools to complement experimental and clinical studies. Needless to say, many aspects of the deregulation of lymphocyte clones are not evident in the phenotype of the single cell but rather in the population dynamics of a whole clone (or many clones) of cells, as in B cell lymphomas. Such aspects are best elucidated by studies of the population dynamics and genetics of the relevant B cell clone(s). In this study, we propose to utilize a novel bioinformatical approach - the analysis of the shapes of Ig gene mutational lineage trees. This is the main innovative feature in our proposal, as it taps into parameters that have never before been measured or analyzed with respect to B lymphocytes in IBD. While the method is new, it has already been shown that graphical analysis of B cell lineage trees and mathematical quantification of tree properties provide novel insights into the mechanisms of normal and malignant B cell clonal evolution. A preliminary analysis of lineage trees from other autoimmune diseases (shown below) indicates that, given sufficient amounts of data, the method could elucidate changes in Ig gene diversification and selection in IBD patients. Moreover, we aim to search for correlations between the parameters characterizing Ig gene diversification and parameters characterizing patients, disease history and severity, and histological markers, as this has the potential of yielding novel diagnostic and prognostic tools.

The purpose of this study is to determine if increasing the linear rise rate of injection of x-ray contrast in the heart during left ventriculograms(part of a cardiac Catheterization procedure) will decrease the incidence of arrythmias and improve image quality?

In earlier work, the Sponsor developed a computer image processing system for analysis of pain diagrams from patients with chronic pain. This system was then tested in a study in over 500 chronic pain patients seen by both primary care practitioners and pain specialists. The hypothesis was that pain location would correlate with the pain type and the underlying cause of the pain. In the study, the computer analysis demonstrated clear correlations between pain diagram data and diagnosis/pain type. The present study extends these observations in a web-based setting, with a focus on the value of computer analysis of pain diagrams as diagnostic predictors.