Pancreaticobiliary maljunction (PBM) is a congenital anomaly defined as a union of the pancreatic and biliary duct that is located outside the duodenal wall. The Japanese Study Group on Pancreaticobiliary Maljunction and the Committee for Registration enrolled and analyzed 1627 patients with PBM who had been diagnosed and treated from January 1, 1990 to December 31, 1999 at 141 hospitals throughout the country. There were 1239 patients with dilatation of the bile duct (group A) and 388 patients without dilatation (group B). The average age was 24 years in group A and 47 years in group B; the age was significantly higher in group B. The type of confluence between the terminal choledochus and the pancreatic duct has been classified into three types (type a, right-angle type; type b, acute-angle type; and type c, complex type). In group A, type a accounted for 57.9% and was significantly more frequent compared with the other types (type b, 32.4%; type c, 5.6%). In group B, type b accounted for 60.8%, being significantly more frequent compared with the other types (type a, 29.4%; type c, 7.2%). Subjective symptoms, preoperative complications (e.g., liver dysfunction and acute pancreatitis), pancreatic stone, and pancreatic duct morphological abnormality were significantly more frequent in group A. However, the amylase levels in the bile and gallbladder were significantly higher in group B, and the presence of gallstone and morphological abnormality of the gallbladder was significantly more frequent in group B. The occurrence rate of cancer in the biliary tract was 10.6% in group A and 37.9% in group B, being significantly higher in group B. In group A, cancer of the extrahepatic bile duct was seen in 33.6% and cancer of the gallbladder was seen in 64.9%, but gallbladder cancer was present significantly more frequently in the patients with diffuse or cylindrical dilatation, and bile duct cancer was present significantly more frequently in the patients with cystic dilatation. In group B, 93.2% of the patients had gallbladder cancer, and bile duct cancer was found in as few as 6.8%. Against this background Japanese surgeons regard cholecystectomy, resection of the extrahepatic bile duct, and hepaticojejunostomy as standard operations for PBM with dilatation of the bile duct. However, opinion on whether or not the bile duct should be removed in the treatment of PBM without dilatation of the bile duct has been divided among Japanese surgeons. A randomized controlled trial is necessary.

Continuous (CW) and pulsed light were used for the noninvasive measurement of hemoglobin oxygenation in tissues. A dual wavelength method of continuous illumination spectroscopy used 760 nm (deoxyhemoglobin peak) and 800 nm (an oxyhemoglobin-deoxyhemoglobin isosbestic point) to measure the kinetics and extent of oxyhemoglobin deoxygenation in brains during mild ischemia/hypoxia. Absorption and scattering were modeled in an artificial milk/yeast blood system, which gave an exponential relationship between absorption and optical path length to a depth of 7 cm. Time-resolved spectroscopy (10-ps resolution) afforded a display of the times and distances of arrival of photons emitted by the cat brain in response to a 10-ps input pulse. The emitted photons rose to a peak in a fraction of a nanosecond and declined exponentially over a few nanoseconds. The half-time of exponential decay corresponds to photon migration over a distance of 4 cm. Exponential light emission continued for several more nanoseconds when the brain was encased by the skull, which plays a key role in prolonging light emission. The exponential decline of light intensity has a value [exp( -pL)], where L is the path length determined from the time/distance scale and ,u is the characteristic of the migration of light in the brain. The factor ,u is increased by increasing absorption, and 1z' = EC where E and C are the Beer-Lambert parameters of extinction coeffilcient (E) and concentration (C). Thus, deoxyhemoglobin can be quantified in brain tissues.The utility of optical methods in studying metabolism and oxidative processes in cells and tissues was significantly enhanced in the early 1950s when a time-sharing dualwavelength system was developed for the quantitation of small changes in absorption in a highly scattering medium such as cell suspensions or muscle tissues in the visible and near-infrared (NIR) regions (1,2). Fluorescence signals from mitochondrial NADH complemented the absorption method for studies of the surface of heart, brain, and skeletal tissue (3,4). NIR spectroscopy was used to detect the redox state of the copper component of cytochrome oxidase in mitochondria (2) and yeast cells (5), and Jobsis-VanderVliet and coworkers (6-8) pioneered the study of NIR absorption in tissues by transillumination. More recently, algorithms have been developed by vanderZee and Delpy (9) to compensate for the interference from hemoglobin and myoglobin with cytochrome copper, as the latter may constitute as little as 10% of the total signal at 830 nm (see also ref. 10).This paper compares the use of continuous (CW) and pulsed light. The CW method has been applied to both animal and model systems to determine: (i) the attenuation characteristic of the light in models containing localized deoxyhemoglobin (Hb) and (ii) the ability to observe hypoxia in the brains of human subjects.II However, CW systems fail to quantify concentrations because they do not measure the optical path.The pulsed-light system time-resolves the emergence of light pulses ...

During epithelial morphogenesis, adherens junctions (AJs) and tight junctions (TJs) undergo dynamic reorganization, whereas epithelial polarity is transiently lost and reestablished. Although ARF6-mediated endocytic recycling of E-cadherin has been characterized and implicated in the rapid remodeling of AJs, the molecular basis for the dynamic rearrangement of TJs remains elusive. Occludin and claudins are integral membrane proteins comprising TJ strands and are thought to be responsible for establishing and maintaining epithelial polarity. Here we investigated the intracellular transport of occludin and claudins to and from the cell surface. Using cell surface biotinylation and immunofluorescence, we found that a pool of occludin was continuously endocytosed and recycled back to the cell surface in both fibroblastic baby hamster kidney cells and epithelial MTD-1A cells. Biochemical endocytosis and recycling assays revealed that a Rab13 dominant active mutant (Rab13 Q67L) inhibited the postendocytic recycling of occludin, but not that of transferrin receptor and polymeric immunoglobulin receptor in MTD-1A cells. Double immunolabelings showed that a fraction of endocytosed occludin was colocalized with Rab13 in MTD-1A cells. These results suggest that Rab13 specifically mediates the continuous endocytic recycling of occludin to the cell surface in both fibroblastic and epithelial cells.

ECM proteins have important roles in acquired resistance to anticancer drugs and cell proliferation regulation of pancreatic cancer cells. Therefore, the expression of ECM proteins in pancreatic cancer specimens could provide valuable information to aid anticancer drug cytotoxicity, and gemcitabine would be useful for treatment of patients with pancreatic cancer.