- 著者
- Kazuhiko Yamashita Tomoko Yamashita Mitsuru Sato Masahiro Inoue Yoshimasa Takase
- 出版者
- Japanese Society for Medical and Biological Engineering
- 雑誌
- Advanced Biomedical Engineering (ISSN:21875219)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.9, pp.117-124, 2020 (Released:2020-07-30)
- 参考文献数
- 27
- 被引用文献数
- 4
Chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia increase the medical costs for middle-aged and elderly people, thus requiring preventive intervention. Monitoring, maintaining, or increasing the number of steps walked per day could be expected to effectively reduce medical costs. We evaluated the medical costs for chronic diseases after the implementation of a step count monitoring system with an information communication technology that we hypothesized would efficiently decrease medical costs. We enrolled 342 subjects in the intervention group. An additional 1,025 subjects were selected as controls by matching with the intervention group for age, gender, and total medical costs accumulated in the year prior to the study. The subjects in the intervention group were provided with pedometers that were used with reading devices stationed throughout the city. The duration of the intervention was 18 months. The subjects were given health points based on their activity performance improvements such as the number of steps they walked. The medical costs for the 18 months before and afer the intervention were compared. The effect of cost reduction was evaluated by comparing the percent increase in medical cost from before to after intervention between the control group and the intervention group. After the intervention period, the medical costs increased in the control group but not in the intervention group. The step counts for the first three months and the last three months of the intervention period were assessed, and the results showed that an average step count of 8000 steps was maintained throughout the intervention period. Assuming that the control group showed a natural increase in medical costs, the results suggest that the natural increase in medical costs was suppressed in the intervention group during the intervention period as a result of using the pedometer technology and health points. Therefore, we found that encouraging the participants to proactively participate in walking was an effective strategy.
- 著者
- Tomoyo Nishihira Asami Miyano Takayuki Ohnuma Takeshi Gotoh Saori Takahashi Kazue Narihiro Kazuhiko Yamashita Tamo Fukamizo
- 出版者
- 日本応用糖質科学会
- 雑誌
- Journal of Applied Glycoscience (ISSN:13447882)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.61, no.4, pp.113-116, 2014 (Released:2014-11-20)
- 参考文献数
- 16
- 被引用文献数
- 2
A simple turbidimetric assay using chitin nanofiber as the substrate was employed to measure chitinase activity. The higher dispersive properties of chitin nanofibers enabled the degradation of chitin to be monitored turbidimetrically. When non-processive chitinases, a family GH18 chitinase from the tobacco plant and a GH19 chitinase from rye seeds, were added to the β-chitin nanofiber suspension, no significant changes were observed in the turbidity of the suspension, however, the amounts of reducing sugars produced were significantly high and small amounts of GlcNAc and (GlcNAc)2 were detected by HPLC in the reaction mixture. However, the addition of a processive family GH18 chitinase, Serratia marcescence chitinase B or chitinase from Autographa californica multiple nucleopolyhedrovirus, resulted in a significant decrease in the turbidity of the chitin nanofiber suspension, and produced larger amounts of reducing sugars including GlcNAc and (GlcNAc)2. The rate of decreases in turbidity was clearly dependent upon the enzyme concentration. We concluded that the turbidimetric assay using β-chitin nanofibers as the substrate was useful for measuring the activities of processive chitinases.