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

3

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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

Sayumi Matsuda Mitsuru Sato Sho Ohno Soo-Jung Yang Motoaki Doi Munetaka Hosokawa

出版者

園芸学会

雑誌

Journal of the Japanese Society for Horticultural Science (ISSN:18823351)

巻号頁・発行日

pp.MI-009, (Released:2014-09-20)

被引用文献数

3 14

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For determination of the endogenous and exogenous causes of somaclonal variation in in vitro culture, a bioassay system was developed using the variegated Saintpaulia (African violet) ‘Thamires’ (Saintpaulia sp.), having pink petals with blue splotches caused by transposon VGs1 (Variation Generator of Saintpaulia 1) deletion in the promoter region of flavonoid 3',5'-hydroxylase. Not only true-to-type but also many solid blue and chimeric plants regenerate in vitro-cultured explants of this cultivar. Using multiplex PCR that enables the determination of these variations, we attempted to evaluate the effects of four candidate triggers of mutation: pre-existing mutated cells, shooting conditions in vitro or ex vitro, cutting treatment of explants, and addition of plant growth regulators (PGRs) to the medium. The percentages of somaclonal variations among total shoots regenerated from leaf segments and stamens were 46.6 and 56.5, which were higher than the percentages expected from pre-existing mutated cells (3.6 and 1.4, respectively). These results indicate that pre-existing mutated cells are not a main cause of somaclonal variations. The percentage of somaclonal variation was independent of culture conditions for mother plants; the mutation percentages of adventitious shoots regenerated from ex vitro- and in vitro-grown leaves were 9.2% and 8.5%, respectively. In addition, the percentage of somaclonal variations of adventitious shoots regenerated under in vitro conditions from the in vitro grown mother plants was also low, at 4.9%. This indicates that the in vitro condition itself is not a main cause of somaclonal variation. However, when adventitious shoots were regenerated from 10 × 5-mm cut-leaf laminas on a PGR-free medium, the percentage of somaclonal variation was 26.4%. In addition, the percentage of somaclonal variations dramatically increased when PGRs were added to the medium for both leaves and leaf segments (39.9 and 46.6, respectively). The bioassay system using Saintpaulia ‘Thamires’ will enable the screening of many environmental factors because of its rapidity and ease of use and will facilitate the development of a new tissue culture technology for avoiding mutation.