Recent advances in opto-electronics have enabled the development of an equipment detectable of non-visible, extremely weak light emitted from organic and inorganic materials at the levels of approximately 10^-6 of the minimally visible light.
In this extremely faint light intensity region, photons emitted do not compose a continuous flow and are rather scattered. These photons are better expressed as the number of the photons counted per unit of time in the measurement.
Application of the equipment in the assessment of ultraweak chemiluminescence in biological and medical fields has been now revealing several interesting findings and playing a role in the understanding of basic process of aging and of causes and consequences of diseases including carcinogenesis.
Weak light emissions from biological and chemical substances, like those seen in the reactions of luciferin-luciferase of firefly and of luminol, have been long since known. These phenomena are called bioluminescence and chemiluminescence, respectively, though the fundamental process underlying in both phenomena is the same and of the photon emission in the transition of an excited state of molecule to its basal state.
Among those weak light emitting phenomena, extremely weak, non-visible light emissions are sometimes described as extraweak chemiluminescence or ultra-weak chemilumenescence.
Singlet oxygen, one of active oxygen species, causes chemiluminescence. The transitions of the various excited states of siglet oxygen molecules to the basal triplet state accompany photon emissions. This nature favors the detection of siglet oxygen in biological samples, though precise causion is needed as the light emitting excited molecular species are not only siglet oxygen in biological materials.
In the present studies, ultra-weak chemiluminescence of human blood has been estimated in both healthy and diseased subjects.
Plasma samples of diabetic patients showed higher light emission than those of healthy subjects. The magnitudes of the increases in the ultra-weak chemilumenscence of the plasma of diabetic subjects were approximately twice of the healthy ones.
Plasma smaples of the patients with liver diseases also gave higher levels of light emission of various magnitudes. Plasma samples of the patients with hyperbilirubinemia like obstructive jaundice showed extraordinarily high light emission that increased gradually with time. Scavenger experiments and analysis of ultra-weak chemiluminescence specturm of the highly light emitting plasma indicated the contribution of singlet oxygen in the photon emitting phenomenon.
Healthy smoker's blood samples also showed higher light emission levels. These increases returned to the nonsmoker's levels by the cessation of smoking within 24 hours. Cigarette smoke itself was found to possess very high photon emitting property.
The light emission of the cigarette smoke absorbed into dimethyl sulfoxide was found to require the presence of molecular oxygen. Spectral analysis and scavenger experiments of this absorbed cigarette smoke lead to the indication that singlet oxygen is involved in this light emission of cigarette smoke.
Free redicals and active oxygens are of interest in the consideration of aging process and mechanisms of diseases, but are not easy to handle in clinical laboratory. The detection of singlet oxygen using ultra-weak cheiluminescence is easier. Several instances of the actual measurements of ultra-weak chemiluminescence are presented.

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The purpose of the present study is to clarify the relationship among clinical severity of dementia, associated clinical symptoms and degree of brain atrophy. The subjects of this study were 109 demented patients with clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer type dementia. The age of them ranged from 51 years to 87 years with mean age of 71.8±8.8 years. Clinical severity of dementia was evaluated by using Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) by Hughes et al. Intellectual impairment was assessed psychologically by Hasagawa's dementia scale which was one of the standadized psychometric tests for the elderly with dementia in Japan. Brain atrophy was estimated in the three computed tomographic sections. They were the section through anterior and posterior horns of lateral ventricles, the section through cellae mediae of lateral ventricles and the section through cortex. Degree of brain atrophy was evaluated by two indexes, that is, CSF% and half width full max (HWFM) obtained from the pixel number and CT number histogram in each section, which were considered to correspond to the enlargement of the free space and mainly to the cortical atrophy, respectively.
Following results were obtained:
1. Among the clinical symptoms, lack of voluntary was most frequent, which was observed in more than 50% of the subjects. Wandering, personality change and aggres-sivity followed in order of the frequency.
2. According to severity of dementia by CDR, lack of voluntary, hypochondriac state and depressive state were most frequently observerd in the elderly with mild dementia. In severe demented state, wandering, persinality change and incontinence were most frequently seen.
3. According to the results by quantification analysis, depressive state in the mild dementia and coprolagnia and wandering in the severe dementia were characteristically observed.
4. According to degree of brain atrophy, quntificantion analysis showed that enlargement of lateral ventricles were characteristically found in the patients with coprolagnia and incontinence, compared with the patients without those symptoms. Also, less enlarged ventricles were observed in the patients with depressive state, compared with the patients without depressive state.
5. It was indicated by quantification analysis that the cortical sulci were more enlarged in the patients with wandering and hallucinations, compared with the patients without those symptoms. Also, the cortical sulci were less enlarged in the patients with coprolagnia, comparing with the patients without coprolagnia.
6. The analysis of the relationship between clinical symptoms and HWFM showed that the HWFM in the section through lateral ventricles was more increased in the patients with incontinence and personality change, compared with the patients without those symptoms. Also, the HWFM in the cortex slice was more increased in the patients with perseveration, compared with the patients without perseveration.
The above mentioned results seem to indicate the relationship between the degree of brain atrophy by CT and characteristic symptoms which are likely to be specific to each stage of dementia. The clinical implications of these results were discussed.

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1) Control group of 35 cases (avergae age, 67.5 years; period of observation, 27 to 117 months, average 63.2 months) and Elastase group (6cap, 10800EL.U./day) of 50 cases (average age, 64.8 years; period of observation, 31 to 118 months, average 82.4 months) were measured for aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV) every 3 months and its assay was made in terms of stochastic changes in both group.
2) PWV increased from 8.77m/sec to 11.7m/sec after 90 months for control group and from 8.20m/sec to 9.87m/sec after 100 months for Elastase group, with regression coefficient of 0.0367 for the fomer against lower regression coefficient of 0.0174 for the latter. Significant differences (p<0.05 to 0.01) were observed in PWV between both group on and after 20 month of observation.
3) Judgements made in terms of distribution of regression coefficient, of the effects in all cases of Elastase group revealed 5 ineffective cases (more than 0.0677 of regression coefficinet), 11 slightly effective cases (0.0174 to 0.0367 of regression coefficient), 26 effective cases (0 to 0.0174 of regression coefficient) and 8 remarkably effective case (less than 0 of regression coefficient).

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The purposes of this study were firstly to compare the validity of estimated maximal oxygen intake (V_O2 max) from different conventional methods and secondary to develop a multiple regression equations for the estimation of V_O2 max at a bicycle ergometer. The subjects tested were 21 physically active men aged 42-74 years and 13 physically inactive women aged 32-53 years.
A) The estimated V_O2max values by Åstrand-Ryhming, Döbeln et al., and Siconolfi et al. were obtained from directly measured physiological parameters (heart rate and oxygen intake) and work load during the submaximal work at one work rate. The validities of their estimation methods of V_O2max were examined. Siconolfi's procedure was found to be the best fit estimation method of V_O2max in both physically active and inactive subjects at whole heart rate (HR) levels, especially at heart rate, 131-140beats/min level.
B) Similarly, the validity of the estimated V_O2 max by another investigators (Maritz et al. and Margaria et al.) were examined on the submaximal work at two or four rates of work. When the estimation methods by Maritz et al. and Margaria et al. are available, it is revealed that such estimations caused trouble at the determination of population mean maximal heart rate (HRmax) or individual's one. A comparison between the two different procedures as mentioned above was carried in our laboratory, and as compared with Margaria's procedure, Maritz's procedure gave better estimation V_O2 max for physically inactive women, however less for physically active men.
C) From a multiple regression equation obtained in this study, a percentage error of estimate (EE, %) and correlation coefficient(r) derived from data from physically active men were as follows;
1) At heart rate 131-140beats/min level;
Y=0.7505+0.1263·V_O2/HR
(EE=6.2±4.5%; r=0.681)
2) At heart rate 151-169beats/min level;
Y=0.4511-2.3967·V_O2+0.5309·V_O2/HR
(EE=4.0±9.1%; r=0.493)
where Y is the V_O2 max (l/min).
Including physically active men and inactive women were shown as below;
3) At heart rate 131-140beats/min level: EE=3.8±8.5%; r=0.899
4) At heart rate 151-169beats/min level: EE=2.7±8.9%; r=0.886
It was suggested that those estimated equations for V_O2max gave a good correspondence to those measured values and might be utilized more accurate estimation and easy to practical use.

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