The purpose of this research was to clarify the effect of repeated administration of 2 kinds of energy drink,1 containing vitamins,taurine and caffeine (simple-type),and the other containing vitamins,taurine,caffeine and several botanical herb extracts (herb-type),on work performance using cognitively subjective and objective indicators.
The simple-type and herb-type drinks were given to 14 healthy young adults in a consecutive double-blind,randomized,2-period cross-over clinical trial.Participants took each energy drink once a day for five days during separate periods.Motivation,feeling of drowsiness,and general fatigue were evaluated on a subjective scale using a self-reported questionnaire both before and after administration.Other subjective evaluations were those based on the fatigue-visual analog scale (Fatigue-VAS) and multi-dimensional fatigue inventory-20 (MFI-20).As an objective measure,work performance was examined using the Kreapelin mental work test.
Compared to the simple-type drink,the herb-type drink achieved a significant reduction in drowsiness and significantly increased motivation based on the self-reported questionnaire results for the post-administration assessment.In the Kreapelin mental work test,the mean amount of work was significantly increased by both drinks.MFI-20 revealed significant decreases in 2 categories of physical fatigue and general fatigue due to the 2 drinks.The fatigue-VAS also indicated decreases but they were not statistically significant.
Both types of energy drink appeared to be effective in terms of subjective and objective indicators.Though the herb-type drink was found to be superior to the simple-type drink regarding subjective measures,there was no significant difference between the 2 regarding the objective measure.

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Recently,the number of patients with colorectal cancer has been increasing.Many patients are not aware of any symptoms until the disease is advanced.It is important to select effective regimens for colorectal cancer therapy and combination therapy with a molecular-targeted agent has recently been used for this purpose.However,the effects of anticancer drugs on epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR),a molecular-targeted protein,have not been clarified.We therefore evaluated the effects of folinic acid/5-fluorouracil/irinotecan (FOLFIRI) and folinic acid/5-fluorouracil/oxaliplatin (mFOLFOX citation=6)treatments,using the 3-(4,5-Dimethyl-2-thiazolyl)-2,5-diphenyl-2 H-tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay,as well as the effects of these treatments on EGFR expression in LoVo cells.
The results suggested that 5-fluorouracil and irinotecan have a stronger antiproliferative effect than oxaliplatin.The reduction in viability for LoVo cells treated with FOLFIRI was greater than that for Lovo cells treated with mFOLFOX 6 on day 22.Moreover,EGFR mRNA and protein levels were increased more by mFOLFOX 6 than by FOLFIRI.These results suggest that FOLFIRI therapy may be more effective than mFOLFOX 6 therapy against LoVo cells in consideration of EGFR expression.

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Benzodiazepines (BZDs) are frequently prescribed for the treatment of sleep disturbances,depression,anxiety syndromes and various somatoform disorders in the elderly.The daily doses of BZDs for elderly patients should be low enough to avoid the adverse effects.However,the actual situation of prescribing BZDs in Japan has not been fully elucidated.We,therefore.,analyzed 56,192 prescriptions including BZDs (23 BZDs including the non-BZD hypnotics,zolpidem and zopiclone) for 6,777 patients at Tsukuba University Hospital using Data Warehouse,a knowledge base technology.
Fifty-four percent of prescriptions including BZDs were from departments other than psychiatry,and 33.8% were for patients over 65 years old.Prescriptions for elderly patients from the psychiatry department were less frequent than those from other departments (18.4 vs.47.2%).While 83% of BZDs prescribed for elderly patients were short-acting BZDs,longacting BZDs were prescribed more frequently by the psychiatry department than others (41.2 vs.16.7%).Intentional dose reduction of BZDs for elderly patients was observed only for etizolam.Our results