Shuji Terai

By Hiroteru Kamimura, Tomoyuki Sugano, Ryoko Horigome, Naruhiro Kimura, Masaaki Takamura, Hirokazu Kawai, Satoshi Yamagiwa and Shuji Terai

Intra-abdominal hypertension (IAH) is defined as an intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) above 12 mmHg. Abdominal compartment syndrome (ACS) is defined as an IAP above 20 mmHg with evidence of organ failure. Moreover, IAH/ACS is a condition that can cause acute renal failure, respiratory failure, circulatory disease, gastrointestinal dysfunction, and liver failure due to elevated IAP. The incidence of IAH/ACS increases in the more critically ill patient and is associated with significantly increased morbidity and mortality. Ascites, blood, or tumors increase IAP. In liver cirrhosis, massive ascites is often encountered. Hence, preventing IAH/ACS conditions may improve outcomes of patients with liver disease.

Part of the book: Management of Chronic Liver Diseases

By Takeshi Yokoo, Kenya Kamimura, Tsutomu Kanefuji, Takeshi Suda and Shuji Terai

Gene therapy returns to the center stage of medicine to treat patients with diseases that are unable to be cured with the conventional therapeutic strategies. This development is due to various reasons, including vector development and significant achievement in next-generation sequencing. Among the various methodologies of gene therapy, nucleic acid-based therapy has been considered to be promising in various diseases. The development of delivery methods to target cells in vivo, however, remains critical. These include viral vector-based and nonviral vector-based gene delivery methods as well as physical approaches such as hydrodynamic gene delivery (HGD). HGD is a simple and effective in vivo gene transfer method for the functional analysis of therapeutic genes and regulatory elements in small animals. Moreover, this chapter outlines the principle of HGD, gene expression studies in rodents, and recent advances in clinical application of HGD and provides future perspectives in developing a safe and efficient method for nucleic acid-based therapy.

Part of the book: In Vivo and Ex Vivo Gene Therapy for Inherited and Non-Inherited Disorders

By Masaki Maruyama, Kenya Kamimura, Moeno Sugita, Nao Nakajima, Yoshifumi Takahashi, Osamu Isokawa and Shuji Terai

Chronic constipation, a common condition, can have remarkably negative effects on a patient’s quality of life. Recent research has identified factors that may influence the prognosis of chronic constipation and suggests the need for adequate therapy. However, the major obstacles in this field were: (1) a small number of therapeutic options, (2) no clear diagnostic criteria, and (3) no effective method to collect information form the patients. These were due to the fact that bowel movement patterns vary widely among individuals, and also the functional constipation, including irritable bowel syndrome, is difficult to be distinguished from the chronic constipation. Recently, it has been demonstrated that the Rome IV diagnostic criteria of functional constipation and the Bristol stool form scale are useful for the objective evaluation and recording of stool. Based on these developments, and the increase of newly developed medicines the therapy for the constipation is significantly changing and therefore, if conventional therapy for chronic constipation is ineffective, switching of medicines is possible. Therefore, clinicians should update the information of these newly developed drugs available in clinics and diagnostic criteria. For this purpose, in this chapter, we have summarized the perspective on the current paradigm of treatment for chronic constipation focusing on recently introduced therapeutic drugs.

Part of the book: Constipation