A recent survey of 79 countries showed that fertility knowledge was lower in Japan than in any other developed country. Given the fertility decline in Japan and the importance of fertility knowledge, we conducted an online survey to examine fertility knowledge and the related factors for effective public education. We studied people aged 18-59 years old, n = 4,328 (the “General” group), and also people who had been trying to conceive for at least six months, 18-50 years old, n = 618 (the “Triers” group). Fertility knowledge was assessed using the Japanese version of the 13-item Cardiff Fertility Knowledge Scale (CFKS-J). All participants provided socio-demographic and fertility information. Participants also completed a 14-item health literacy scale and an 11-item health numeracy scale. We asked participants who were aware of age-related decline in fertility when and where they first acquired that knowledge. The average percentages of CFKS-J items answered correctly were 53.1% in the Triers group and 44.4% in the General group (p < 0.001). Multivariate linear regression models showed in the Triers group greater fertility knowledge was associated with greater health literacy and prior medical consultation regarding their fertility. In the General group greater fertility knowledge was associated with being female, younger, university educated, currently trying to conceive, non-smoking, having higher household income, having higher health literacy and having higher health numeracy. Of those who were aware of the age-related decline in fertility, around 3% first learned the fact “at school”, and around 65% first learned it “through mass media” or “via the Internet”. More than 30% of the respondents first learned it “less than 5 years before” the survey. Although fertility knowledge had improved since a previous study, possibly due to recent media coverage of age-related infertility, it was still low. Educational interventions, both in schools and in the community, may be needed to increase fertility knowledge in the general population because most people obtain fertility knowledge from mass media, which has been shown to often present distorted and inaccurate fertility information.

Failure and delay in initial treatment contact for mental disorders has been recognized as an important public health problem. According to the concept of mental health literacy, recognition of symptoms is crucial to making decisions to seek or not seek professional help. The aims of this study were to investigate the types of health problems for which Japanese adults intend to seek help, their preferred sources of help, and the factors associated with help-seeking intentions. A cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted in June 2014 among Japanese adults aged 20–59 years. A total of 3308 eligible respondents were included in this study. Help-seeking intentions were measured by listing potential sources of help (including ‘would not receive help’) and asking which ones would be chosen in four health conditions indicated by irritability, dizziness, insomnia, and depressed mood, respectively. In the case of dizziness, 85.9 % of the participants reported a positive help-seeking intention and 42.7 % gave first priority to seeking help from formal sources. These percentages were smaller in the cases of insomnia (75.4 and 25.0 %), depressed mood (74.9 and 18.7 %), and irritability (72.9 and 0.9 %). Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that the factors significantly associated with help-seeking intentions were almost identical across the four health problems. In particular, perception of family and friends regarding help-seeking, psychiatric history, contact with people with mental illness, better health literacy, and neighborhood communicativeness were significantly associated with the overall help-seeking intention and also the help-seeking intention from formal sources for all the problems of dizziness, insomnia, and depressed mood. The majority of participants indicated their intentions to seek help, but psychological problems (insomnia and depressed mood) were less likely to induce help-seeking intentions than a physical problem (dizziness). Besides developing health literacy skills, community-based interventions for creating a friendly approachable atmosphere and facilitating daily interactions with family, friends, and neighbors may be worth considering as a possible public health strategy for encouraging help-seeking whether for psychological or physical problems.

We conducted a cross-sectional study to elucidate factors contributing to vasovagal reaction (VVR), the most frequent side effect following whole blood and apheresis donations. Complications recorded at the collection sites after voluntary donations by the Japanese Red Cross Tokyo Blood Center (JRC), in the 2006 and 2007 fiscal years, were analyzed by both univariate analysis and the multivariate conditional logistic regression model. Of 1,119,716 blood donations over the full two years, complications were recorded for 13,320 donations (1.18%), among which 67% were VVR. There were 4,303 VVR cases which had sufficient information and could be used for this study. For each VVR case, two sex- and age-matched controls (n = 8,606) were randomly selected from the donors without complications. Age, sex, body mass index (BMI), predonation blood pressure, pulse and blood test results, including total protein, albumin, and hemoglobin, were compared between the VVR group and the control group. In univariate analysis, the VVR group was significantly younger, with a lower BMI, higher blood pressure and higher blood protein and hemoglobin levels than the control group (p<0.001). Furthermore, blood protein and hemoglobin levels showed dose-dependent relationships with VVR incidences by the Cochran-Armitage trend test (p<0.01). For both sexes, after adjusting for confounders with the multivariate conditional logistic regression model, the higher than median groups for total protein (male: OR 1.97; 95%CI 1.76,-2.21; female: OR 2.29; 95%CI 2.05–2.56), albumin (male: 1.75; 1.55–1.96; female: 1.76; 1.57–1.97) and hemoglobin (male: 1.98; 1.76–2.22; female: 1.62; 1.45–1.81) had statistically significant higher risk of VVR compared to the lower than median groups. These elevated serum protein and hemoglobin levels might offer new indicators to help understand VVR occurrence.

Health state utilities are global measurements of quality of life and have been used to evaluate health outcomes for the cost-utility analysis. This study aimed to estimate the health state utilities of patients with hepatitis B (HB), hepatitis C (HC), and hepatitis-related diseases in Japan. We distributed a self-administered questionnaire, including the EuroQol 5-Dimension 5-Level (EQ-5D-5L), to 9,952 outpatients with several clinical conditions caused by HB or HC virus infection (such as asymptomatic chronic hepatitis, chronic hepatitis, compensated cirrhosis, and decompensated cirrhosis) and estimated the condition-specific utilities of patients with HB or HC. In patients with more severe conditions (patients with acute hepatitis, fulminant hepatitis, and hepatocellular carcinoma and patients undergoing post-liver transplantation), the utilities of these severe conditions were estimated by three hepatitis experts using the EQ-5D-5L. The means of the utilities for acute hepatitis, fulminant hepatitis, asymptomatic chronic hepatitis, chronic hepatitis, compensated cirrhosis, compensated cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma stage I/II, hepatocellular carcinoma stage III/IV, and post-liver transplantation were 0.529, − 0.111, 0.904, 0.868, 0.845, 0.722, 0,675, 0,428, and 0.651 and 0.876, 0.821, 0.737, 0.671, 0.675, 0.428, and 0.651 in HB and HC, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that comprehensively assessed the health state utilities of patients with HB, HC and hepatitis-related conditions from a nationwide survey in Japan using the EQ-5D-5L.

Background: The loss of E-cadherin expression and the induction of N-cadherin are known as hallmarks of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, an essential initial step in the process of metastasis in solid tumors. Although several studies have reported expressions of these cadherins in patients with multiple myeloma (MM), their clinical significance is unknown as MM cells are non-epithelial. Methods: In this study, we examined the expression of E- and N-cadherins by immunohistochemistry using bone marrow (BM) biopsy specimens from 31 newly diagnosed MM patients and in subsequent biopsy specimens from six of these. Results: Negative E-cadherin expression on BM myeloma cell membranes was significantly associated with the presence of soft-tissue masses arising from bone lesions and breaking through the cortical bone, referred to as extramedullary disease (EMD). Conclusions: Given the aggressive nature of EMD, our study suggests that screening for E-cadherin using BM immunohistochemistry is one measure that could predict the development of EMD in patients with MM.