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Trehalose is a non-reducing disaccharide consisting of two glucose residues. Industrial mass-production of trehalose from starch has been achieved by using enzymatic reactions of maltooligo-syltrehalose synthase and maltooligosyltrehalose trehalohydrolase. This saccharide is available for various foods and has many useful functions; sweetening, low-damage to nutrients, and prevention of degeneration of starch and proteins. In this review, we present several functions of trehalose revealed by recent studies. Degradation of fatty acids and the formation of volatile aldehydes from fatty acids are remarkably suppressed by trehalose. This saccharide is preventive of the body odor (volatile aldehydes) of aged persons. In addition, trehalose has inhibitive effects on DNA-strand scission and protein modification by lipid oxidative products. Trehalose is effective in stabilizing vitamin C and SOD-like activity. Trehalose has shown ability to interact with minerals, including calcium chloride. Because of the interaction between trehalose and minerals, trehalose can be applied to improve of the property of mineral-containing products. From these results, it has been seen that trehalose has the benefits of lipid, minerals and vitamins other than starch and protein, including its function as a malti-functional saccharide. Trehalose has wide applications in foods, cosmetics and phamaceuticals.

More than 30 years ago, population-based tumor registries were established in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This report, the first of a series of papers on cancer incidence, describes methodological aspects of the tumor registries and discusses issues of data quality in the context of the Life Span Study (LSS) cohort, the major atomic bomb survivor population. The tumor registries in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are characterized by active case ascertainment based on abstraction of medical records at area hospitals, augmented by tissue registries operational in the area and a number of clinical and pathological programs undertaken over the years among the atomic bomb survivors. Using conventional measures of quality, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki tumor registries have a death certificate-only (DCO) rate of less than 9%, a mortality/incidence (M/I) ratio of about 50%, and a histological verification (HV) rate in excess of 70%, which place these registries among the best in Japan and comparable to many established registries worldwide. All tumor registry data pertaining to the LSS population were assembled, reviewed and handled with special attention given to the quality and uniformity of data based on standardized procedures. Special studies and monitoring programs were also introduced to evaluate the quality of the tumor incidence data in the LSS. Analyses were performed to examine the quality of incidence data overall and across various substrata used for risk assessment such as age, time and radiation dose groups. No significant associations were found between radiation dose and data quality as measured by various indices. These findings warrant the use of the present tumor registry-based data for studies of cancer incidence in the atomic bomb survivors.

This report presents, for the first time, comprehensive data on the incidence of solid cancer and risk estimates for A-bomb survivors in the extended Life Span Study (LSS-E85) cohort. Among 79,972 ...