Medically unexplained somatic symptoms are problematic in psychiatry, primary care settings, and other clinical areas. The burden they impose on health-care systems constitutes a significant public health problem. At the international symposium "Rethinking Somatoform Disorders," this problem was addressed by specialists working in somatoform disorders, psychiatric nosology, epidemiology, and biological and cross-cultural psychiatry. The meeting was the third of the Keio University International Symposia for Life Sciences and Medicine, in collaboration with the World Health Organization and...

The aging of society is a growing concern in all advanced nations, and at the forefront of concern is long-term care for frail older people. Enactment of a new public long-term care insurance program by the Japanese government in 1997 provided an excellent opportunity for a conference focusing on an ideal long-term care system for frail older people. The conference was organized around four major themes: Social aspects, including family dynamics and the role of formal providers; Clinical aspects, including effective treatments for physical and mental disabilities; Macroeconomic and...

Because stroke is essentially a disease of the vessels and blood flow, the most fundamental aspects of ischemic blood flow in the brain are under investigation by researchers. Their work was the focus of the sixth in the series of Keio University International Symposia for Life Sciences and Medicine, held in Tokyo in 1999. Selected here are 55 papers from the symposium, covering the buffy coat (glycocalyx) of endothelial cells, the blood-brain barrier and permeability, gene expression, vascular reactivity, dysregulation, inflammatory deterioration, cortical spreading depression, edema,...