Calcification of spinal cord tumors: report of two cases

Two cases of calcification of spinal cord tumors were detected by computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. The first; a 27-year-old male, with a very rare astrocytoma accompanied by calcification of the thoracic spinal cord, and the second; a 62-year-old female, with a rare calcified neurilemmoma in the upper cervical extradural space. The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the fact that some spinal cord tumors occasionally contain areas of calcification, and review the literature on this subject.     

Biosynthesis of astromicin and related antibiotics. I. Biosynthetic studies by bioconversion experiments

Biosynthesis of astromicin, a unique pseudodisaccharide aminoglycoside antibiotic containing 1,4-diaminocyclitol component, was investigated by isolating a variety of possible precursor compounds from mutants of Micromonospora olivasterospora in which biosynthetic pathways for astromicin were blocked. Washed mycelia of M. olivasterospora mutants converted these compounds to astromicin, which was detected by thin-layer chromatography. Since astromicin possesses one glycyl and three methyl groups, [14C]glycine and [14C]methionine should be incorporated into precursors to form astromicin. To confirm the biosynthetic pathway, formation of labeled astromicin from the precursors was examined using [1-14C]-glycine or [methyl-14C]methionine. From above results, we propose the biosynthetic pathway for astromicin as shown in Fig. 2.     

Clinicopathological study of early multicentric gastric carcinomas

During a two-year period, from August, 1983 to July, 1985, 144 gastric cancer patients have been treated at the National Tohsei Hospital. Among them, 57 patients were determined as having an early gastric carcinoma. Four patients (7.0%) of this number were found to have a multicentric type, 3 manifesting a double II c type, and 1 patient having both a I type and II a type. Pathologically these two types carcinomas were found in only one patient, in a so-called kissing position.     

Evaluation of intraoperative radiotherapy for carcinoma of the pancreas: prognostic factors and survival analyses

Among 145 patients with carcinoma of the pancreas who had been admitted to three institutions between 1976 and 1985, 117 were entered into a prognostic factor analysis system according to Cox's proportional hazards model. The treatment was classified into four modalities: bypass surgery, single-dose intraoperative radiotherapy (IOR), IOR combined with external irradiation, and resection with or without various radiations. The most important prognostic factors for treatment were identified as location of tumor, TNM stage, and relief of back pain. Adjusting the imbalances among the treatment groups using Cox's model, the superiority of IOR with external irradiation was confirmed for both bypass and single-dose IOR. With this adjustment, the survival rates proved to be more meaningful than the simple Kaplan-Meier estimates.