A rare antenatally detected mass of the hand: tumour or congenital anomaly?

Tumour and tumour-like lesions of the hand can arise from various tissues and may present at birth. Rarely, anomalies of the hand may have an appearance mimicking a mass. We describe the imaging features of an antenatally detected floating thumb and describe its unusual mass-like appearance. While no hand tumour with similar imaging appearance has been reported, a few congenital lesions mimicking this appearance have been described. Awareness of these anomalies and identification of the typical imaging features of floating thumb allow diagnosis to be made with certainty.     

Risk for HIV-1 infection is not associated with repeat-region polymorphism in the DC-SIGN neck domain and novel genetic DC-SIGN variants among North Indians

BACKGROUND: Several genetic factors have been related to HIV-1 resistance, the homozygosity for a mutation in CCR5 gene (CCR5Delta 32 allele) is presently considered the most relevant one. The C-type lectin, DC-SIGN efficiently binds and transmits HIV-1 to susceptible cell in trans thereby augmenting the infection. A potential association of the DC-SIGN neck domain repeats polymorphism and risk of HIV-1 infection is currently under debate. METHODS: Genetic risk association study was conducted in HIV-1 exposed seronegative (HES; n=50) individuals, HIV-1 seronegative (HSN; n=314) healthy control and HIV-1 infected seropositive patients (HSP; n=190) for polymorphism in neck domain of DC-SIGN gene. The DC-SIGN genotypes were identified by PCR from DNA extracted from peripheral blood and confirmed by sequencing. Fisher exact or chi(2) test was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: One HSN and HSP individual who were heterozygous (7/8) with respect to DC-SIGN repeat regions were found. The DC-SIGN neck repeat polymorphism among North Indian individuals was not associated with susceptibility to HIV-1 infection. Furthermore, inheritance study of heterozygous mutation (7/8) in HSN individual's family showed that one parent, two brothers, one sister and one daughter were heterozygous (7/8) for DC-SIGN mutant allele. Sequence analyses of DC-SIGN exon 4 repeat region of randomly selected 25 North Indian individuals from HSP, HSN and HES revealed four conserved intronic mutations. These mutations were at nucleotide position 1283, 1306, 1308 upstream and 1906 downstream of the DC-SIGN exon 4 repeat region when compared with the wild type sequence (NCBI Acc. No. AF209479). CONCLUSION: The polymorphism in DC-SIGN neck repeats region was rare and not associated with HIV-1 susceptibility among North Indians. Sequencing analysis of DC-SIGN gene confirmed four novel genetic variants in intronic region flanking exon 4 coding region.     

Overexpression of the HER-2/neu oncogene in pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Novel systemic treatments are needed in pancreatic cancer. The authors sought to establish the frequency of overexpression of the HER-2/neu oncogene in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma to determine the potential role of trastuzumab (Herceptin) as a therapeutic agent in this disease. Tumor specimens from patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma were analyzed by staining for p185HER2 protein using the DAKO immunohistochemical assay. Patients with and without HER-2/neu overexpression by immunohistochemistry were compared with respect to clinical and pathologic characteristics. HER-2/neu gene amplification was also evaluated by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Thirty-two of 154 patients (21%) had pancreatic adenocarcinoma that demonstrated HER-2/neu overexpression by immunohistochemistry. At initial diagnosis, 16% of resectable cancers, 17% of locally advanced cancers, and 26% of metastatic cancers were determined to have HER-2/neu overexpression. Three of 11 (27%) patients with HER-2/neu overexpression by immunohistochemistry had gene amplification by FISH. HER-2/neu overexpression occurs in a subset of pancreatic cancer. Evaluation of the efficacy of trastuzumab for patients with pancreatic cancer who overexpress HER-2/neu appears indicated.     

Malignant nodular hidradenoma of nose

Malignant tumours originating from the sweat glands are very rare. We report a case of a female with malignant nodular hidradenoma of the externa nasal pyramid. A brief review of literature including the histopathological aspects and management is presented herewith.     

Role of Fine-Needle Aspiration Cytology in Swellings of the Parotid Region

To report the role of preoperative fine-needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) in patients with swellings in the parotid region at a tertiary care center. Prospective study of FNAC results compared with final histologic diagnosis as the standard criterion. An academic tertiary care center. A consecutive series of 51 patients who underwent FNAC of swellings in the parotid region between 2007 and 2009, of whom 41 had surgical resection. Predictive value, sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy. FNAC was performed in all the 51 patients who presented with a swelling in the parotid region in the out patient department in our hospital. Sixteen patients (31.4 %) were diagnosed to have malignancy, thirty patients (58.8 %) were diagnosed as benign condition. The FNAC was not satisfactory in 5 patients (9.8%) even after repeated aspiration. The FNAC diagnosis of malignant or suspicious lesion of the parotid region had positive and negative predictive values of 90 % and 96.66%, respectively. The diagnostic accuracy of FNAC is 95 %. We strongly recommend FNAC as a safe and accurate and less expensive method for preoperative diagnosis of the swellings in the parotid region.     

Urinary MCP-1 as diagnostic and prognostic marker in patients with lupus nephritis flare

Aim of the study: This study aimed to assess correlation of urinary monocytic chemoattractant protein-1 (UMCP-1) with severity of lupus nephritis and its role as predictor of outcome. Method: Twenty patients with lupus nephritis flare were included in the study. Ten patients in each group of stable systemic lupus erythematosus and non-renal flare were taken as controls. Biopsy was done to define lupus nephritis stage. UMCP-1 levels were measured in all patients at the time of entry and at four and eight weeks of follow-up. Results: Mild, moderate and severe lupus nephritis flare was noted in one, five and 15 patients, respectively. UMCP-1 levels were high in patients with severe lupus nephritis flare (2.74?±?0.95?ng/mg creatinine) as compared to patients with moderate (1.43?±?0.46?ng/mg creatinine) and mild lupus nephritis flare (0.76?±?0.57?ng/mg creatinine) (P?=?0.0093). Baseline mean UMCP-1 levels in lupus nephritis flare, non-renal flare and stable SLE patients were 2.32?±?1.06, 0.171?±?0.03 and 0.213?±?0.026?ng/mg creatinine, respectively. The difference among the three groups was very significant (P?相似文献   

Identification of ZINC02765569: a potent inhibitor of PTP1B by vHTS

The present study describes identification of a novel lead molecule ZINC02765569 for inhibition of protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) enzyme by a high-throughput virtual screening of Zinc database against catalytic domain of PTP1B employing docking algorithm Glide. The identified hit molecule ZINC02765569 was synthesized and evaluated for in vitro PTP1B enzyme inhibition, in vitro cellular glucose uptake assay, and animal models of hyperglycemia. ZINC02765569 shows promising inhibition of PTP1B enzyme at 10 μm assay, positively up-regulate the cellular glucose uptake in skeletal cell muscle myotubes and SLM/STZ hyperglycemic animal experiments. The novel hit reported here should provide a platform for the further development of its analogs as potential PTP1B enzyme inhibitors.