The Detection of Metastatic Disease of the Spine in Oncology Patients Using MRI

The value of MRI in the diagnosis and management of patients with primary bone tumours has already been established.The use of MRI in the detection of metastatic spinal disease is discussed in this paper.     

Lung cancer cell type and mining exposure

It is frequently stated that the most common primary lung cancer cell type in asbestos-exposed persons is adenocarcinoma. Recently a contrary opinion has been expressed. This study compares the cell types recorded among deceased South African miners whose lungs were examined at the National Centre for Occupational Health. It supports the opinion that adenocarcinoma is not associated with asbestos exposure. From the large database available, there is no evidence of a consistent association between any particular cell type and specific mining exposure.     

香港牙科事业发展简史

香港现已成为东亚区牙医与人口比率较高的大都市，这与香港社会及经济的发展有着密切关系，也是香港政府、学术界及私人执业界衷诚合作的结果。经过多年的努力，防胜于治的保健概念渐渐在社会植根。牙科教育也从师徒传授演变成为系统性的大学课程及理论与实践相结合的专科...     

The Single‐Nucleotide Polymorphism Lottery: How Useful are a Few Common SNPs in Identifying Disease‐Associated Alleles?

It has been proposed that using association analysis of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in candidate genes may be more successful in identifying disease susceptibility genes for complex diseases. Finding all the SNPs within a candidate gene and genotyping a large case‐control cohort is a resource‐intensive process. As linkage disequilibrium extends across small regions of the genome, the expectation is that a few common anonymous SNPs will be sufficient to detect functional disease‐associated alleles. The aim of this investigation was to compare the ability of a number of family‐ and population‐based association methods to identify known susceptibility loci using the Genetic Analysis Workshop 12 simulated data set. As expected, case‐control methods were more likely to detect association with individual SNPs but family‐based haplotyping methods appeared better able to localize the position of functional polymorphism. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Acute anterior uveitis, ankylosing spondylitis, back pain, and HLA-B27.

One hundred and sixty-nine patients with acute anterior uveitis were studied for the presence of HLA-B27 tissue type, radiological evidence of ankylosing spondylitis, and a history of back pain. 60% were male; 45% were HLA-B27+. The male:female ratio in the HLA-B27+ group was the same as in the whole group. 24% had radiological evidence of ankylosing spondylitis, and, of these, 83% were HLA-B27+ while 17% were HLA-B27-. There was a definite correlation between the severity of the ankylosing spondylitis and preponderance of males in the HLA-B27+ group of patients. Significant back pain occurred in 60% of HLA-B27+ patients but in only 14% of HLA-B27- patients. The importance of the selection of patients and of consistency in the use of diagnostic criteria in studies relating to ankylosing spondylitis and acute anterior uveitis is stressed.