Scintigraphy with In-111-labeled monoclonal antitumor antibodies: kinetics, biodistribution, and tumor detection

The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare the kinetics, biodistribution, and tumor-depicting properties of three intact indium-111-labeled murine monoclonal antibodies (MoAb) and to determine if use of In-111-labeled F(ab')2 fragments of one of them had advantages over its intact counterpart for immunoscintigraphy. Ten patients with prostate cancer were studied with an anti-prostatic acid phosphatase MoAb (PAY-276), with a resultant tumor detection rate of 15%. Twenty-eight patients with melanoma were studied with ZME-018, a MoAb that targets the KD-240 melanoma antigen. Forty-three percent of the known lesions were detected. Forty patients with carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)-producing tumors were studied, 24 with intact ZCE-025, and anti-CEA MoAb, and 16 with its F(ab')2 fragment. With use of intact ZCE-025, 34% of known lesions were detected versus 83% with its F(ab')2 fragment. The distribution of each MoAb appears unique unto itself with regard to kinetics, normal tissue distribution, and response to MoAb mass.     

Pulmonary arteriovenous malformations: techniques and long-term outcome of embolotherapy

Over a 10-year period, 276 pulmonary arteriovenous malformations (PAVMs) were occluded with balloon embolotherapy in 76 patients, 67 (88%) of whom had hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia. Eleven patients (14%) were discovered by means of family screening with measurement of arterial blood gases and chest radiography. Epistaxis, dyspnea, hemoptysis, and hemothorax occurred in 79%, 71%, 13%, and 9% of patients, respectively. Clinical histories of strokes and transient ischemic attacks were present in 18% and 37% of patients, respectively. Computed tomographic scans of 59 patients showed stroke in 36%. Sixty-five percent of PAVMs were located in the lower lobes, which correlated with the finding of more pronounced hypoxemia in the upright position. After embolotherapy, symptomatic hypoxemia was corrected, and serial values have remained constant for 5 years. Complications were minimal, and no patient required surgery. Balloon embolotherapy is effective long-term therapy for PAVMs, and family screening should be pursued because of the possibility of a higher frequency of paradoxical embolization (stroke) than previously recognized.     

Preliminary study with bicalutamide in heterosexual and homosexual patients with prostate cancer: a possible implication of androgens in male homosexual arousal

Study Type – Symptom prevalence (case series)
Level of Evidence 4 What’s known on the subject? and What does the study add? A recent published paper regarding sexual and cognitive duality presents that androgens act synergic with female sexual pheromones while estrogens would act synergic with male sexual pheromones in normal potent men. The same authors found in this study that bicalutamide disfavours sexual function predominantly in homosexual rather than heterosexual men suffering with prostate cancer. The results of this study are interpreted alone in this article, the similarities and differences with results corresponding to younger and normal potent men following to be discussed recently in a review regarding psychosexual dualism.

OBJECTIVE

? Not only has a precise characterization of libido and sexual arousal in men as a central neural process been lacking, but the interactive role of gonadal hormones and sexual orientation in such processes has never been investigated. We investigate the relationships among sexual hormones, sexual arousal, and sexual orientation in men by comparing the self‐reported sexual response of heterosexual and homosexual men with locally advanced prostate neoplasm, receiving the non‐steroidal anti‐androgen bicalutamide as monotherapy.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

? 29 Romanian men participated in this study: 17 heterosexual and 12 homosexual. Patients were undergoing treatment for prostate cancer consisting of a standard daily dose of 50 mg bicalutamide, a fast acting non‐steroidal anti‐androgen with action comparable to other anti‐androgen drugs but with reportedly fewer sexual side effects. ? Patients retrospectively provided information regarding their sexual functioning measured by the IIEF prior to commencing bicalutamide treatment. ? Then, about five weeks later, patients were asked to prospectively provide information regarding their current sexual functioning while undergoing bicalutamide treatment.

RESULTS

? Overall IIEF scores as well as the Erectile Function, Orgasmic Function, Sexual Desire, and Overall Satisfaction subscales showed group, treatment, and group by treatment effects. ? The Intercourse Satisfaction subscale showed group and group by treatment effects. ? On most subscales, homosexual men showed lower functioning than heterosexual men, primarily in response to treatment with bicalutamide.

CONCLUSIONS

? Treatment with an anti‐androgen in a clinical population of men undergoing therapy for prostate cancer affected homosexual men more than heterosexual men, although not all heterosexual men were unaffected. ? These results are discussed in the context of dual sexual natures, a concept recently developed in the sexual literature. ? Furthermore, these findings reiterate the importance of incorporating such variables as sexual orientation into studies investigating medical treatments on sexual response.     

Interhemispheric visual competition after multisensory reversal of hemianopia

Unilateral lesions of visual cortex have the secondary consequence of suppressing visual circuits in the midbrain superior colliculus (SC), collectively producing blindness in contralesional space (“hemianopia”). Recent studies have demonstrated that SC visual responses and contralesional vision can be reinstated by a non‐invasive multisensory training procedure in which spatiotemporally concordant visual‐auditory pairs are repeatedly presented within the blind hemifield. Despite this recovery of visual responsiveness, the loss of visual cortex was expected to result in permanent deficits in that hemifield, especially when visual events in both hemifields compete for attention and access to the brain's visuomotor circuitry. This was evaluated in the present study in a visual choice paradigm in which the two visual hemifields of recovered cats were simultaneously stimulated with equally valent visual targets. Surprisingly, the expected disparity was not found, and some animals even preferred stimuli presented in the previously blind hemifield. This preference persisted across multiple stimulus intensity levels and there was no indication that animals were less aware of cues in the previously blind hemifield than in its spared counterpart. Furthermore, when auditory cues were combined with visual cues, the enhanced performance they produced on a visual task was no greater in the normal than in the previously blind hemifield. These observations suggest that the multisensory rehabilitation paradigm revealed greater inherent visual information processing potential in the previously blind hemifield than was believed possible given the loss of visual cortex.     

Aligning Developmental and Processing Accounts of Implicit and Statistical Learning

A long‐standing question in child language research concerns how children achieve mature syntactic knowledge in the face of a complex linguistic environment. A widely accepted view is that this process involves extracting distributional regularities from the environment in a manner that is incidental and happens, for the most part, without the learner's awareness. In this way, the debate speaks to two associated but separate literatures in language acquisition: statistical learning and implicit learning. Both fields have explored this issue in some depth but, at present, neither the results from the infant studies used by the statistical learning literature nor the artificial grammar learning tasks studies from the implicit learning literature can be used to fully explain how children's syntax becomes adult‐like. In this work, we consider an alternative explanation—that children use error‐based learning to become mature syntax users. We discuss this proposal in the light of the behavioral findings from structural priming studies and the computational findings from Chang, Dell, and Bock's (2006) dual‐path model, which incorporates properties from both statistical and implicit learning, and offers an explanation for syntax learning and structural priming using a common error‐based learning mechanism. We then turn our attention to future directions for the field, here suggesting how structural priming might inform the statistical learning and implicit learning literature on the nature of the learning mechanism.     

Challenges in quantifying multisensory integration: alternative criteria, models, and inverse effectiveness

Single-neuron studies provide a foundation for understanding many facets of multisensory integration. These studies have used a variety of criteria for identifying and quantifying multisensory integration. While a number of techniques have been used, an explicit discussion of the assumptions, criteria, and analytical methods traditionally used to define the principles of multisensory integration is lacking. This was not problematic when the field was small, but with rapid growth a number of alternative techniques and models have been introduced, each with its own criteria and sets of implicit assumptions to define and characterize what is thought to be the same phenomenon. The potential for misconception prompted this reexamination of traditional approaches in order to clarify their underlying assumptions and analytic techniques. The objective here is to review and discuss traditional quantitative methods advanced in the study of single-neuron physiology in order to appreciate the process of multisensory integration and its impact.     

Factors affecting the permissiveness of porcine alveolar macrophages for porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus

Alveolar macrophages from PRRSV-infected and naïve pigs were placed into culture and infected with PRRSV laboratory strain SD-23983. Permissiveness increased with time in culture, and macrophages from infected pigs could be superinfected. Addition of actinomycin D, an inhibitor of mRNA synthesis, blocked infection. Interferon-γ reduced infection in cultures, while the addition of tumor necrosis factor-α or interleukin (IL)-10 did not affect permissiveness. IL-4 produced a marginal increase in the percentage of infected cells, but without a detectable increase in virus yield. These results suggest that the PRRSV-permissive population of cells in culture arises from a non-permissive precursor population and depends on new mRNA synthesis.