A morphological study on the effect of cyproterone acetate on human prostatic carcinoma

Sixteen patients with prostatic carcinoma were treated with 200 mg of Cyproterone acetate daily. No other kind of hormonal treatment was given. Transrectal biopsies of the prostate were taken before the treatment was started, and at regular intervals afterwards. The treatment period lasted from 3 to 16 months, with an average of 9 months. A thorough examination of multiple sections from all specimens revealed no convincing signs of cellular involution. The study has demonstrated no specific or significant atrophic changes following Cyproterone acetate therapy. Some possible explanations regarding the effect of Cyproterone acetate on human malignant prostatic tissue are discussed.     

Neisseria gonorrhoeae Strain with High-Level Resistance to Spectinomycin Due to a Novel Resistance Mechanism (Mutated Ribosomal Protein S5) Verified in Norway

Gonorrhea may become untreatable, and new treatment options are essential. Verified resistance to spectinomycin is exceedingly rare. However, we describe a high-level spectinomycin-resistant (MIC, >1,024 μg/ml) Neisseria gonorrhoeae strain from Norway with a novel resistance mechanism. The resistance determinant was a deletion of codon 27 (valine) and a K28E alteration in the ribosomal protein 5S. The traditional spectinomycin resistance gene (16S rRNA) was wild type. Despite this exceedingly rare finding, spectinomycin available for treatment of ceftriaxone-resistant urogenital gonorrhea would be very valuable.     

Quantitative observations on the crystalline composition of urinary stones

Quantitative analytical findings on upper urinary tract stones from 500 patients are reported and compared to data in the literature. Methods of presentation of quantitative data are discussed. A wide range of findings between recurrent stones in the same patient and between stones from patients with the same cause of stone formation was found. No immediate clinical value of quantitation can be seen, but larger materials and correlation with metabolic investigations in stone formers may reveal correlations of clinical interest. Quantitative observations may identify groups of patients and types of stones not recognised on the basis of qualitative analysis. Examples of this are given for calcium oxalate-calcium phosphate stones and for stones containing brushite. The organic matrix which usually contributes 2-3% of stone mass was not considered, but distinctly visible and separate organic material in 7 stones was quantitated by visual estimate. 32 stones were incomplete, and their quantitation may not be wholly representative. Their exclusion, however, would have led to major bias because most were large and nearly half were triple phosphate stones, both properties being relatively rare. In cases of multiple stones, usually only one was quantitated. Seventy patients provided more than one stone for analysis (Otnes, 1983b), but except when specifically stated only the first stone is considered.     

Inverse Current Source Density Method in Two Dimensions: Inferring Neural Activation from Multielectrode Recordings

The recent development of large multielectrode recording arrays has made it affordable for an increasing number of laboratories to record from multiple brain regions simultaneously. The development of analytical tools for array data, however, lags behind these technological advances in hardware. In this paper, we present a method based on forward modeling for estimating current source density from electrophysiological signals recorded on a two-dimensional grid using multi-electrode rectangular arrays. This new method, which we call two-dimensional inverse Current Source Density (iCSD 2D), is based upon and extends our previous one- and three-dimensional techniques. We test several variants of our method, both on surrogate data generated from a collection of Gaussian sources, and on model data from a population of layer 5 neocortical pyramidal neurons. We also apply the method to experimental data from the rat subiculum. The main advantages of the proposed method are the explicit specification of its assumptions, the possibility to include system-specific information as it becomes available, the ability to estimate CSD at the grid boundaries, and lower reconstruction errors when compared to the traditional approach. These features make iCSD 2D a substantial improvement over the approaches used so far and a powerful new tool for the analysis of multielectrode array data. We also provide a free GUI-based MATLAB toolbox to analyze and visualize our test data as well as user datasets.