Clonidine GH stimulation test to differentiate MSA from idiopathic late onset cerebellar ataxia: a prospective,controlled study

Journal of Neurology - Despite the consensus criteria for multiple system atrophy (MSA), the diagnosis of MSA of cerebellar type (MSA-C) may be difficult in the early stage of the disease. There...     

COVID-19 in Patients with Cancer: A Retrospective Study of 212 Cases from a French SARS-CoV-2 Cluster During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic

We describe a large series of patients with solid tumors in an early COVID‐19 cluster in the eastern part of France. From February to May 2020, this multicenter retrospective study enrolled 212 patients with cancer under treatment or on follow‐up for any type of malignant solid tumor and positive for SARS‐CoV‐2. The mortality rate was 30%. Patients with gastrointestinal cancers were identified as a subset of more vulnerable patients; immunotherapy and radiotherapy within 3 months from COVID‐19 diagnosis were risk factors for death. The reported data support the essential need to be proactive and weigh the risks of morbidity from COVID‐19 against the magnitude of benefits of intended cancer therapies during this pandemic.Implications for PracticeThis article supports the essential need to be proactive (treatment delay or modification) in oncology in the setting of pandemic. This study identified patients with gastrointestinal cancers as a more vulnerable subset of patients with cancer and found that immunotherapy and radiotherapy within 3 months from COVID‐19 diagnosis to be risk factors for death. The reported data indicate the necessity of weighing the risks of morbidity from COVID‐19 against the magnitude of benefits of intended cancer therapies in any future wave of COVID‐19.     

Sex, culture and the anthropologist.

The apocalyptic threat of AIDS, combined with recent ethnological developments, is promoting an anthropological "rediscovery of sex." If this rediscovery is to have important and lasting effects on the development of theory, a stock-taking is in order--one which examines anthropology's historical, methodological, and practical relationship to the study of sexual behavior. Parallel theoretical directions taken in both American and British anthropology, starting in the late 1920's, resulted in a disciplinary departure from the study of sexuality, as such; sexual behavior became shielded from analytic view by a more abstract, propositional approach to society and culture. In addition to reviewing these historical trends, the paper considers elements of personal privacy and intrasocietal variation in the anthropology of sex and, with illustrations taken from the Ilahita Arapesh of northeastern Papua New Guinea, proposes that the locus of sexual behavior and experience lies in the interaction of cultural ideas and psychobiological impulses.