Nyctometric studies in argon laser coagulation in patients with diabetic retinopathy

Forty-two patients (57 eyes) with diabetic retinopathy at various stages have been examined by nyctometry before and over the course of the follow-up period after argon laser coagulation of the retina. The findings evidence a marked reduction of the adaptation ability of the central retinal area even in high vision acuity in the patients with diabetic retinopathy vs. normal subjects. A stable rise of the nyctometric parameters has been observed after argon laser coagulation; these parameters characterize the function of the pigmented epithelium and of the retinal cone, and these data may be considered as an evidence of the improved trophics of these tissues, resultant from such therapy.     

An Empirical Evaluation of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) with Survivors of a Natural Disaster

Controlled studies of treatments effective with victims of natural disasters are almost nonexistent. This is a small study conducted under difficult conditions to test the effectiveness of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) in treating trauma related reactions following Hurricane Andrew. The results were positive in that EMDR produced significant improvement over wail list controls in perceived posttraumatic avoidance behaviors and thoughts as measured by changes in the Impact of Event Scale and significant improvement in subjective aversive reactions to representative experiences of the hurricane. These results suggest and support other studies that EMDR can be an effective therapeutic intervention for trauma reactions.     

Mixed tumour of salivary gland type of the male breast.

Benign breast tumours with a mixed cartilaginous and epithelial component are distinctly rare as evident from the literature. A case of Mixed Tumour of the breast presenting pre-operatively as a hard mass in a 65 year old male is reported. Histologically, it was composed of a mixture of benign cartilage, myoepithelial cells, tubules and a myxoid stroma in fat. A brief review of cartilage bearing lesions and mixed tumour in the mammary region is discussed.     

Ionic modulation of the effects of heparin and 6-aminohexanoic acid on plasminogen activation by streptokinase: the role of ionic strength, divalent cations and chloride.

Studies were conducted on the effect of heparin or 6-aminohexanoic acid (6-AH) on the activation of glutamic plasminogen (Glu-Plg) by streptokinase in the presence of different concentrations of buffer, NaCl and divalent cations. Heparin and 6-AH inhibited streptokinase-mediated activation of Glu-Plg using 10 mM Tris-HCl buffer pH 7.4. This inhibition was partially reversed by the addition of 0.2-1.0 mM of Mg ions. Increasing the ionic strength of Tris-HCl buffer from 10 to 50 mM or addition of 50-150 mM of NaCl to 50 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.4 inhibited the activation of Glu-Plg by streptokinase while decreasing the % inhibition by heparin over the control samples. Double reciprocal plot of the activation of Glu-Plg by streptokinase using 50 mM Tris-HCl pH 7.4 containing 100 mM NaCl showed that the addition of heparin lowered Vmax by 50% without affecting Km. To determine whether the inhibitory effect of heparin was specifically directed towards Glu-Plg or streptokinase, the ratios of the initial rate of plasmin generation in the presence of heparin over the controls were plotted against the inverse of the volume fraction of Glu-Plg or streptokinase after serial dilutions. The results indicated that the dilutions of streptokinase but not of Glu-Plg influenced the ratios, suggesting an interaction of heparin with streptokinase. Addition of 6-AH reversed the inhibitory effect of NaCl on the activation of Glu-Plg by streptokinase and the results of the near UV CD spectra of Glu-Plg showed that addition of 6-AH enhanced the spectra in this region with an increase in the ellipticity which was not affected by addition of NaCl.     

Application of influence diagrams to prostate intensity-modulated radiation therapy plan selection

The purpose is to incorporate clinically relevant factors such as patient-specific and dosimetric information as well as data from clinical trials in the decision-making process for the selection of prostate intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) plans. The approach is to incorporate the decision theoretic concept of an influence diagram into the solution of the multiobjective optimization inverse planning problem. A set of candidate IMRT plans was obtained by varying the importance factors for the planning target volume (PTV) and the organ-at-risk (OAR) in combination with simulated annealing to explore a large part of the solution space. The Pareto set for the PTV and OAR was analysed to demonstrate how the selection of the weighting factors influenced which part of the solution space was explored. An influence diagram based on a Bayesian network with 18 nodes was designed to model the decision process for plan selection. The model possessed nodes for clinical laboratory results, tumour grading, staging information, patient-specific information, dosimetric information, complications and survival statistics from clinical studies. A utility node was utilized for the decision-making process. The influence diagram successfully ranked the plans based on the available information. Sensitivity analyses were used to judge the reasonableness of the diagram and the results. In conclusion, influence diagrams lend themselves well to modelling the decision processes for IMRT plan selection. They provide an excellent means to incorporate the probabilistic nature of data and beliefs into one model. They also provide a means for introducing evidence-based medicine, in the form of results of clinical trials, into the decision-making process.     

Comparative Analysis of Apoptosis and Inflammation Genes of Mice and Humans

Apoptosis (programmed cell death) plays important roles in many facets of normal mammalian physiology. Host-pathogen interactions have provided evolutionary pressure for apoptosis as a defense mechanism against viruses and microbes, sometimes linking apoptosis mechanisms with inflammatory responses through NFκB induction. Proteins involved in apoptosis and NFκB induction commonly contain evolutionarily conserved domains that can serve as signatures for identification by bioinformatics methods. Using a combination of public (NCBI) and private (RIKEN) databases, we compared the repertoire of apoptosis and NFκB-inducing genes in humans and mice from cDNA/EST/genomic data, focusing on the following domain families: (1) Caspase proteases; (2) Caspase recruitment domains (CARD); (3) Death Domains (DD); (4) Death Effector Domains (DED); (5) BIR domains of Inhibitor of Apoptosis Proteins (IAPs); (6) Bcl-2 homology (BH) domains of Bcl-2 family proteins; (7) Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF)-family ligands; (8) TNF receptors (TNFR); (9) TIR domains; (10) PAAD (PYRIN; PYD, DAPIN); (11) nucleotide-binding NACHT domains; (12) TRAFs; (13) Hsp70-binding BAG domains; (14) endonuclease-associated CIDE domains; and (15) miscellaneous additional proteins. After excluding redundancy due to alternative splice forms, sequencing errors, and other considerations, we identified cDNAs derived from a total of 227 human genes among these domain families. Orthologous murine genes were found for 219 (96%); in addition, several unique murine genes were found, which appear not to have human orthologs. This mismatch may be due to the still fragmentary information about the mouse genome or genuine differences between mouse and human repertoires of apoptotic genes. With this caveat, we discuss similarities and differences in human and murine genes from these domain families.     

Hormones in male-patients with advanced esophageal-carcinoma

Hormones are believed to play a dominant role as promoters in the growth and development of hormone-dependent cancers. Much less is known about the circulating hormones in male patients with oesophageal cancer. This lack of attention led us to evaluate the role of peptide and steroid hormones (by RIA) in male patients with oesophageal cancer (n=49). Blood samples of patients were collected pretherapeutically and data was compared with age matched controls (n=25). In this retrospective study, significantly high levels of FSH (P<0.02), LH (P<0.001) and prolactin (P<0.001) were observed with concomitant low levels of estradiol (P<0.001), DHEA-S (P<0.02) and testosterone (P<0.001) in patients when compared with respective controls. The patients when grouped according to anatomical site and histological type of the tumor, intergroup variation was not observed in these hormones. From our, study, it seems that hormonal imbalance or altered ratio of peptide and steroid hormones might be playing a significant role in the development and/or progression of oesophageal carcinoma in men.