A 11C-choline positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) scan is used for restaging prostate cancer (PCa) patients with biochemical recurrence (BCR). Only a few reports have focused on the correlation between PET/CT and nodal relapse location at pathologic examination.

Central lymph node (CLN) metastasis in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is common and being able to predict CLN metastasis helps surgeons determine individualized therapy. However, the relationship between contralateral CLN metastasis and the total number of positive lymph nodes (LNs) in the combined prelaryngeal and pretracheal region remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate whether the total number of positive LNs in the combined prelaryngeal and pretracheal region has clinical significance as a predictor for contralateral CLN metastasis.

Optimal treatment of blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN), a rare entity of dismal prognosis previously described as CD4+/CD56+ hematodermic malignancies, is not defined. We report five cases of relapsed BPDCN treated with bendamustine hydrochloride, a well-tolerated bifunctional drug acting as an alkylating and antimetabolite agent. All patients were above the age of 50 years and in advanced disease (early first relapse in two, subsequent relapse in three; multi-organ involvement in four; previous intensive chemotherapy in five; and stem cell transplantation in four). Four patients were evaluable for response. Two failed therapy, one died from tumor lysis syndrome after rapid blast clearance from blood, and one reached and maintained complete remission for 7 months. Bendamustine should be further evaluated in BPDCN. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Investigate the expressions of WNTs in granulosa cells of PCOS in North China, and explore the possible mechanism.

In patients with prostate cancer (PCa), prostate enlargement may give rise to lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS); many patients suffer from moderate-to-severe symptoms. We compare the efficacy of degarelix and goserelin plus bicalutamide in improving LUTS in PCa patients.

Tracheobronchial rupture is a rare but potentially life-threatening complication commonly caused by neck and chest trauma. Iatrogenic tracheobronchial rupture can be caused by intubation, tracheostomy, bronchoscopy but also linked to pre-existing primary diseases. Paratracheal air cysts, infrequently described in literature, seem to be associated with obstructive lung disease and weaknesses in right posterior lateral wall of the trachea. We report a case of a paratracheal air cyst rupture in a previous healthy patient.

Neuroblastoma is the most common, non-central nervous system tumor of childhood. It has the potential to synthesize catecholamines. However, the presences of hypertension are uncommon. We report the perioperative management of a 15-month-old infant with giant abdominal neuroblastoma who presented severe hypertension. The pathophysiological alterations of neuroblastoma are reviewed and perioperative management presented.

Patients with stage IIIA-ipsilateral mediastinal lymph node involvement (N2) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) represent a heterogeneous group with different clinical presentation. The aim of this study was to analyze a series of patients with "potentially resectable" stage IIIA-pathologically proven N2 (pN2) NSCLC undergoing induction chemotherapy followed by surgery to evaluate their long-term outcomes and to identify prognostic factors. Out of 287 patients who underwent induction chemotherapy for NSCLC with ipsilateral mediastinal lymph node involvement pathologically proven, we retrospectively evaluated 141 (49%) patients with no clinical evidence of progression after induction chemotherapy and candidates for surgery. Most of them (73%) underwent at least 3 cycles of cisplatin-based chemotherapy. We used the Kaplan-Meier method to plot survival and the log-rank test to assess the survival difference between groups. Multivariable analysis was performed using Cox proportional hazards regression. A total of 15 (10.6%) patients underwent explorative thoracotomy; 126 patients underwent surgical anatomical resection after a median 27 days (range: 21-30) from the last cycle of chemotherapy. A total of 113 (89.7%) patients had a radical resection. A total of 22 (17.5%) patients had a complete pathologic lymph node downstaging (pN0), and 8 (6.3%) patients had a complete pathological response (pT0N0). The median overall survival was 24 months, with a 5-year overall survival of 30%. At multivariable analysis, downstaging and number of cycles of chemotherapy were independent prognostic factors (P = 0.006); downstaging benefit was mostly because of complete pathological response (hazards ratio = 0.23, 95% CI: 0.07-0.76). In conclusion, more than 3 cycles of chemotherapy and pathological downstaging could significantly improve 5-year survival in selected patients with "potentially resectable" pathologically proven N2 disease.

Intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) is a dose-delivery technology allowing for a reduction in radiotherapy side effects. It has been rapidly adopted despite the lack of prospective studies showing improved outcomes. We sought to compare the cost through Medicare reimbursement patterns of surgery, IMRT, and conventional XRT in treating head and neck cancer. We then identified factors that correlate with these differences.

Breast cancer (BC) is leading type of cancer among group of women, which determines almost 23% of invasive cancers. It has been reported repeatedly that the level of oxidative stress is higher for BC in comparison to cancer-free woman. The goal of the present study was to evaluate the role of base excision repair (BER) pathway in the development of BC. One-hundred seventy-one women with confirmed BC and 222 healthy controls were enrolled in presented study. The level of oxidative DNA damage and the kinetic of their repair were analyzed by the modified alkaline comet assay. The efficiency of BER pathway was evaluated by BER assay. The presence of the 326Cys/Cys genotype and 326Cys allele of OGG1 gene and the 324His/His of MUTYH gene are associated with increased risk of BC development. Moreover, correlation between clinical parameter with selected genes has shown increased risk of BC progression. The survival analysis has shown a significant lower DFS for individuals with the 762Ala/Ala genotype compared to 762Val/Vla carriers and the 762Val/Ala genotype in relation to concomitant chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In subgroup of patients with alone chemotherapy and alone radiotherapy, the 762Val/Val genotype was significantly associated with lower overall survival. Furthermore, we also elevated the level of basal and oxidative DNA damage in a group of patients with BC in relation to healthy controls. We also observed the difference in effectiveness of DNA damage repair. The results of present studies suggested the important role of BER pathway in BC development. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A 1-year-old male castrated Pug was referred for unilateral exophthalmos unresponsive to oral antibiotic and anti-inflammatory therapy. Clinical findings included exophthalmos of the left eye with lateral strabismus, resistance to retropulsion, and an elevated nictitans. Hematologic and biochemical analyses were within normal limits. Findings following computed tomography (CT) of the head included an expansile retrobulbar soft tissue mass with bony lysis extending into the left nasal cavity and nasopharynx. Ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspirates and biopsy samples obtained via rhinoscopy were nondiagnostic. Palliative exenteration was elected; the patient was euthanized 13 weeks following exenteration due to development of neurologic signs and perceived poor quality of life. The histopathologic diagnosis was a malignant pigmented peripheral nerve sheath tumor.

Lung cancer is the most common cause of malignant pleural effusions (MPEs). For patients with lung cancer and MPE, median survival is only 3-4 months. The aim of this study was to evaluate lung cancer patients with MPE by clinical and laboratory findings on admission, and determine 2-year survival rate and prognostic factors.

Extramedullary involvement of acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) is rare and has been reported under the terms myeloid sarcoma (MS), granulocytic sarcoma, chloroma, extramedullary acute myeloid leukemia, myeloblastoma and myelosarcoma. The most common extramedullary involvement includes soft tissues and lymph nodes, but it may arise in different sites of the body. There are only very few reports about MS in the pulmonary system, and involvement of the trachea is extremely rare.

Organising pneumonia (OP) is not a well-known cause of increased 18 F-FDG uptake, and the relationship of the increased 18 F-FDG uptake to clinical parameters has not been clearly identified. This study aims to assess the role of positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) for the diagnosis of focal organised pneumonia that may mimic malignity because of mass-like lesions on the radiological images it causes.

Metastasis to palatine tonsils are rare, accounting from only 0.8% of all tonsillar tumors, so far only 100 cases reported in the English literature. Only a few cases have been reported for small cell and non-small cell lung cancer as a primary site. With a diagnosis of small cell lung cancer, a 68-year-old male patient relapsed after six cycles of chemotherapy in tonsilla palatina and cervical lymph nodes. Patients died 26 months after being diagnosed with lung cancer and 2 months after detection of tonsil metastasis. We present the current case report because of the rarity of metastasis to tonsil in lung cancer.

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is a promising tool for accurate and consistent diagnosis and prognosis. Cell detection and segmentation are essential steps for CAD. These tasks are challenging due to variations in cell shapes, touching cells, and cluttered background. In this paper, we present a cell detection and segmentation algorithm using the sparse reconstruction with trivial templates and a stacked denoising autoencoder (sDAE). The sparse reconstruction handles the shape variations by representing a testing patch as a linear combination of shapes in the learned dictionary. Trivial templates are used to model the touching parts. The sDAE, trained with the original data and their structured labels, is used for cell segmentation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to apply sparse reconstruction and sDAE with structured labels for cell detection and segmentation. The proposed method is extensively tested on two data sets containing more than 3000 cells obtained from brain tumor and lung cancer images. Our algorithm achieves the best performance compared with other state of the arts.

Phospholipase C beta 1 (PLCβ1) expresses in gliomas and cultured glial cells, but its expression is barely detectable in normal glial cells. We analyzed data from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO-GDSxxx), The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and the Repository for Molecular Brain Neoplasia Data (REMBRANDT) to explore the potential role of PLCβ1 as a biomarker in high-grade glioma (HGG). PLCβ1 expression is significantly higher in grade III gliomas than that in grade IV gliomas from GDS1815 (n = 24 vs. 76), GDS1962 (n = 19 vs. 81), and GDS1975 (n = 26 vs. 59). In GDS1815, PLCβ1 expression correlates with several known proneural (PN) signature genes; its expression from PN subtype (n = 15) is significantly higher than that from mesenchymal (Mes) subtype (n = 33) HGG. In GDS1962, PLCβ1 expression is the highest in nontumor brain tissue (n = 23) and is significantly higher than its expression in grade II gliomas [astrocytomas (n = 7) and oligodendrogliomas (n = 37)]. A Kaplan-Meier survival curve from a REMBRANDT cohort demonstrates that glioma patients with intermediate PLCβ1 expression (n = 103) survived significantly longer than PLCβ1 downregulated (2X) groups (n = 226). From TCGA data, PLCβ1 RNA-Seq signal inversely correlates with the pathological grades, and PLCβ1 expression in PN (n = 8) is of significantly higher levels than that in Mes (n = 8) subtypes of glioblastoma. The top 50 % of PLCβ1 expression subgroup (n = 294) of gliomas (grades II to IV merged) survived significantly longer than the low 50 percentile of the PLCβ1 expression subgroup (n = 293). p values are less than 0.05 for all these analyses. We conclude that PLCβ1 is a candidate signature gene for PN subtype HGG, and its expression inversely correlates with glioma pathological grade and is a potential prognostic factor.

Retinoic acid (RA) morphogenetic properties have been used in different kinds of therapies, from neurodegenerative disorders to some types of cancer such as promyelocytic leukemia and neuroblastoma. However, most of the pathways responsible for RA effects remain unknown. To investigate such pathways, we used a RA-induced differentiation model in the human neuroblastoma cells, SH-SY5Y. Our data showed that n-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) reduced cells' proliferation rate and increased cells' sensitivity to RA toxicity. Simultaneously, NAC pre-incubation attenuated nuclear factor erythroid 2-like factor 2 (NRF2) activation by RA. None of these effects were obtained with Trolox® as antioxidant, suggesting a cysteine signalization by RA. NRF2 knockdown increased cell sensibility to RA after 96 h of treatment and diminished neuroblastoma proliferation rate. Conversely, NRF2 overexpression limited RA anti-proliferative effects and increased cell proliferation. In addition, a rapid and non-genomic activation of the ERK 1/2 and PI3K/AKT pathways revealed to be equally required to promote NRF2 activation and necessary for RA-induced differentiation. Together, we provide data correlating NRF2 activity with neuroblastoma proliferation and resistance to RA treatments; thus, this pathway could be a potential target to optimize neuroblastoma chemotherapeutic response as well as in vitro neuronal differentiation protocols.

The purpose of this study is to review the current literature concerning the indication of pelvic lymph node dissection (PLND), its extent and complications in prostate cancer (PCa) staging, the available tools, and the future perspectives to assess the risk of lymph node invasion (LNI).

To explore the association of c-erbB-2 protein expression with clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of gastric cancer (GC) after surgery.