Tumeur Germinale De L\'espace Para Pharynge : A Propos D\'un Cas

Les tumeurs germinales à localisation cervico-faciale sont rares. Nous rapportons l\'observation d\'une une fillette de 7 ans porteuse d\'une tumeur maligne à cellules germinales de l\'espace para-pharyngé droit traité par chimiothérapie. Les particularités étiopathogéniques, thérapeutiques, et pronostiques de cette tumeur sont rappelées après une revue des données de la littérature.Extragonadal germ cell tumors of the head and neck are very rare. We report the case of a 7-year-old girl with malignant germ cell tumor of the right parapharyngeal space treated by chemotherapy. Etiopathogenic, therapeutic, and prognostic characteristics of this tumour are recalled after a review of the literature data. Keywords: Extragonadal germ cell tumors, parapharyngeal tumors. Journal Tunisien d\'ORL et de chirurgie cervico-faciale Vol. 18 2007: pp. 61-6

Activity of Thymus capitatus essential oil components against in vitro cultured Echinococcus multilocularis metacestodes and germinal layer cells

The essential oil (EO) of Thymus capitatus, seven fractions (F1-F7) obtained from silica gel chromatography, and several pure EO components were evaluated with respect to in vitro activities against Echinococcus multilocularis metacestodes and germinal layer (GL) cells. Attempts to evaluate physical damage in metacestodes by phosphoglucose isomerase (PGI) assay failed because EO and F1-F7 interfered with the PGI-activity measurements. A metacestode viability assay based on Alamar Blue, as well as transmission electron microscopy, demonstrated that exposure to EO, F2 and F4 impaired metacestode viability. F2 and F4 exhibited higher toxicity against metacestodes than against mammalian cells, whereas EO was as toxic to mammalian cells as to the parasite. However, none of these fractions exhibited notable activity against isolated E. multilocularis GL cells. Analysis by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry showed that carvacrol was the major component of the EO (82.4%), as well as of the fractions F3 (94.4%), F4 (98.1%) and F5 (90.7%). Other major components of EO were β-caryophyllene, limonene, thymol and eugenol. However, exposure of metacestodes to these components was ineffective. Thus, fractions F2 and F4 of T. capitatus EO contain potent anti-echinococcal compounds, but the activities of these two fractions are most likely based on synergistic effects between several major and minor constituents

One century of eel growth: changes and implications

International audienceA cooperative effort gathered a large European length-at-age data set (N = 45,759, Lat. 36S–61N Long.10W–27E) for Anguilla anguilla, covering one century. To assess the effect of global warming during the last century and habitat effects on growth, a model was fitted on the data representing the conditions met at the distribution area scale. Two GLMs were designed to predict eel log(GR): one model was fitted to the whole data and the other was fitted to the female data subset. A model selection procedure was applied to select the best predictors among sex, age class, five temperature parameters and six habitat parameters (depth, salinity and four variables related to the position in the catchment). The yearly sum of temperatures above 13 °C (TempSUP13), the relative distance within the catchment, sex, age class, salinity class and depth class were finally selected. The best model predicted eel log(GR) with a 64.46% accuracy for the whole data and 66.91% for the female eel data. Growth rate (GR) was greater in habitats close to the sea and in deep habitats. TempSUP13 variable had one of the greatest predictive powers in the model, showing that global warming had affected eel growth during the last century