Gastric cancer with multiple metastases in pregnancy: a case report

The mortality rate in gastric cancer during pregnancy is very high, which dictates the need to research and improve the methods of early diagnosis of malignancies, as well as studying the pathogenesis of malignant tumors in pregnant women. We report a lethal case of gastric cancer in a pregnant woman. The findings of the autopsy, histological, histochemical and immunohistochemical examinations verified gastric signet ring cells carcinoma with multiple metastases and infiltration of the placental intervillous space. The possible pathogenesis of cancer with changes in the hormonal background occurring in pregnant women is discussed. Understanding the endocrine mechanisms of carcinoma pathogenesis will be useful for developing new therapies for gastric cancer

Эффективность сочетанного применения флутиказона пропионата и сальметерола при 18-месячной терапии больных стероидозависимой бронхиальной астмой

The efficacy of 18-month usage of Fluticasone propionate (FP, 1000 meg daily) combined with Salmeterol (100 meg daily) was studied in 37 steroid-dependent asthma patients aged from 15 to 66 years, who had received systemic steroids (SS) for the period from 2 to 20 years.Thirteen patients (1 group) had taken. SS intermittently, with interruptions not longer than 1 month. Twenty four patients (2 group) had taken SS constantly. Treatment appreciation was performed taking into account dynamics of daytime and nighttime asthma symptoms, short-acting beta-agonists need, lung function parameters, tolerance to physical load (by bicycle execise) and blood plasma cortisol level.The carried out investigation showed that long-time treatment by FP and Salmeterol ensured steady clinical and functional improvement in patients’ condition: it decreased frequency and intensity of asthma symptoms, reduced the need of short-acting beta-agonists, eliminated variable bronchial obstruction and enhanced the tolerance to physical load. SS were replaced by FP in all the patients from the first group and in 18 patients from the second group. Six patients with partly abolished SS reduced their doses in 2—5 times. Factors limited the opportunity of complete SS abolition were the duration of SS constant treatment (more than 5 years) and hign supporting doses (more than15 mg).Increase of basal cortisol level on the FP and Salmeterol treatment background, absence of arrythmiac effects, low degree of local complications (signs of moderate oral candidiasis were in 2 persons and transient dysphonia was in 4 persons) evidence concerning safety of long-time FP and Salmeterol treatment of steroiddependent asthma patients.Изучена эффективность 18-месячного применения флутиказона пропионата (ФП, 1000 мкг/сут.) в сочетании с сальметеролом (100 мкг/сут) у 37 больных стероидозависимой бронхиальной астмой (С ЗБА) в возрасте от 15 до 66 лет и длительностью приема системных гл ю ко ко рти ко стероидов (СГК) от 2 до 20 лет. У 13 больных (1-я гр.) прием СГК носил интермиттирующий (с перерывами не более 1 мес.), у 24 (2-я гр.) — постоянный характер. Оценку эффективности лечения проводили с учетом динамики дневных и ночных симптомов БА, потребности короткодействующих β2-агонистов, показателей ФВД , толерантности к физической нагрузке (велоэргометрия) уровня базального кортизола плазмы крови.Проведенное исследование показало, что длительный прием ФП и сальметерола обеспечивает стойкое клинико-функциональное улучшение в состоянии больных: уменьшает частоту и выраженность симптомов БА, снижает потребность в короткодействующих β2-агонистах, устраняет вариабельную бронхиальную обструкцию, повышает толерантность к физической нагрузке. Все больные 1-й гр. и 18 из 2-й гр. переведены с СГК на ФП. У 6 больных с неполной отменой СГК их поддерживающая доза снижена в 2—5 раз. Факторами, лимитирующими возможность полной отмены СГК, являются длительность их постоянного приема (более 5 лет) и высокие (>15 мг) поддерживающие дозы.Увеличение уровня базального кортизола в динамике лечения ФП и сальметеролом, отсутствие аритмогенного эффекта, низкая частота местных осложнений (признаки умеренно выраженного орального кандидоза у 2 и преходящая дисфония у 4 человек) свидетельствуют о безопасности длительного лечения ФП и сальметеролом больных СЗБА

Mesoscopic organization reveals the constraints governing C. elegans nervous system

One of the biggest challenges in biology is to understand how activity at the cellular level of neurons, as a result of their mutual interactions, leads to the observed behavior of an organism responding to a variety of environmental stimuli. Investigating the intermediate or mesoscopic level of organization in the nervous system is a vital step towards understanding how the integration of micro-level dynamics results in macro-level functioning. In this paper, we have considered the somatic nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, for which the entire neuronal connectivity diagram is known. We focus on the organization of the system into modules, i.e., neuronal groups having relatively higher connection density compared to that of the overall network. We show that this mesoscopic feature cannot be explained exclusively in terms of considerations, such as optimizing for resource constraints (viz., total wiring cost) and communication efficiency (i.e., network path length). Comparison with other complex networks designed for efficient transport (of signals or resources) implies that neuronal networks form a distinct class. This suggests that the principal function of the network, viz., processing of sensory information resulting in appropriate motor response, may be playing a vital role in determining the connection topology. Using modular spectral analysis, we make explicit the intimate relation between function and structure in the nervous system. This is further brought out by identifying functionally critical neurons purely on the basis of patterns of intra- and inter-modular connections. Our study reveals how the design of the nervous system reflects several constraints, including its key functional role as a processor of information.Comment: Published version, Minor modifications, 16 pages, 9 figure

Decadal to monthly timescales of magma transfer and reservoir growth at a caldera volcano

International audienceCaldera-forming volcanic eruptions are low-frequency, highimpact events capable of discharging tens to thousands of cubic kilometres of magma explosively on timescales of hours to days, with devastating effects on local and global scales1. Because no such eruption has been monitored during its long build-up phase, the precursor phenomena are not well understood. Geophysical signals obtained during recent episodes of unrest at calderas such as Yellowstone, USA, and Campi Flegrei, Italy, are difficult to interpret, and the conditions necessary for large eruptions are poorly constrained2,3. Here we present a study of pre-eruptive magmatic processes and their timescales using chemically zoned crystals from the 'Minoan' caldera-formingeruption of Santorini volcano,Greece4, which occurred in the late 1600s BC. The results provide insights into how rapidly large silicic systems may pass from a quiescent state to one on the edge of eruption5,6. Despite the large volume of erupted magma4 (40-60 cubic kilometres), and the 18,000-year gestation period between the Minoan eruption and the previous major eruption, most crystals in the Minoan magma record processes that occurred less than about 100 years before the eruption. Recharge of the magma reservoir by large volumes of silicic magma (and some mafic magma) occurred during the century before eruption, and mixing between different silicicmagmabatches was still taking place during the final months. Final assembly of large silicic magma reservoirs may occur on timescales that are geologically very short by comparison with the preceding repose period, with major growth phases immediately before eruption. These observations have implications for the monitoring of long-dormant, but potentially active, caldera systems

A Graph Algorithmic Approach to Separate Direct from Indirect Neural Interactions

Network graphs have become a popular tool to represent complex systems composed of many interacting subunits; especially in neuroscience, network graphs are increasingly used to represent and analyze functional interactions between neural sources. Interactions are often reconstructed using pairwise bivariate analyses, overlooking their multivariate nature: it is neglected that investigating the effect of one source on a target necessitates to take all other sources as potential nuisance variables into account; also combinations of sources may act jointly on a given target. Bivariate analyses produce networks that may contain spurious interactions, which reduce the interpretability of the network and its graph metrics. A truly multivariate reconstruction, however, is computationally intractable due to combinatorial explosion in the number of potential interactions. Thus, we have to resort to approximative methods to handle the intractability of multivariate interaction reconstruction, and thereby enable the use of networks in neuroscience. Here, we suggest such an approximative approach in the form of an algorithm that extends fast bivariate interaction reconstruction by identifying potentially spurious interactions post-hoc: the algorithm flags potentially spurious edges, which may then be pruned from the network. This produces a statistically conservative network approximation that is guaranteed to contain non-spurious interactions only. We describe the algorithm and present a reference implementation to test its performance. We discuss the algorithm in relation to other approximative multivariate methods and highlight suitable application scenarios. Our approach is a tractable and data-efficient way of reconstructing approximative networks of multivariate interactions. It is preferable if available data are limited or if fully multivariate approaches are computationally infeasible.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, published in PLOS On

Neocortical Axon Arbors Trade-off Material and Conduction Delay Conservation

The brain contains a complex network of axons rapidly communicating information between billions of synaptically connected neurons. The morphology of individual axons, therefore, defines the course of information flow within the brain. More than a century ago, Ramón y Cajal proposed that conservation laws to save material (wire) length and limit conduction delay regulate the design of individual axon arbors in cerebral cortex. Yet the spatial and temporal communication costs of single neocortical axons remain undefined. Here, using reconstructions of in vivo labelled excitatory spiny cell and inhibitory basket cell intracortical axons combined with a variety of graph optimization algorithms, we empirically investigated Cajal's conservation laws in cerebral cortex for whole three-dimensional (3D) axon arbors, to our knowledge the first study of its kind. We found intracortical axons were significantly longer than optimal. The temporal cost of cortical axons was also suboptimal though far superior to wire-minimized arbors. We discovered that cortical axon branching appears to promote a low temporal dispersion of axonal latencies and a tight relationship between cortical distance and axonal latency. In addition, inhibitory basket cell axonal latencies may occur within a much narrower temporal window than excitatory spiny cell axons, which may help boost signal detection. Thus, to optimize neuronal network communication we find that a modest excess of axonal wire is traded-off to enhance arbor temporal economy and precision. Our results offer insight into the principles of brain organization and communication in and development of grey matter, where temporal precision is a crucial prerequisite for coincidence detection, synchronization and rapid network oscillations