Is basal ultrasensitive measurement of calcitonin capable of substituting for the pentagastrin-stimulation test?

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate a second-generation assay for basal serum calcitonin (CT) measurements compared with the pentagastrin-stimulation test for the diagnosis of inherited medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC) and the follow-up of patients with MTC after surgery. Recent American Thyroid Association recommendations suggest the use of basal CT alone to diagnose and assess follow-up of MTC as the pentagastrin (Pg) test is unavailable in many countries. DESIGN: Multicentric prospective study. PATIENTS: A total of 162 patients with basal CT <10 ng/l were included: 54 asymptomatic patients harboured noncysteine \u27rearranged during transfection\u27 (RET) proto-oncogene mutations and 108 patients had entered follow-up of MTC after surgery. MEASUREMENT: All patients underwent basal and Pg-stimulated CT measurements using a second-generation assay with 5-ng/l functional sensitivity. RESULTS: Ninety-five per cent of patients with basal CT ≥ 5 ng/l and 25% of patients with basal CT <5 ng/l had a positive Pg-stimulation test (Pg CT >10 ng/l). Compared with the reference Pg test, basal CT ≥ 5 ng/l had 99% specificity, a 95%-positive predictive value but only 35% sensitivity (P < 0.0001). Overall, there were 31% less false-negative results using a 5-ng/l threshold for basal CT instead of the previously used 10-ng/l threshold. CONCLUSION: The ultrasensitive CT assay reduces the false-negative rate of basal CT measurements when diagnosing familial MTC and in postoperative follow-up compared with previously used assays. However, its sensitivity to detect C-cell disease remains lower than that of the Pg-stimulation test

CommunityRx, a social care assistance intervention for family and friend caregivers delivered at the point of care: Two concurrent blinded randomized controlled trials

Background: CommunityRx is an evidence-based social care intervention delivered to family and friend caregivers (“caregivers”) at the point of healthcare to address health-related social risks (HRSRs). Two CommunityRx randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are being fielded concurrently on Chicago’s South Side, a predominantly African American/Black community. CommunityRx-Hunger is a double-blind RCT enrolling caregivers of hospitalized children. CommunityRx-Dementia is a single-blind RCT enrolling caregivers of community-residing people with dementia. RCTs with caregivers face recruitment barriers, including caregiver burden and lack of systematic strategies to identify caregivers in clinical settings. COVID-19 pandemic-related visitor restrictions exacerbated these barriers and prompted the need for iteration of the protocols from in-person to remote operations. This study describes these protocols and methods used for successful iteration to overcome barriers. Methods and findings: CommunityRx uses individual-level data to generate personalized, local community resource referrals for basic, health and caregiving needs. In early 2020, two in-person RCT protocols were pre-tested. In March 2020, when pandemic conditions prohibited face-to-face clinical enrollment, both protocols were iterated to efficient, caregiver-centered remote operations. Iterations were enabled in part by the Automated Randomized Controlled Trial Information-Communication System (ARCTICS), a trial management system innovation engineered to integrate the data collection database (REDCap) with community resource referral (NowPow) and SMS texting (Mosio) platforms. Enabled by engaged Community Advisory Boards and ARCTICS, both RCTs quickly adapted to remote operations. To accommodate these adaptations, launch was delayed until November (CommunityRx-Hunger) and December (CommunityRx-Dementia) 2020. Despite the delay, 65% of all planned participants (CommunityRx-Hunger n = 417/640; CommunityRx-Dementia n = 222/344) were enrolled by December 2021, halfway through our projected enrollment timeline. Both trials enrolled 13% more participants in the first 12 months than originally projected for in-person enrollment. Discussion: Our asset-based, community-engaged approach combined with widely accessible institutional and commercial information technologies facilitated rapid migration of in-person trials to remote operations. Remote or hybrid RCT designs for social care interventions may be a viable, scalable alternative to in-person recruitment and intervention delivery protocols, particularly for caregivers and other groups that are under-represented in traditional health services research. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov: CommunityRx-Hunger (NCT04171999, 11/21/2019); CommunityRx for Caregivers (NCT04146545, 10/31/2019).</p

Time Until Partial Response in Metastatic Adrenocortical Carcinoma Long-Term Survivors

A partial response (PR) has been proposed as a surrogate for overall survival in advanced adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). The primary endpoint of the study was to characterize the time until a PR in patients with metastatic ACC treated with a standard therapy is achieved. Long-term survivors were selected to allow evaluation of delayed tumor response to mitotane. Records from patients with metastatic ACC that survived for &gt; 24 months were retrieved. Tumor response was analyzed according to the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) 1.1 criteria. Time until a tumor response, after treatment initiation or therapeutic plasma mitotane level, was analyzed. Sixty-eight patients were analyzed. The first-line systemic therapy was mitotane as a monotherapy (M) (n = 57) or cytotoxic polychemotherapy plus/minus mitotane (PC ± M) (n = 11). The second-line therapy was M (n = 2) or PC ± M (n = 41). Thirty-two PRs occurred in 30/68 patients (44.1%): this was obtained for 13 (40.6%) during M and during PC ± M for 19/32 responders (59.4%). PRs were observed within 6 months of starting M or PC ± M in 76.9 and 94.7% of responses, respectively, within 6 months of therapeutic plasma mitotane being first observed in 88.9% of responses with M and in 53.3% of responses with PC ± M. All PRs (but one) occurred within 1 year after initiating treatment. To conclude, Most patients with metastatic ACC and long survival times had PRs within the first 6 months of standard systemic therapy, and almost all within the first year. The absence of response after that period could be considered as a treatment failure. Maintenance of mitotane therapy in non-responders after 1 year should be questioned in future randomized trials

p.Ala541Thr variant of MEN1 gene: A non deleterious polymorphism or a pathogenic mutation?

Context Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Type 1 (MEN1) is an autosomal dominant inherited syndrome, related to mutations in the MEN1 gene. Controversial data suggest that the nonsynonymous p.Ala541Thr variant, usually considered as a non-pathogenic polymorphism, may be associated with an increased risk of MEN1-related lesions in carriers. Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the pathogenic influence of the p.Ala541Thr variant on clinical and functional outcomes. Patients and methods We analysed a series of 55 index patients carrying the p.Ala541Thr variant. Their clinical profile was compared to that of 117 MEN1 patients. The biological impact of the p.Ala541Thr variant on cell growth was additionally investigated on menin-deficient Leydig cell tumour (LCT)10 cells generated from Men1+/Men1− heterozygous knock-out mice, and compared with wild type (WT). Results The mean age at first appearance of endocrine lesions was similar in both p.Ala541Thr carriers and MEN1 patients, but no p.Ala541Thr patient had more than one cardinal MEN1 lesion at initial diagnosis. A second MEN1 lesion was diagnosed in 13% of MEN1 patients and in 7% of p.Ala541Thr carriers in the year following preliminary diagnosis. Functional studies on LCT10 cells showed that overexpression of the p.Ala541Thr variant did not inhibit cell growth, which is in direct contrast to results obtained from investigation of WT menin protein. Conclusion Taken together, these data raise the question of a potential pathogenicity of the p.Ala541Thr missense variant of menin that commonly occurs within the general population. Additional studies are required to investigate whether it may be involved in a low-penetrance MEN1 phenotype

Octreotide (long-acting release formulation) treatment in patients with graves' orbitopathy: clinical results of a four-month, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind study.

There are few effective, safe modalities for the management of Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO), a cell-mediated immune comorbidity of thyroid disease. Somatostatin analogs inhibit lymphocyte proliferation and activation, and accumulate in the orbital tissue of patients with GO. A double-blind, placebo-controlled study of a long-acting somatostatin analog [16 wk of long-acting release formulation of octreotide (octreotide-LAR)] was conducted in 51 patients with mild active GO with the aim of preventing deterioration and precluding the need for more aggressive therapeutic modalities, such as glucocorticoids or radiotherapy. No treatment effect was observed for the primary end point (a composite parameter defining the outcome as either success or failure on the basis of changes in class/grade of the severity index and Clinical Activity Scale of GO). The Clinical Activity Scale score was reduced for patients treated with octreotide-LAR, but without any significant difference with respect to patients receiving placebo. However, octreotide-LAR significantly reduced proptosis (as measured by exophthalmometry). This was associated with nonsignificant differences in favor of octreotide-LAR in a series of proptosis-related parameters: class III grade, opening of the upper eyelid, the difference in ocular pressure between primary position and upgaze, and extraocular muscle involvement. By magnetic resonance imaging evaluation the extraocular muscle volumes appeared reduced, but nonsignificantly. No significant correlation between the initial uptake of the somatostatin analog indium-labeled and the response to treatment was observed. One patient in the octreotide-LAR group developed gallstones. In this study, octreotide-LAR did not seem suitable to mitigate activity in mild GO. Surprisingly, it significantly reduced proptosis, one of the most debilitating symptoms of GO. Additional studies are warranted to define the benefit to risk ratio of the somatostatin analogs in this indication

MetaPath: identifying differentially abundant metabolic pathways in metagenomic datasets

Enabled by rapid advances in sequencing technology, metagenomic studies aim to characterize entire communities of microbes bypassing the need for culturing individual bacterial members. One major goal of metagenomic studies is to identify specific functional adaptations of microbial communities to their habitats. The functional profile and the abundances for a sample can be estimated by mapping metagenomic sequences to the global metabolic network consisting of thousands of molecular reactions. Here we describe a powerful analytical method (MetaPath) that can identify differentially abundant pathways in metagenomic datasets, relying on a combination of metagenomic sequence data and prior metabolic pathway knowledge. First, we introduce a scoring function for an arbitrary subnetwork and find the max-weight subnetwork in the global network by a greedy search algorithm. Then we compute two p values (p abund and p struct ) using nonparametric approaches to answer two different statistical questions: (1) is this subnetwork differentically abundant? (2) What is the probability of finding such good subnetworks by chance given the data and network structure? Finally, significant metabolic subnetworks are discovered based on these two p values. In order to validate our methods, we have designed a simulated metabolic pathways dataset and show that MetaPath outperforms other commonly used approaches. We also demonstrate the power of our methods in analyzing two publicly available metagenomic datasets, and show that the subnetworks identified by MetaPath provide valuable insights into the biological activities of the microbiome. We have introduced a statistical method for finding significant metabolic subnetworks from metagenomic datasets. Compared with previous methods, results from MetaPath are more robust against noise in the data, and have significantly higher sensitivity and specificity (when tested on simulated datasets). When applied to two publicly available metagenomic datasets, the output of MetaPath is consistent with previous observations and also provides several new insights into the metabolic activity of the gut microbiome. The software is freely available at http://metapath.cbcb.umd.edu .https://doi.org/10.1186/1753-6561-5-S2-S

Prognostic factors in stage III-IV adrenocortical carcinomas (ACC): an European Network for the Study of Adrenal Tumor (ENSAT) study.

BACKGROUND: The clinical course of advanced adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) is heterogeneous. Our study aimed primarily to refine and make headway in the prognostic stratification of advanced ACC. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Patients with advanced ENSAT ACC (stage III or stage IV) at diagnosis registered between 2000 and 2009 in the ENSAT database were enrolled. The primary end point was overall survival (OS). Parameters of potential prognostic relevance were selected. Univariate and multivariate analyses were carried out: model 1 'before surgery'; model 2 'post-surgery'. RESULTS: Four hundred and forty-four patients with advanced ENSAT ACC (stage III: 210; stage IV: 234) were analyzed. After a median follow-up of 55.2 months, the median OS was 24 months. A modified ENSAT (mENSAT) classification was validated: stage III (invasion of surrounding tissues/organs or the vena renalis/cava) and stage IVa, IVb, IVc (2, 3 or >3 metastatic organs, including N, respectively). Two- or 5-year OS was 73%, 46%, 26% and 15% or 50%, 15%, 14% and 2% for stages III, IVa, IVb and IVc, respectively. In the multivariate analysis, mENSAT stages (stages IVa, IVb, or IVc, respectively) were significantly correlated with OS (P 6 and/or Ki67 ≥20%, P = 0.06) in model 2. CONCLUSION: The mENSAT classification and GRAS parameters (Grade, R status, Age and Symptoms) were found to best stratify the prognosis of patients with advanced ACC