Ki-67 Expression in CRC Lymph Node Metastasis Does Not Predict Survival

Colorectal cancer is one of the most common malignancies and a leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Molecular markers may improve clinicopathologic staging and provide a basis to guide novel therapeutic strategies which target specific tumour-associated molecules according to individual tumour biology; however, so far, no ideal molecular marker has been found to predict disease progression. We tested Ki-67 proliferation marker in primary and lymph node metastasis of CRC. We observed a statistical significant difference between the positive rates of neoplastic cells positively stained by Ki-67 in both sites, with remarkable increased number of Ki-67 positive cells in primary tumor cells compared to cancer cells that invaded lymph nodes. We can speculate that the metastatic CRC in lymph node can be more resistant to the drugs that target cellular division

Lifshitz black holes in string theory

We provide the first black hole solutions with Lifshitz asymptotics found in string theory. These are expected to be dual to models enjoying anisotropic scale invariance with dynamical exponent z=2 at finite temperature. We employ a consistent truncation of type IIB supergravity to four dimensions with an arbitrary 5-dimensional Einstein manifold times a circle as internal geometry. New interesting features are found that significantly differ from previous results in phenomenological models. In particular, small black holes are shown to be thermodynamically unstable, analogously to the usual AdS-Schwarzschild black holes, and extremality is never reached. This signals a possible Hawking-Page like phase transition at low temperatures.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figures. v2 references adde

Psychological Functioning and Disease-Related Quality of Life in Pediatric Patients With an Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator

The objective of this multicenter study was to evaluate psychological functioning and disease-related quality of life (DRQoL) in pediatric patients with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) in The Netherlands. Thirty patients were investigated; the mean age was 16.3 years, and the mean duration of implantation was 3.6 years. To assess psychological problems, three domains of the Symptom Checklist (SCL-90-R) were administered to the 25 patients >13 years old. DRQoL was assessed with a disease-specific pediatric questionnaire, the short-form 11-item Worries About (WA)ICDs Scale. Patients ≥13 years old scored significantly higher than the reference group on the domains of anxiety, depression, and sleeping problems of the SCL-90-R (T = 7.5, p < 0.001; T = 5.4, p < 0.001; and T = 7.8, p < 0.001, respectively). Patients who had received an (in)appropriate shock reported more depressive symptoms (T = 2.1, p < 0.03). Patients with >2 years implant duration (N = 19) or who had received an (in)appropriate shock (N = 13) showed lower DRQoL scores on the modified WAICD (T = 2.1, p < 0.04; T = 2.1, p < 0.5, respectively). Age at implantation or underlying disease did not influence psychological problems or DRQoL. Young ICD patients showed more anxiety, depression, and sleeping disorders. Worries were increased among patients with ICD shocks and in those who had their ICD implanted for >2 years. To determine psychological problems and help children to learn to cope with shocks, proper guidance and monitoring of young ICD patients are recommended

Lepton flavour violation in the MSSM

We derive new constraints on the quantities delta_{XY}^{ij}, X,Y=L,R, which parametrise the flavour-off-diagonal terms of the charged slepton mass matrix in the MSSM. Considering mass and anomalous magnetic moment of the electron we obtain the bound |delta^{13}_{LL} delta^{13}_{RR}|<0.1 for tan beta=50, which involves the poorly constrained element delta^{13}_{RR}. We improve the predictions for the decays tau -> mu gamma, tau -> e gamma and mu -> e gamma by including two-loop corrections which are enhanced if tan beta is large. The finite renormalisation of the PMNS matrix from soft SUSY-breaking terms is derived and applied to the charged-Higgs-lepton vertex. We find that the experimental bound on BR(tau -> e gamma) severely limits the size of the MSSM loop correction to the PMNS element U_{e3}, which is important for the proper interpretation of a future U_{e3} measurement. Subsequently we confront our new values for delta^{ij}_{LL} with a GUT analysis. Further, we include the effects of dimension-5 Yukawa terms, which are needed to fix the Yukawa unification of the first two generations. If universal supersymmetry breaking occurs above the GUT scale, we find the flavour structure of the dimension-5 Yukawa couplings tightly constrained by mu -> e gamma.Comment: 37 pages, 15 figures; typo in Equation (35) and (49) correcte

CTLA4CT60 gene polymorphism is not associated with differential susceptibility to pemphigus foliaceus

Pemphigus foliaceus is an organ-specific autoimmune disease characterized by autoantibodies against the extracellular region of desmoglein 1, a protein that mediates intercellular adhesion in desmosomes. Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) is a key negative regulator of the T cell immune response, playing an important role in T cell homeostasis and maintenance of peripheral tolerance. Polymorphisms in the CTLA4 gene have been associated with autoimmune diseases and the functional CT60 single nucleotide polymorphism (rs3087243, also named 6230G > A) has been proposed to be a casual variant in several of these diseases. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether this polymorphism is associated with inter-individual variation in susceptibility to pemphigus foliaceus. The population sample in this case-control association study comprised 248 patient and 367 controls. We did not found a significant association of pemphigus foliaceus with the CT60 variants. We conclude that the CTLA4CT60 polymorphism is not an important factor for pemphigus foliaceus pathogenesis in the population analyzed