Testosterone decreases adiponectin levels in female to male transsexuals

Aim: To evaluate the effect of testosterone (T) on adiponectin serum levels in transsexual female patients. Methods: We measured adiponectin, leptin, luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone, T, estradiol, lipid profile, biochemical parameters and body composition in 16 transsexual female patients at baseline and after 6 months of T treatment (100 mg Testoviron Depot /10 days, i.m.). Results: Adiponectin levels were 16.9 ± 7.3 mg/mL at baseline and 13.5 ± 7.4 mg/mL at month 6 of T treatment (P < 0.05). Leptin and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol decreased significantly, whereas body mass index, waist circumference and lean body mass increased significantly after 6 months of T treatment. No changes in insulin or Homeostasis Model Assessment were detected. Conclusion: T can significantly reduce adiponectin serum levels in transsexual female patients

Antenatal automatic diagnosis of cleft lip via unsupervised clustering method relying on 3D facial soft tissue landmarks

Objectives Ultrasound (US) is the first-choice device to detect different types of facial dysmorphisms. Anyway, at present no standard protocol has been defined for automatic nor semi-automatic diagnosis. Even though the practitioner's contribution is core, steps towards automatism are to be undertaken. We propose a methodology for diagnosing cleft lip on 3D US scans. Methods A bounded Depth Minimum Steiner Trees (D-MST) clustering algorithm is proposed for discriminating groups of 3D US faces relying on the presence/absence of a cleft lip. The analysis of 3D facial surfaces via Differential Geometry is adopted to extract landmarks. Thus, the extracted geometrical information is elaborated to feed the unsupervised clustering algorithm and produce the classification. The clustering returns the probability of being affected by the pathology, allowing physicians to focus their attention on risky individuals for further analysis. Results The feasibility is tested upon the available 3D US scans data and then deeply investigated for a large dataset of adult individuals. 3D facial Bosphorus database is chosen for the testing, which seven cleft lip-affected individuals are added to, by artificially creating the defect. The algorithm correctly separates left and right-sided cleft lips, while healthy individuals create a unique cluster; thus, the method shows accurate diagnosis results. Conclusions Even if further testing is to be performed on tailored datasets made exclusively of fetal images, this techniques gives hefty hints for a future tailored algorithm. This method also fosters the investigation of the scientific formalisation of the "normotype", which is the representative face of a class of individuals, collecting all the principal anthropometric facial measurements, in order to recognise a normal or syndromic fetus

Genetic modulation of the Let-7 microRNA binding to KRAS 3'-untranslated region and survival of metastatic colorectal cancer patients treated with salvage cetuximab-irinotecan

There is increasing evidence that the Let-7 microRNA (miRNA) exerts an effect as a tumor suppressor by targeting the KRAS mRNA. The Let-7 complementary site (LCS6) T>G variant in the KRAS 3'-untranslated region weakens Let-7 binding. We analyzed whether the LCS6 variant may be clinically relevant to patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (MCRC) treated with anti-epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) therapy. LCS6 genotypes and KRAS/BRAF mutations were determined in the tumor DNA of 134 patients with MCRC who underwent salvage cetuximab-irinotecan therapy. There were 34 G-allele (T/G+G/G) carriers (25%) and 100 T/T genotype carriers (75%). G-allele carriers were significantly more frequent in the KRAS mutation group than in patients with KRAS wild type (P=0.004). In the 121 patients without BRAF V600E mutation, overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) times were compared between carriers of the LCS6 G-allele genotypes and carriers of the wild-type T/T genotype. LCS6 G-allele carriers showed worse OS (P=0.001) and PFS (P=0.004) than T/T genotype carriers (confirmed in the multivariate model including the KRAS status). In the exploratory analysis of the 55 unresponsive patients with KRAS mutation, LCS6 G-allele carriers showed adverse OS and PFS times. These findings deserve additional investigations as they may open novel perspectives for the treatment of patients with MCRC

Mucinous histology predicts for poor response rate and overall survival of patients with colorectal cancer and treated with first-line oxaliplatin- and/or irinotecan-based chemotherapy

The objective of this study was to investigate the efficacy of first-line chemotherapy containing irinotecan and/or oxaliplatin in patients with advanced mucinous colorectal cancer. Prognostic factors associated with response rate and survival were identified using univariate and multivariate logistic and/or Cox proportional hazards analyses. The population included 255 patients, of whom 49 (19%) had mucinous and 206 (81%) had non-mucinous colorectal cancer. The overall response rates for mucinous and non-mucinous tumours were 18.4 (95% CI, 7.5–29.2%) and 49% (95% CI, 42.2–55.8%), respectively (P=0.0002). After a median follow-up of 45 months, median overall survival for the mucinous patients was 14.0 months compared with 23.4 months for the non-mucinous group (hazard ratio (HR), 1.74; CI 95%, 1.27–3.31; P=0.0034). After adjustment for significant features by multivariate Cox regression analysis, mucinous histology was associated with poor overall survival (HR, 1.593, 95% CI, 1.05–2.40; P=0.0267), together with performance status ECOG 2, number of metastatic sites ⩾2, and peritoneal metastases. This retrospective analysis shows that patients with mucinous colorectal cancer have poor responsiveness to oxaliplatin/irinotecan-based first-line combination chemotherapy and an unfavourable prognosis compared with non-mucinous colorectal cancer patients