Supplementation with iron in pulmonary arterial hypertension : two randomized crossover trials

Rationale: Iron deficiency, in the absence of anaemia, is common in patients with idiopathic and heritable pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and is associated with a worse clinical outcome. Oral iron absorption may be impeded by elevated circulating hepcidin levels. The safety and benefit of parenteral iron replacement in this patient population is unclear. Objectives: To evaluate the safety and efficacy of parenteral iron replacement in pulmonary arterial hypertension. Methods: In two randomised, double blind, placebo-controlled 12 week crossover studies, 39 patients in Europe received a single infusion of ferric carboxymaltose (Ferinject®) 1000 mg (or 15 mg/kg if weight < 66.7Kg) or saline as placebo and 17 patients in China received iron dextran (Cosmofer®) 20 mg iron/kg body weight or saline placebo. All patients had idiopathic or heritable PAH and iron deficiency at entry as defined by: a serum ferritin < 37 µg/l or iron < 10.3 µmol/l or transferrin saturations < 16.4%. Results: Both iron treatments were well tolerated and improved iron status. Analysed separately and combined, there was no effect on any measure of exercise capacity (using cardiopulmonary exercise testing or 6 minute walk test) or cardio-pulmonary haemodynamics, as assessed by right heart catheterisation, cardiac magnetic resonance or plasma NT-proBNP, at 12 weeks. Conclusion: Iron repletion by administration of a slow release iron preparation as a single infusion to PAH patients with iron deficiency without overt anaemia was well tolerated but provided no significant clinical benefit at 12 weeks. Clinical trial registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01447628

The criminal profiling illusion:what's behind the smoke and mirrors?

There is a belief that criminal profilers can predict a criminal's characteristics from crime scene evidence. In this article, the authors argue that this belief may be an illusion and explain how people may have been misled into believing that criminal profiling (CP) works despite no sound theoretical grounding and no strong empirical support for this possibility. Potentially responsible for this illusory belief is the information that people acquire about CP, which is heavily influenced by anecdotes, repetition of the message that profiling works, the expert profiler label, and a disproportionate emphasis on correct predictions. Also potentially responsible are aspects of information processing such as reasoning errors, creating meaning out of ambiguous information, imitating good ideas, and inferring fact from fiction. The authors conclude that CP should not be used as an investigative tool because it lacks scientific support

Using second harmonic generation to predict patient outcome in solid tumors

Background: Over-treatment of estrogen receptor positive (ER+), lymph node-negative (LNN) breast cancer patients with chemotherapy is a pressing clinical problem that can be addressed by improving techniques to predict tumor metastatic potential. Here we demonstrate that analysis of second harmonic generation (SHG) emission direction in primary tumor biopsies can provide prognostic information about the metastatic outcome of ER+, LNN breast cancer, as well as stage 1 colorectal adenocarcinoma. Methods: SHG is an optical signal produced by fibrillar collagen. The ratio of the forward-to-backward emitted SHG signals (F/B) is sensitive to changes in structure of individual collagen fibers. F/B from excised primary tumor tissue was measured in a retrospective study of LNN breast cancer patients who had received no adjuvant systemic therapy and related to metastasis-free survival (MFS) and overall survival (OS) rates. In addition, F/B was studied for its as