Lung cancer screening: from imaging to biomarker.

Despite several decades of intensive effort to improve the imaging techniques for lung cancer diagnosis and treatment, primary lung cancer is still the number one cause of cancer death in the United States and worldwide. The major causes of this high mortality rate are distant metastasis evident at diagnosis and ineffective treatment for locally advanced disease. Indeed, approximately forty percent of newly diagnosed lung cancer patients have distant metastasis. Currently, the only potential curative therapy is surgical resection of early stage lung cancer. Therefore, early detection of lung cancer could potentially increase the chance of cure by surgery and underlines the importance of screening and detection of lung cancer. In the past fifty years, screening of lung cancer by chest X-Ray (CXR), sputum cytology, computed tomography (CT), fluorescence endoscopy and low-dose spiral CT (LDCT) has not improved survival except for the recent report in 2010 by the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), which showed a 20 percent mortality reduction in high risk participants screened with LDCT compared to those screened with CXRs. Furthermore, serum biomarkers for detection of lung cancer using free circulating DNA and RNA, exosomal microRNA, circulating tumor cells and various lung cancer specific antigens have been studied extensively and novel screening methods are being developed with encouraging results. The history of lung cancer screening trials using CXR, sputum cytology and LDCT, as well as results of trials involving various serum biomarkers, are reviewed herein

The Effect of Nicotine on Reproduction and Attachment of Human Gingival Fibroblasts In Vitro

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142127/1/jper0658.pd

High prevalence of lung cancer in a surgical cohort of lung cancer patients a decade after smoking cessation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study was designed to assess the prevalence of smoking at time of lung cancer diagnosis in a surgical patient cohort referred for cardiothoracic surgery.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Retrospective study of lung cancer patients (n = 626) referred to three cardiothoracic surgeons at a tertiary care medical center in Southern California from January 2006 to December 2008. Relationships among years of smoking cessation, smoking status, and tumor histology were analyzed with Chi-square tests.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Seventy-seven percent (482) had a smoking history while 11.3% (71) were current smokers. The length of smoking cessation to cancer diagnosis was <1 year for 56 (13.6%), 1-10 years for 110 (26.8%), 11-20 years for 87 (21.2%), 21-30 years for 66 (16.1%), 31-40 years for 44 (10.7%), 41-50 years for 40 (9.7%) and 51-60 years for 8 (1.9%). The mean cessation was 18.1 ± 15.7 years (n = 411 former smokers). Fifty-nine percent had stage 1 disease and 68.0% had adenocarcinoma. Squamous cell carcinoma was more prevalent in smokers (15.6% vs. 8.3%, p = 0.028); adenocarcinoma was more prevalent in never-smokers (79.9% versus 64.3%, p = 0.0004). The prevalence of adenocarcinoma varied inversely with pack year (p < 0.0001) and directly with years of smoking cessation (p = 0.0005).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>In a surgical lung cancer cohort, the majority of patients were smoking abstinent greater than one decade before the diagnosis of lung cancer.</p

Informing investment to reduce inequalities: a modelling approach

Background: Reducing health inequalities is an important policy objective but there is limited quantitative information about the impact of specific interventions. Objectives: To provide estimates of the impact of a range of interventions on health and health inequalities. Materials and methods: Literature reviews were conducted to identify the best evidence linking interventions to mortality and hospital admissions. We examined interventions across the determinants of health: a ‘living wage’; changes to benefits, taxation and employment; active travel; tobacco taxation; smoking cessation, alcohol brief interventions, and weight management services. A model was developed to estimate mortality and years of life lost (YLL) in intervention and comparison populations over a 20-year time period following interventions delivered only in the first year. We estimated changes in inequalities using the relative index of inequality (RII). Results: Introduction of a ‘living wage’ generated the largest beneficial health impact, with modest reductions in health inequalities. Benefits increases had modest positive impacts on health and health inequalities. Income tax increases had negative impacts on population health but reduced inequalities, while council tax increases worsened both health and health inequalities. Active travel increases had minimally positive effects on population health but widened health inequalities. Increases in employment reduced inequalities only when targeted to the most deprived groups. Tobacco taxation had modestly positive impacts on health but little impact on health inequalities. Alcohol brief interventions had modestly positive impacts on health and health inequalities only when strongly socially targeted, while smoking cessation and weight-reduction programmes had minimal impacts on health and health inequalities even when socially targeted. Conclusions: Interventions have markedly different effects on mortality, hospitalisations and inequalities. The most effective (and likely cost-effective) interventions for reducing inequalities were regulatory and tax options. Interventions focused on individual agency were much less likely to impact on inequalities, even when targeted at the most deprived communities

Thermal conductivity of single crystal lanthanum cuprates at very low temperature

We have undertaken a study of the thermal conductivity of single crystals of pure and strontium doped lanthanum copper oxide in the temperature range 0.1-6 K. For in plane conduction, all samples show approximately a T2.7 dependence, whereas for conduction across the planes for X = 0 we observe [kappa] ~ T2. This suggests that dimensionality may play an important role in the lattice heat conduction properties of these materials at very low temperature.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/29444/1/0000526.pd

Constraining the Origin of Impact Craters on Al Foils from the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector

Preliminary examination (PE) of the aerogel tiles and Al foils from the Stardust Interstellar Dust Collector has revealed multiple impact features. Some are most likely due to primary impacts of interstellar dust (ISD) grains, and others are associated with secondary impacts of spacecraft debris, and possibly primary impacts of interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) [1, 2]. The current focus of the PE effort is on constraining the origin of the individual impact features so that definitive results from the first direct laboratory analysis of contemporary ISD can be reported. Because crater morphology depends on impacting particle shape and composition, in addition to the angle and direction of impact, unique particle trajectories are not easily determined. However, elemental analysis of the crater residues can distinguish real cosmic dust from the spacecraft debris, due to the low cosmic abundance of many of the elements in the spacecraft materials. We present here results from the elemental analysis of 24 craters and discuss the possible origins of 4 that are identified as candidate ISD impact

Final Reports of the Stardust ISPE: Seven Probable Interstellar Dust Particles

The Stardust spacecraft carried the first spaceborne collector specifically designed to capture and return a sample of contemporary interstellar dust to terrestrial laboratories for analysis [1]. The collector was exposed to the interstellar dust stream in two periods in 2000 and 2002 with a total exposure of approximately 1.8 10(exp 6) square meters sec. Approximately 85% of the collector consisted of aerogel, and the remainder consisted of Al foils. The Stardust Interstellar Preliminary Examination (ISPE) was a consortiumbased effort to characterize the collection in sufficient detail to enable future investigators to make informed sample requests. Among the questions to be answered were these: How many impacts are consistent in their characteristics with interstellar dust, with interplanetary dust, and with secondary ejecta from impacts on the spacecraft? Are the materials amorphous or crystalline? Are organics detectable? An additional goal of the ISPE was to develop or refine the techniques for preparation, analysis, and curation of these tiny samples, expected to be approximately 1 picogram or smaller, roughly three orders of magnitude smaller in mass than the samples in other small particle collections in NASA's collections - the cometary samples returned by Stardust, and the collection of Interplanetary Dust Particles collected in the stratosphere

Microanalysis of Hypervelocity Impact Residues of Possible Interstellar Origin

The NASA Stardust spacecraft deployed two collector trays, one dedicated to the collection of dust from Comet Wild 2, and the other for the capture of interstellar dust (ISD). The samples were returned successfully to Earth in 2006, and now provide an unprecedented opportunity for laboratory-based microanalysis of materials from the outer solar system and beyond. Results from the cometary sample studies have demonstrated that Wild 2 contains much more refractory condensate material and much less pristine extra-solar material than expected, which further indicates that there was significant transport of inner solar system materials to the Kuiper Belt in the early solar system [1]. The analysis of the interstellar samples is still in the preliminary examination (PE) phase, due to the level of difficulty in the definitive identification of the ISD features, the overall low abundance, and its irreplaceable nature, which necessitates minimally invasive measurements [2]. We present here coordinated microanalysis of the impact features on the Al foils, which have led to the identification of four impacts that are possibly attributable to interstellar dust. Results from the study of four ISD candidates captured in aerogel are presented elsewhere [2]

The Physics of the B Factories

This work is on the Physics of the B Factories. Part A of this book contains a brief description of the SLAC and KEK B Factories as well as their detectors, BaBar and Belle, and data taking related issues. Part B discusses tools and methods used by the experiments in order to obtain results. The results themselves can be found in Part C