Treatment of HIV-related primary central nervous system lymphoma with azt high dose, HAART, interleukin-2 and foscarnet in three patients

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Purpose</p> <p>Combined immunomodulatory and antiviral treatment was administered to three patients with newly diagnosed HIV-associated primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) in an attempt to improve outcomes.</p> <p>Patients and methods</p> <p>Three patients from our institution who were recently diagnosed with HIV-associated PCNSL received intravenous azidothymidine (AZT) 1.6 gr. bid for two weeks, followed by oral AZT 250 mg bid from day 15. In addition, complementary highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) with a second nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI) plus one protease inhibitor (PI) and interleukin 2 (IL-2) subcutaneously 2 million units twice daily (bid) plus foscarnet 90 mg/kg bid were administered on days 1-14. One patient received anti-EpsteinBarr virus (EBV)-maintenance therapy with ganciclovir, followed by cidofovir <abbrgrp><abbr bid="B1">1</abbr></abbrgrp>.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>All patients experienced progressive disease while on induction therapy, and switched early to whole-brain radiation therapy (WBRT) as second linetreatment. No grade 3 or 4 toxicities were observed. Two patients died on days 50 and 166 respectively due to progressive disease. The third patient with histologically proven lymphoproliferation and only suspected PCNSL remained alive at 53 months. He was on HAART and remained clinically and neurologically stable.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Although IL-2, HAART, high-dose AZT and foscarnet are used for other HIV-related conditions, they did not demonstrate benefit in lymphoma remission for 2 HIVassociated PCNSL patients. The third patient went into delayed remission after additional radiotherapy and was in good clinical and neurological health status over 53 months after diagnosis.</p

SimBench: Open source time series of power load, storage and generation for the simulation of electrical distribution grids

In operation and planning of electrical grids, it is essential to account for temporal fluctuation of produced and consumed electric energy. Time series based studies often use standardized load profiles for this, which, however, cannot accurately represent the individual peak patterns in load and demand and their random combinations. As part of the SimBench project, we developed a dataset of energy time series to be assigned as individual profiles to grid nodes in high voltage (HV), medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) grids to calculate local power flows in a more realistic way. Load profiles are classified and assigned to categories on the basis of similarity to standard load profiles to represent a broad range of energy users and generation profiles were created using weather data and an agent-based simulation tool. The subset presented in this paper comprises different 77 one-year-profiles with a 15 minute resolution, containing commercial consumers, household consumers, storage, and production units based on real measurements from Germany with a focus on MV and LV levels