Sialoblastoma- long-term follow-up and remission for a rare salivary malignancy

Sialoblastoma is a rare salivary neoplasm which presents either congenitally or during early infancy. It was originally considered a benign neoplasm, however a number of reported cases have documented locoregional recurrence and distant metastases. Currently, there is no consensus on the appropriate treatment for this neoplasm. We report on long term follow-up of a patient with metastatic sialoblastoma, and a brief discussion of the possible treatment modalities currently being considered

Age, Tumor Characteristics, and Treatment Regimen as Event Predictors in Ewing: A Children's Oncology Group Report

. Purpose. To associate baseline patient characteristics and relapse across consecutive COG studies. Methods. We analyzed risk factors for LESFT patients in three randomized COG trials. We evaluated age at enrollment, primary site, gender, tumor size, and treatment (as randomized). We estimated event-free survival (EFS, Kaplan-Meier) and compared risk across groups (log-rank test). Characteristics were assessed by proportional hazards regression with the characteristic of interest as the only component. Confidence intervals (CI) for RR were derived. Factors related to outcome at level 0.05 were included in a multivariate regression model. Results. Between 12/1988 and 8/2005, 1444 patients were enrolled and data current to 2001, 2004, or 2008 were used. Patients were with a median age of 12 years (0-45), 55% male and 88% Caucasian. The 5-year EFS was 68.3% ± 1.3%. In univariate analysis age, treatment, and tumor location were identified for inclusion in the multivariate model, and all remained significant (p < 0.01). Since tumor size was not collected in the last study, the other two were reanalyzed. This model identified age, treatment, tumor location, and tumor size as significant predictors. Conclusion. Age > 18 years, pelvic tumor, size > 8 cms, and chemotherapy without ifosfamide/etoposide significantly predict worse outcome. AEWS0031 is NCT00006734, INT0091 and INT0054 designed before 1993 (unregistered)

Sport, and use of anabolic androgenic steroids among Icelandic high school students: a critical test of three perspectives

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This study investigates the use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) among a national representative sample of high school students in Iceland. We test several hypotheses drawn from three perspectives. The first perspective focuses on the use of AAS as an individual phenomenon motivated by the desire to succeed in sport. The second perspective views the use of AAS as shaped by norms and values embedded in social relationships of formally organized sport. The third perspective suggests that factors outside sport, which have been shown to correlate with the use of other substances, predict the use of AAS.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>We use logistic regression and predicted probabilities to analyze data from a national representative survey of 11031 Icelandic high school students.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our results indicated that the use of AAS is not significantly related to participation in formally organized sports. However, it positively relates to fitness and physical training in informal contexts. We found a relatively strong relationship between the use of AAS and the use of illicit substances and a moderate relationship between AAS use and alcohol and tobacco consumption. We also found a significant negative relationship between AAS use and school integration and school achievement, and a significant positive relationship between AAS use and school anomie. The relation between AAS use and family-related variables was weaker. Finally, we found that the relationship between sport participation, physical exercise, and AAS use varies across levels of anomie and integration.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our findings suggest that the use of AAS and especially illegal substances should be considered more as a social and a health problem rather than a sport specific issue. We found that high school students participating in fitness and informal training outside of formally organized sport clubs are the main risk group and should be the target of prevention efforts. However, this should not be done at the expense of general risk factors that affect AAS and other substances used by the general population. Finally, we suggest that prevention efforts should target both groups and individuals.</p