Prevention of Colorectal Cancer: The Future Is Now

An estimated 140,000 new cases of colorectal cancer (CRC) were diagnosed in the USA in 2013. This review focuses on primary, secondary, and tertiary efforts to improve outcomes for patients at risk of CRC. Primary prevention to prevent the occurrence of CRC should focus on the reduction of modifiable CRC risk factors, including education regarding the deleterious effects of Western diets consisting of red and processed meats and the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle and obesity. Foods containing folates, vitamin D, and calcium may be protective against CRC and their consumption should likely be encouraged. Secondary preventive screening efforts can have a profound effect on reducing mortality by identifying neoplasia when precancerous lesions such as adenomas may be removed or when early-stage CRCs exist. Efforts must be made to increase the uptake of CRC screening on a worldwide level. The most resounding data for pharmacologic success in the prophylaxis of colorectal neoplasia belong to the class of aspirin and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Future therapies improving the efficiency of CRC screening modalities and genomic medical breakthroughs to personalize prophylactic treatments will change the way CRC prevention is viewed

De Novo Transcriptome Sequencing and Analysis of Differential Gene Expression among Various Stages of Tail Regeneration in <i>Hemidactylus flaviviridis</i>

Across the animal kingdom, lizards are the only amniotes capable of regenerating their lost tail through epimorphosis. Of the many reptiles, the northern house gecko, Hemidactylus flaviviridis, is an excellent model system that is used for understanding the mechanism of epimorphic regeneration. A stage-specific transcriptome profile was generated in the current study following an autotomized tail with the HiSeq2500 platform. The reads obtained from de novo sequencing were filtered and high-quality reads were considered for gene ontology (GO) annotation and pathway analysis. Millions of reads were recorded for each stage upon de novo assembly. Up and down-regulated transcripts were categorized for early blastema (EBL), blastema (BL) and differentiation (DF) stages compared to the normal tail (NT) by differential gene expression analysis. The transcripts from developmentally significant pathways such as FGF, Wnt, Shh and TGF-β/BMP were present during tail regeneration. Additionally, differential expression of transcripts was recorded from biological processes, namely inflammation, cell proliferation, apoptosis and cell migration. Overall, the study reveals the stage-wise transcriptome analysis in conjunction with cellular processes as well as molecular signaling pathways during lizard tail regeneration. The knowledge obtained from the data can be extrapolated to configure regenerative responses in other amniotes, including humans, upon loss of a complex organ

Idiopathic Unilateral Enlargement of the Extraocular Muscles in an Infant

A 6-month-old boy presented with a unilateral motility deficit of the right eye in all fields of gaze. Neuroimaging revealed unilateral enlargement of the medial, lateral, and inferior rectus muscles with sparing of the tendons. An evaluation for thyroid eye disease, idiopathic orbital inflammation, myositis, inflammatory and neoplastic infiltration of the muscle, vascular anomalies, and metastatic neuroblastoma was unrevealing. Biopsy of the muscle revealed normal architecture with an absence of inflammation, infiltration, or fibrosis. A review of the literature reveals the exceptionally rare nature of this finding. While the authors cannot rule out an atypical case of congenital euthyroid eye disease, this constellation of findings is not consistent with thyroid eye disease and may represent previously described cases of idiopathic enlargement of the extraocular muscles