Prognostic factors in prostate cancer

Prognostic factors in organ confined prostate cancer will reflect survival after surgical radical prostatectomy. Gleason score, tumour volume, surgical margins and Ki-67 index have the most significant prognosticators. Also the origins from the transitional zone, p53 status in cancer tissue, stage, and aneuploidy have shown prognostic significance. Progression-associated features include Gleason score, stage, and capsular invasion, but PSA is also highly significant. Progression can also be predicted with biological markers (E-cadherin, microvessel density, and aneuploidy) with high level of significance. Other prognostic features of clinical or PSA-associated progression include age, IGF-1, p27, and Ki-67. In patients who were treated with radiotherapy the survival was potentially predictable with age, race and p53, but available research on other markers is limited. The most significant published survival-associated prognosticators of prostate cancer with extension outside prostate are microvessel density and total blood PSA. However, survival can potentially be predicted by other markers like androgen receptor, and Ki-67-positive cell fraction. In advanced prostate cancer nuclear morphometry and Gleason score are the most highly significant progression-associated prognosticators. In conclusion, Gleason score, capsular invasion, blood PSA, stage, and aneuploidy are the best markers of progression in organ confined disease. Other biological markers are less important. In advanced disease Gleason score and nuclear morphometry can be used as predictors of progression. Compound prognostic factors based on combinations of single prognosticators, or on gene expression profiles (tested by DNA arrays) are promising, but clinically relevant data is still lacking

Coordination variability around the walk to run transition during human locomotion

Increases in movement variability have previously been observed to be a hall-mark property of cooraination changes between coupled oscillators that occur as movement frequency is scaled. Prior research on the walk-run transition in human locomotion has also demonstrated increases in variability around the transition region, supporting predictions of nonequilibrium phase transitions (Diedrich & Warren, 1995). The current study examined the coordinative patterns of both intra- and inter-limb couplings around the walk-run transition using two different temporal manipulations of locomotor velocity as a control parameter in healthy young participants (N = 11). Coordination variability did not increase before the transition. The nature of the change in continuous relative phase variability between gait modes was coupling-specific, and varying the time spent at each velocity did not have an overall effect on gait transition dynamics. Lower extremity inter-limb coordination dynamics were more sensitive to changes in treadmill velocity than intra-limb coordination. The results demonstrate the complexity of segmental coordination change in human locomotion, and question the applicability o