Biological predictive factors in rectal cancer treated with preoperative radiotherapy or radiochemotherapy

We analysed the expression of microsatellite instability, p53, p21, vascular endothelial growth factor and thymidylate synthase (TS) in pretreatment biopsy specimens from 57 locally advanced rectal cancers. The aim of the study was to correlate the expression of these markers with pathological response. Nineteen patients were treated with preoperative concomitant radiotherapy (RT) and fluorouracil/oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy (RCT), while 38 had RT alone. Pathological complete remission (pCR) and microfoci residual tumour (micR) occurred more frequently in patients treated with RCT (P=0.002) and in N0 tumours (P=0.004). Among patients treated with RCT, high TS levels were associated with a higher response rate (pCR+micR; P=0.015). No such correlation was found in the RT group. The other molecular factors were of no predictive value. Multivariate analysis confirmed a significant interaction between nodal status and the probability of achieving a pathological response (P=0.023) and between TS expression and treatment, indicating that a high TS level is predictive of a higher pathological response in the RCT subset (P=0.007). This study shows that lymph node status is the most important predictive factor of tumour response to preoperative treatment. Thymidylate synthase expression assessed immunohistochemically from pretreatment tumour biopsies may be a useful predictive marker of rectal tumour response to preoperative RCT

Visualizing confidence bands for semiparametrically estimated nonlinear relations among latent variables

Structural equation mixture models (SEMMs), when applied as a semiparametric model (SPM), can adequately recover potentially nonlinear latent relationships without their specification. This SPM is useful for exploratory analysis when the form of the latent regression is unknown. The purpose of this article is to help users familiar with structural equation models to add SEMM to their toolkit of exploratory analytic options. We describe how the SEMM captures potential nonlinearity between latent variables, and how confidence bands (CBs; point wise and simultaneous) for the recovered latent function are constructed and interpreted. We then illustrate the usefulness of CBs for inference with an empirical example on the effect of emotions on cognitive processing. We also introduce a visualization tool that automatically generates plots of the latent regression and their CBs to promote user accessibility. Finally, we conclude with a discussion on the use of this SPM for exploratory research

Bolsas palpebrales inferiores y blefaroplastia estética: investigación anatomo-quirúrgica

Abordamos el estudio de las bolsas adiposas palpebrales inferiores contemplando la importancia de dos ejes fundamentales como son, en la práctica, la blefaroplastia estética y el aspecto puramente anatómico. Sobre material formolizado de la región orbitaria y según técnica habitual, practicamos disecciones en cada una de las preparaciones anatómicas mediante las cuales fue posible estudiar, en la mitad inferior de la órbita, el comportamiento de la grasa y de las estructuras involucradas con ella permitiendo además incorporar la noción de la arquitectura del espacio retroseptal ántero-inferior y la de sus compartimentos o subdivisiones medial, central y lateral. Esta línea de investigación anatomo-quirúrgica condujo finalmente al preciso establecimiento de la ubicación y de las principales características de cada uno de los paquetes adiposos palpebrales inferiores

Cyber-Tooth: Antennified Dental Implant for RFID Wireless Temperature Monitoring

The implantation of devices and prostheses is considerably rising in recent years. When an implanted medical prosthesis is equipped with a local wireless sensor, an early-onset identification of possible infections could be achieved. This paper proposes a method to transform a metallic dental implant into an antenna integrating a temperature UHF RFID sensor. A sensorized add-on disk, fully embedded in the dental implant's crown, collects the external interrogating electromagnetic field and transforms the implant itself into a top-excited dipole. After simulations, a preliminary prototype of the resulting Cyber-Tooth is experimented with a near-filed interrogation by means of an on-cheek antenna. Results are promising for the establishment of a robust backscattering link, as a good margin in the link budget is achievable with further improvements in the tuning of the disk harvester