Validation of Androgen Receptor loss as a risk factor for the development of brain metastases from ovarian cancers

Abstract Background Central nervous system (CNS) spreading from epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC) is an uncommon but increasing phenomenon. We previously reported in a small series of 11 patients a correlation between Androgen Receptor (AR) loss and localization to CNS. Aims of this study were: to confirm a predictive role of AR loss in an independent validation cohort; to evaluate if AR status impacts on EOC survival. Results We collected an additional 29 cases and 19 controls as validation cohort. In this independent cohort at univariate analysis, cases exhibited lower expression of AR, considered both as continuous (p <  0.001) and as discrete variable (10% cut-off: p <  0.003; Immunoreactive score: p <  0.001). AR negative EOC showed an odds ratio (OR) = 8.33 for CNS dissemination compared with AR positive EOC. Kaplan-Meier curves of the combined dataset, combining data of new validation cohort with the previously published cohort, showed that AR <  10% significantly correlates with worse outcomes (p = 0.005 for Progression Free Survival (PFS) and p = 0.002 for brain PFS (bPFS) respectively). Comparison of AR expression between primary tissue and paired brain metastases in the combined dataset did not show any statistically significant difference. Conclusions We confirmed AR loss as predictive role for CNS involvement from EOC in an independent cohort of cases and controls. Early assessment of AR status could improve clinical management and patients’ prognosis

Nouvelles interventions dans le débat sur les rapports entre l’étude historique et l’étude sociologique du droit

Si tratta di una nota sui rapporti tra storia del diritto - in particolare quella contemporanea - e sociologia del diritto. Dall'analisi critica dei nuovi contributi in materia collazionati da M.G. Losano emerge la prossimità delle due discipline, separate alla fine soltanto da una diversità metodologica circa la archivazione-raccolta dei dati storico-sociologici

Raccontando il possibile. Eschilo e le narrazioni giuridiche

La corrente Law and Literature, che si è sviluppata per lo più negli Stati Uniti, sta cominciando ad affrontare il problema della costruzione di uno strumentario utile all’analisi del fenomeno giuridico nella prospettiva della complessità sociale, sebbene risenta a tratti di un atteggiamento epistemologico ancora legato a suddivisioni di campo a volte ingenue e limitanti. Il presente contributo intende rielaborarne in parte la metodologia, proponendo un possibile impianto di una teoria delle narrazioni giuridiche, da verificare, dopo averne definiti l’oggetto, l’universo, il campo, le categorie, attraverso l’analisi di un testo letterario tra i più significativi per la tradizione giuridica occidentale, ovvero l’Orestea di Eschilo, preziosa testimonianza del terreno in cui affondano le radici delle istituzioni giuridiche e politiche degli ordinamenti contemporanei: una terra intrisa di sangue, violenza e legge sacra, di vendetta e giustizia. Le ragioni della scelta dell’opera discendono dal genere, dalle modalità di composizione dell’opera e dalle finalità che Eschilo vi imprime. Queste sono strettamente collegate alle condizioni, alle esigenze e alle aspettative sociali nell’Atene nella prima metà del V secolo. Ci sembra, in sintesi, che l’Orestea riassuma un caso rappresentativo di narrazione giuridica nei termini da noi elaborati e quindi adatto come campo di verifica di teoria e metodo di analisi. Su un altro fronte si va a verificare l’adeguatezza dell’approccio a far emergere dai contenuti della narrazione quelle informazioni che più rivelano le origini degli ordinamenti giuridici attuali, e di alcuni paradossi del legame sociale

Narration as a Normative Process

The Law and Literature approach has become one of the most promising ways to go about observing the legal phenomenon. I will not trace out the way this approach has developed, for which purpose there is an abundance of critical essays the reader can refer to, but I will point out that Law and Literature has a long history even in Europe (Sansone 2001) and is very much thriving here (Aristodemou 2000; Buescu-Trabuco-Ribeiro 2010; Gaakeer 2007; Gaakeer and Ost 2008; Garapon and Salas 2008; González 2008; Mittica 2009; Ost et al. 2001; Ost 2004; Pozzo 2010; Ward 1995, 2004; Williams 2005), as it is in other countries outside the United States (Melkevik 2010), most notably in Australia (Dolin 2007) and less notably in Latin America (Coaguila Valdivia 2009; Karam Trindade, Gubert, and Neto 2008a, 2008b; Lopes 2006; Schwartz and Trindade 2008). Also testifying to the growing interest in this interdisciplinary approach is the large following attracted by the Italian Society for Law and Literature (ISLL), established in June 2008 at the University of Bologna with the aim of promoting Law and Literature and, more broadly still, Law and the Humanities: an international network has been set up linking some of the most prominent organizations devoted to this approach; an online multilingual journal called ISLL Papers has since been founded, and also a library that extends its scope so as to also keep a close eye on the research being conducted in this field in different parts of the world and from different disciplinary perspectives. It is too early to have a proper assessment of this experience, to be sure, but at least one observation can be made from the outset as far as the society’s membership is concerned. There has gathered around ISLL a community of scholars coming from a variety of disciplines, bringing a perspective both internal to law and external to it. From an internal viewpoint we have the legal sciences and the different branches of positive law, and we concomitantly have a number of disciplines traditionally engaged in observing law from an external viewpoint, such as philosophy, history (ancient, medieval, and modern), and the sociology and anthropology of law. The area that ISLL has come to stretch over is, in this sense, spontaneously interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinarity, as is known, offers great opportunities for any scholarly enterprise, but at the same time it also increases more than anything else the risk of lapsing into improvisation and dilettantism. Our aim is to work out investigative models that can be shared among different disciplinary perspectives, in such a way as to find a common language and to proceed bringing to bear the expertise distinctive to each participant. This need is the order of the day on the agenda for this field of study, and the process, especially as Europe is concerned, has gotten off to a good start through the effort François Ost. While I do agree with Posner (2009) in criticizing interdisciplinarity as an idle pursuit when undertaken in a superficial way, I argue, contrary to Posner’s view, that through a process involving a theoretical exchange with methodological controls on the data to be analyzed, Law and the Humanities makes it possible to observe the law in a useful and rigorous way, and not just to recover law’s aesthetic dimension, with a view to providing an ethical vantage point on the law for those who will be dealing with legal questions. There are three objectives in particular I will be focusing on: (a) to present a model I have called normative narration (Mittica 2006), a model understood as the main engine driving the processes of normative construction, and developed by drawing on concepts and insights pertaining to different disciplines; (b) to frame a new way of looking at the distinction between law and literature; and (c) to come at a definition of law as narrative, as well as to see how other types of narrative produced within a culture can be considered normative