Cancer incidence patterns by region and socioeconomic deprivation in teenagers and young adults in England

Data on 35 291 individuals with cancer, aged 13–24 years, in England from 1979 to 2001 were analysed by region and socio-economic deprivation of census ward of residence, as measured by the Townsend deprivation index. The incidence of leukaemia, lymphoma, central nervous system tumours, soft tissue sarcomas, gonadal germ cell tumours, melanoma and carcinomas varied by region (P<0.01, all groups) but bone tumour incidence did not. Lymphomas, central nervous system tumours and gonadal germ cell tumours all had higher incidence in less deprived census wards (P<0.01), while chronic myeloid leukaemia and carcinoma of the cervix had higher incidence in more deprived wards (P<0.01). In the least deprived wards, melanoma incidence was nearly twice that in the most deprived, but this trend varied between regions (P<0.001). These cancer incidence patterns differ from those seen in both children and older adults and have implications for aetiology and prevention

Meiotic Chromosome Pairing Is Promoted by Telomere-Led Chromosome Movements Independent of Bouquet Formation

Chromosome pairing in meiotic prophase is a prerequisite for the high fidelity of chromosome segregation that haploidizes the genome prior to gamete formation. In the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, as in most multicellular eukaryotes, homologous pairing at the cytological level reflects the contemporaneous search for homology at the molecular level, where DNA double-strand broken ends find and interact with templates for repair on homologous chromosomes. Synapsis (synaptonemal complex formation) stabilizes pairing and supports DNA repair. The bouquet stage, where telomeres have formed a transient single cluster early in meiotic prophase, and telomere-promoted rapid meiotic prophase chromosome movements (RPMs) are prominent temporal correlates of pairing and synapsis. The bouquet has long been thought to contribute to the kinetics of pairing, but the individual roles of bouquet and RPMs are difficult to assess because of common dependencies. For example, in budding yeast RPMs and bouquet both require the broadly conserved SUN protein Mps3 as well as Ndj1 and Csm4, which link telomeres to the cytoskeleton through the intact nuclear envelope. We find that mutants in these genes provide a graded series of RPM activity: wild-type>mps3-dCC>mps3-dAR>ndj1Δ>mps3-dNT = csm4Δ. Pairing rates are directly correlated with RPM activity even though only wild-type forms a bouquet, suggesting that RPMs promote homologous pairing directly while the bouquet plays at most a minor role in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A new collision trap assay demonstrates that RPMs generate homologous and heterologous chromosome collisions in or before the earliest stages of prophase, suggesting that RPMs contribute to pairing by stirring the nuclear contents to aid the recombination-mediated homology search

Atrioventricular and interventricular delay optimization in cardiac resynchronization therapy: physiological principles and overview of available methods

In this review, the physiological rationale for atrioventricular and interventricular delay optimization of cardiac resynchronization therapy is discussed including the influence of exercise and long-term cardiac resynchronization therapy. The broad spectrum of both invasive and non-invasive optimization methods is reviewed with critical appraisal of the literature. Although the spectrum of both invasive and non-invasive optimization methods is broad, no single method can be recommend for standard practice as large-scale studies using hard endpoints are lacking. Current efforts mainly investigate optimization during resting conditions; however, there is a need to develop automated algorithms to implement dynamic optimization in order to adapt to physiological alterations during exercise and after anatomical remodeling

Transluminal angioplasty of a stenosis of an internal mammary artery graft

Stricture of an internal mammary artery graft was successfully dilated by percutaneous angioplasty in a young man who had recurrent angina soon after bypass surgery.link_to_subscribed_fulltex