Response to GH Treatment After Radiation Therapy Depends on Location of Irradiation

OBJECTIVES: Cancer survivors with GH deficiency (GHD) receive GH therapy (GHT) after 1+ year observation to ensure stable tumor status/resolution. HYPOTHESIS: Radiation therapy (RT) to brain, spine, or extremities alters growth response to GHT. AIM: Identify differences in growth response to GHT according to type/location of RT. METHODS: The Pfizer International Growth Database was searched for cancer survivors on GHT for ≥5 years. Patient data, grouped by tumor type, were analyzed for therapy (surgery, chemotherapy, RT of the focal central nervous system, cranial, craniospinal, or total body irradiation [TBI] as part of bone marrow transplantation), sex, peak stimulated GH, age at GHT start, and duration from RT to GHT start. Kruskal-Wallis test and quantile regression modeling were performed. RESULTS: Of 1149 GHD survivors on GHT for ≥5 years (male 733; median age 8.4 years; GH peak 2.8 ng/mL), 431 had craniopharyngioma (251, cranial RT), 224 medulloblastoma (craniospinal RT), 134 leukemia (72 TBI), and 360 other tumors. Median age differed by tumor group (P < 0.001). Five-year delta height SD score (SDS) (5-year ∆HtSDS; median [10th-90th percentile]) was greatest for craniopharyngioma, 1.6 (0.3-3.0); for medulloblastoma, 5-year ∆HtSDS 0.9 (0.0-1.9); for leukemia 5-year ∆HtSDS, after TBI (0.3, 0-0.7) versus without RT (0.5, 0-0.9), direct comparison P < 0.001. Adverse events included 40 treatment-related, but none unexpected. CONCLUSIONS: TBI for leukemia had significant impact on growth response to GHT. Medulloblastoma survivors had intermediate GHT response, whereas craniopharyngioma cranial RT did not alter GHT response. Both craniospinal and epiphyseal irradiation negatively affect growth response to GH therapy compared with only cranial RT or no RT

Overnight levels of luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone and growth hormone before and during gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue treatment in short boys born small for gestational age

Aims: To evaluate if 3 months of gonadotropin-releasing hormone analogue (GnRHa) treatment results in sufficient suppression of pubertal luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) profile patterns in short pubertal small for gestational age (SGA) boys. To compare growth hormone (GH) profiles and fasting insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I and IGF-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) levels after 3 months of GnRHa treatment with those at baseline. Methods: After measurement of baseline overnight profiles and IGF-I and IGFBP-3 levels, 14 short pubertal SGA boys received leuprorelide acetate depots of 3.75 mg subcutaneously, every 4 weeks. Results: At baseline, mean GH levels were comparable with those of controls, whereas IGF-I and IGFBP-3 standard deviation scores (SDS) were significantly lower than zero SDS. After 3 months of GnRHa treatment, all boys showed clinical arrest of puberty. The area under the curve above zero, mean and maximum LH and FSH had significantly decreased to prepubertal levels. Peak LH during the GnRH agonist test, however, indicated insufficient pubertal suppression in 43% of boys. Overnight GH profile characteristics and IGF-I and IGFBP-3 levels did not significantly change. Conclusions: Puberty was sufficiently suppressed by GnRHa treatment, as shown by the prepubertal LH and FSH profiles. After 3 months of GnRHa treatment, overnight GH profile characteristics had not significantly changed, reflecting that GH levels are comparable for prepubertal and early pubertal boys

Compton Scattering on the Deuteron in Baryon Chiral Perturbation Theory

Compton scattering on the deuteron is studied in the framework of baryon chiral perturbation theory to third order in small momenta, for photon energies of order the pion mass. The scattering amplitude is a sum of one- and two-nucleon mechanisms with no undetermined parameters. Our results are in good agreement with existing experimental data, and a prediction is made for higher-energy data being analyzed at SAL.Comment: 39 pages LaTeX, 19 figures (uses epsf

Boost operators in Coulomb-gauge QCD: the pion form factor and Fock expansions in phi radiative decays

In this article we rederive the Boost operators in Coulomb-Gauge Yang-Mills theory employing the path-integral formalism and write down the complete operators for QCD. We immediately apply them to note that what are usually called the pion square, quartic... charge radii, defined from derivatives of the pion form factor at zero squared momentum transfer, are completely blurred out by relativistic and interaction corrections, so that it is not clear at all how to interpret these quantities in terms of the pion charge distribution. The form factor therefore measures matrix elements of powers of the QCD boost and Moeller operators, weighted by the charge density in the target's rest frame. In addition we remark that the decomposition of the eta' wavefunction in quarkonium, gluonium, ... components attempted by the KLOE collaboration combining data from phi radiative decays, requires corrections due to the velocity of the final state meson recoiling against a photon. This will be especially important if such decompositions are to be attempted with data from J/psi decays.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

Initiation of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and estimates of total Antarctic ice volume in the earliest Oligocene

Reconstructions of Antarctic paleotopography for the late Eocene suggest that glacial erosion and thermal subsidence have lowered West Antarctic elevations considerably since then, with Antarctic land area having decreased ~20%. A new climate-ice sheet model based on these reconstructions shows that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet first formed at the Eocene-Oligocene transition (33.8–33.5 Ma, E-O) in concert with the continental-scale expansion of the East Antarctica Ice Sheet and that the total volume of East and West Antarctic ice (33.4–35.9 × 106 km3) was >1.4 times greater than previously assumed. This larger modeled ice volume is consistent with a modest cooling of 1–2°C in the deep ocean during the E-O transition, lower than other estimates of ~3°C cooling, and suggests the possibility of substantial ice in the Antarctic interior before the Eocene-Oligocene boundary

Mediated intimacy and postfeminism: A discourse analytic examination of sex and relationships advice in a women's magazine

This paper uses a discourse analytic perspective to analyse sex and relationship advice in a best-selling women's magazine. It identifies three different interpretative repertoires which together structure constructions of sexual relationships: the intimate entrepreneurship repertoire, organised around plans, goals and the scientific management of relationships; men-ology, in which women are instructed in how to learn to please men; and transforming the self, which calls on women to remodel their interior lives in order to construct a desirable subjectivity. The paper considers each repertoire in turn, and also looks at how they work together in order to privilege men and heterosexuality. Discussion focuses in particular on the postfeminist nature of the advice, in which pre-feminist, feminist and anti-feminist ideas are entangled in such a way as to make gender ideologies more pernicious and difficult to contest

Demonstration of the temporal matter-wave Talbot effect for trapped matter waves

We demonstrate the temporal Talbot effect for trapped matter waves using ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. We investigate the phase evolution of an array of essentially non-interacting matter waves and observe matter-wave collapse and revival in the form of a Talbot interference pattern. By using long expansion times, we image momentum space with sub-recoil resolution, allowing us to observe fractional Talbot fringes up to 10th order.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure

Longitudinal double-spin asymmetry and cross section for inclusive neutral pion production at midrapidity in polarized proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV

We report a measurement of the longitudinal double-spin asymmetry A_LL and the differential cross section for inclusive Pi0 production at midrapidity in polarized proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 200 GeV. The cross section was measured over a transverse momentum range of 1 < p_T < 17 GeV/c and found to be in good agreement with a next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculation. The longitudinal double-spin asymmetry was measured in the range of 3.7 < p_T < 11 GeV/c and excludes a maximal positive gluon polarization in the proton. The mean transverse momentum fraction of Pi0's in their parent jets was found to be around 0.7 for electromagnetically triggered events.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. D (RC