Alveolar Echinococcosis Mimicking a Hepatic Neoplasm with Lymph Node Metastasis: A Case Report

A 37-year-old man had an asymptomatic 17-mm mass in the liver by health check with ultrasonography. Five years later, he was referred to our hospital because the mass was slightly enlarged with a peripancreatic lymph node. We performed endoscopic ultrasonography fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) to evaluate a lymph node, but it showed amorphous eosinophilic material and eosinophilic infiltrate in necrotic tissue of toothpaste-like white specimen. However, we diagnosed as potentially malignant liver mass with lymph node metastasis because of 2-deoxy-2-(fluorine-18) fluorodeoxyglucose uptake. We then performed hepatectomy and enucleation of the pancreas. DNA polymerase chain reaction analysis revealed Echinococcus multilocularis infection. Retrospectively, we could find a part of Echinococcus in the specimens of EUS-FNA

New Sequence Variants in HLA Class II/III Region Associated with Susceptibility to Knee Osteoarthritis Identified by Genome-Wide Association Study

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common disease that has a definite genetic component. Only a few OA susceptibility genes that have definite functional evidence and replication of association have been reported, however. Through a genome-wide association study and a replication using a total of ∼4,800 Japanese subjects, we identified two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (rs7775228 and rs10947262) associated with susceptibility to knee OA. The two SNPs were in a region containing HLA class II/III genes and their association reached genome-wide significance (combined P = 2.43×10−8 for rs7775228 and 6.73×10−8 for rs10947262). Our results suggest that immunologic mechanism is implicated in the etiology of OA