KRAS Codons 12 and 13 Mutation Analysis: A Comparative Study between Direct Sequencing and a New Sensitive Real-Time PCR Assay

KRAS somatic mutations are found in 30–40% of colorectal cancer (CRC). Seven mutations in codons 12 and 13 of KRAS (95% of the observed human mutations) preclude the efficacy of anti-EGFR therapy for the treatment of CRC. Assessment of KRAS mutational status has become a standard procedure in the management of patients with CRC. Technically, KRAS mutation testing can be performed with different methods, characterized by distinct sensitivities and specificities. The present study analyzed KRAS in 182 CRC histological samples by using direct sequencing and a new kit based on a Real-Time Sequence-Specific Primers-PCR technology. The kit allowed to recover as positive 17 samples that were negative or unclear by sequencing, with a recovery rate equal to 13.82%. This study proposes a fast, sensitive, and high-throughput system to identify such seven described mutations of KRAS gene in CRC samples

Idiopathic eosinophilic parotitis in an eight-year-old boy: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>A number of medical conditions, some of them recently reported, are associated with an increased production of eosinophils. We report the first case of eosinophilic parotitis in the literature.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>The patient was an eight-year-old Caucasian boy who presented with a two-year history of recurring acute parotitis with no fever. He had had a total of five episodes with no response to antibiotics, but remission had been achieved with oral corticosteroid therapy. We performed allergy tests for inhalant and food allergens and for haptens, but the results were all negative. The results of echography ruled out sialodochitis. Instead, a swab from the parotid duct led to the detection of a high number of eosinophils.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This report is first in the literature to describe a case of eosinophilic parotitis, and we suggest that a cytological assessment, which is quite simple yet rarely used by physicians, be performed when patients with parotitis of uncertain origin are under evaluation.</p

Acquired Resilience: An Evolved System of Tissue Protection in Mammals.

This review brings together observations on the stress-induced regulation of resilience mechanisms in body tissues. It is argued that the stresses that induce tissue resilience in mammals arise from everyday sources: sunlight, food, lack of food, hypoxia and physical stresses. At low levels, these stresses induce an organised protective response in probably all tissues; and, at some higher level, cause tissue destruction. This pattern of response to stress is well known to toxicologists, who have termed it hormesis. The phenotypes of resilience are diverse and reports of stress-induced resilience are to be found in journals of neuroscience, sports medicine, cancer, healthy ageing, dementia, parkinsonism, ophthalmology and more. This diversity makes the proposing of a general concept of induced resilience a significant task, which this review attempts. We suggest that a system of stress-induced tissue resilience has evolved to enhance the survival of animals. By analogy with acquired immunity, we term this system \u27acquired resilience\u27. Evidence is reviewed that acquired resilience, like acquired immunity, fades with age. This fading is, we suggest, a major component of ageing. Understanding of acquired resilience may, we argue, open pathways for the maintenance of good health in the later decades of human life

Glycyl-L-alanine: A multi-temperature neutron study

Neutron diffraction data have been collected at 12, 50, 150 and 295 K for the dipeptide glycyl-L-alanine, C5H10N2O3, in order to obtain accurate positional and anisotropic displacement parameters for the H atoms. The values of these parameters serve as a benchmark for assessing the equivalent parameters obtained from a so-called Hirshfeld-atom refinement of X-ray diffraction data described elsewhere [Capelli et al. (2014). IUCrJ, 1, 361-379]. The flexibility of the glycyl-L-alanine mol­ecule in the solid and the hydrogen-bonding inter­actions as a function of temperature are also considered

Development of novel membrane disrupting lipoguanidine compounds sensitizing Gram-negative bacteria to antibiotics

A new class of amphiphilic molecules, the lipoguanidines, designed as hybrids of guanidine and fatty acid compounds, has been synthesized and developed. The new molecules present both a guanidine polar head and a lipophilic tail that allow them to disrupt bacterial membranes and to sensitize Gram-negative bacteria to the action of the narrow-spectrum antibiotics rifampicin and novobiocin. The lipoguanidine 5g sensitizes Klebsiella pneumonia, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli to rifampicin, thereby reducing the antibiotic minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) up to 256-fold. Similarly, 5g is able to potentiate novobiocin up to 64-fold, thereby showing a broad spectrum of antibiotic potentiating activity. Toxicity and mechanism studies revealed the potential of 5g to work synergistically with rifampicin through the disruption18 of bacterial membranes without affecting eukaryotic cells

Images of the Early Universe from the BOOMERanG experiment

The CMB is the fundamental tool to study the properties of the early universe and of the universe at large scales. In the framework of the Hot Big Bang model, when we look to the CMB we look back in time to the end of the plasma era, at a redshift ~ 1000, when the universe was ~ 50000 times younger, ~ 1000 times hotter and ~ 10^9 times denser than today. The image of the CMB can be used to study the physical processes there, to infer what happened before, and also to study the background geometry of our Universe

ℓ-space spectroscopy of the Cosmic Microwave Background with the BOOMERanG experiment

The BOOMERanG experiment has recently produced detailed maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background, where sub-horizon structures are resolved with good signal to noise ratio. A power spectrum (spherical harmonics) analysis of the maps detects three peaks, at multipoles ℓ = (213_(-13)^(+10)),(541_(-32)^(+20))(845_(-25)^(+12)). In this paper we discuss the data analysis and the implications of these results for cosmology