The relationship between cancer patient's fear of recurrence and radiotherapy : a systematic review and meta-analysis

The authors are also grateful to the Breast Cancer Now for supporting this research (grant reference number 6873).OBJECTIVE: This review aims to provide an overview of the current knowledge available on the nature and extent of the relationship between external-beam radiotherapy (RT) and fear of cancer recurrence (FoR). METHODS: PubMed, MEDLINE and EMBASE databases were searched to identify relevant studies. Systematic review procedures were followed including a quality assessment. Meta-analysis of suitable studies was conducted. RESULTS: Twenty-five eligible studies were included in the systematic review and 15 of them were included in further meta-analysis. Meta-analysis of the available data confirmed a weak relationship between RT and FoR (15 studies, 9567 patients, overall r = 0.053, 95%, CI: 0.021-0.085, P = 0.001). Subgroup analysis based on cancer site (breast cancer versus other types of cancer) revealed that the correlation between RT and FoR was statistically significant in 'other cancer' group (P˂0.001) but was nonsignificant in 'breast cancer' group (P = 0.538). CONCLUSIONS: While meta-analysis reports a statistically significant association between cancer patient's FoR and the receipt of RT, these results should be interpreted with caution due to significant variability between studies. Further longitudinal studies should be conducted to address the trajectory of FoR over RT in greater detail. PostprintPeer reviewe

A Historical and Political Review of the Response to the 2015-2016 Zika Outbreak in Puerto Rico

The Zika virus was first identified in 1948 but was relatively unknown until 2015, when Brazil began to report a significant increase in the numbers of babies with congenital defects. It is a virus that is primarily transmitted by mosquitos and primarily effects the nervous system. With its tropical climate and constant mosquito presence, Puerto Rico was the location of a massive outbreak during 2015-2016. However, the response to the outbreak faced several hurdles despite Brazil already reporting an increase in microcephaly. The purpose of this review is to examine the political and historical factors that hampered the initial response to the 2015 Zika outbreak in Puerto Rico and how they affected the perceived risk of the Zika virus. It is crucial that intensive health education campaigns and vaccine development continue in order to ensure that a second outbreak does not occur and result in a greater number of babies diagnosed with Congenital Zika Syndrome

Generating entanglement of photon-number states with coherent light via cross-Kerr nonlinearity

We propose a scheme for generating entangled states of light fields. This scheme only requires the cross-Kerr nonlinear interaction between coherent light-beams, followed by a homodyne detection. Therefore, this scheme is within the reach of current technology. We study in detail the generation of the entangled states between two modes, and that among three modes. In addition to the Bell states between two modes and the W states among three modes, we find plentiful new kinds of entangled states. Finally, the scheme can be extend to generate the entangled states among more than three modes.Comment: 2 figure

Mandrake : visualizing microbial population structure by embedding millions of genomes into a low-dimensional representation

In less than a decade, population genomics of microbes has progressed from the effort of sequencing dozens of strains to thousands, or even tens of thousands of strains in a single study. There are now hundreds of thousands of genomes available even for a single bacterial species, and the number of genomes is expected to continue to increase at an accelerated pace given the advances in sequencing technology and widespread genomic surveillance initiatives. This explosion of data calls for innovative methods to enable rapid exploration of the structure of a population based on different data modalities, such as multiple sequence alignments, assemblies and estimates of gene content across different genomes. Here, we present Mandrake, an efficient implementation of a dimensional reduction method tailored for the needs of large-scale population genomics. Mandrake is capable of visualizing population structure from millions of whole genomes, and we illustrate its usefulness with several datasets representing major pathogens. Our method is freely available both as an analysis pipeline (https://github.com/johnlees/mandrake) and as a browser-based interactive application (https://gtonkinhill.github.io/mandrake-web/).This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Genomic population structures of microbial pathogens'.Peer reviewe

Fear of cancer recurrence in adolescent and young adult cancer survivors : a systematic review of the literature

This study is funded by the President Foundation of Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University (2017L001); and the Science and technology project of Guangdong Province (2015A030302025)Objective The current systematic review aims to provide an overview of fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) in adolescent and young adult cancer survivors (15‐39 years at cancer diagnosis, AYAs). Methods MEDLINE, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Embase databases were independently searched to identify relevant quantitative articles. PRISMA systematic review procedures were followed with quality assessment. Results Seventeen studies were included in the current review. All were quantitative studies that utilized a cross‐sectional study design. Seven articles reported results of FCR prevalence, six studied determinants related to FCR, and 11 articles provided information about consequences of FCR. Prevalence of FCR ranged from 31% to 85.2% among AYA survivors. Associations between sociodemographic/clinical variables and FCR were inconsistent. Psychological distress and higher treatment intensity were positively associated with higher FCR levels. Lower scores on levels of physical, psychological functioning, and overall health‐related quality of life (QoL) were identified as consequences of increased FCR. Conclusion FCR appears to be a prevalent concern among adolescent and young adult cancer populations. Adequate assessment to determine need for support and intervention is still required. Longitudinal studies in AYAs are warranted to understand the development and potential influence of FCR. Age‐appropriate and flexible psychological care would be more successful potentially with this crucial background information.PostprintPeer reviewe

Conformational change of the AcrR regulator reveals a possible mechanism of induction

The Escherichia coli AcrR multidrug-binding protein represses transcription of acrAB and is induced by many structurally unrelated cytotoxic compounds. The crystal structure of AcrR in space group P2221 has been reported previously. This P2221 structure has provided direct information about the multidrug-binding site and important residues for drug recognition. Here, a crystal structure of this regulator in space group P31 is presented. Comparison of the two AcrR structures reveals possible mechanisms of ligand binding and AcrR regulation

A primary luminal/HER2 negative breast cancer patient with mismatch repair deficiency

: Here, we present the case of a 47-year-old woman diagnosed with luminal B breast cancer subtype and provide an in-depth analysis of her gene mutations, chromosomal alterations, mRNA and protein expression changes. We found a point mutation in the FGFR2 gene, which is potentially hyper-activating the receptor function, along with over-expression of its ligand FGF20 due to genomic amplification. The patient also harbors somatic and germline mutations in some mismatch repair (MMR) genes, with a strong MMR mutational signature. The patient displays high microsatellite instability (MSI) and tumor mutational burden (TMB) status and increased levels of CTLA-4 and PD-1 expression. Altogether, these data strongly implicate that aberrant FGFR signaling, and defective MMR system might be involved in the development of this breast tumor. In addition, high MSI and TMB in the context of CTLA-4 and PD-L1 positivity, suggest the potential benefit of immune checkpoint inhibitors. Accurate characterization of molecular subtypes, based on gene mutational and expression profiling analyses, will be certainly helpful for individualized treatment and targeted therapy of breast cancer patients, especially for those subtypes with adverse outcome

Relative expression of TAp73 and ΔNp73 isoforms

The transcription factor p73 belongs to the p53 family of tumour suppressors and similar to other family members, transcribed as different isoforms with opposing pro- and anti-apoptotic functions. Unlike p53, p73 mutations are extremely rare in cancers. Instead, the pro-apoptotic activities of transcriptionally active p73 isoforms are commonly inhibited by over-expression of the dominant negative p73 isoforms. Therefore the relative ratio of different p73 isoforms is critical for the cellular response to a chemotherapeutic agent. Here, we analysed the expression of N-terminal p73 isoforms in cell lines and mouse tissues. Our data showed that the transcriptionally competent TAp73 isoform is abundantly expressed in cancer cell lines compared to the dominant negative ΔNp73 isoform. Interestingly, we detected higher levels of ΔNp73 in some mouse tissues, suggesting that ΔNp73 may have a physiological role in these tissues

The divergent DSL ligand Dll3 does not activate Notch signaling but cell autonomously attenuates signaling induced by other DSL ligands

Mutations in the DSL (Delta, Serrate, Lag2) Notch (N) ligand Delta-like (Dll) 3 cause skeletal abnormalities in spondylocostal dysostosis, which is consistent with a critical role for N signaling during somitogenesis. Understanding how Dll3 functions is complicated by reports that DSL ligands both activate and inhibit N signaling. In contrast to other DSL ligands, we show that Dll3 does not activate N signaling in multiple assays. Consistent with these findings, Dll3 does not bind to cells expressing any of the four N receptors, and N1 does not bind Dll3-expressing cells. However, in a cell-autonomous manner, Dll3 suppressed N signaling, as was found for other DSL ligands. Therefore, Dll3 functions not as an activator as previously reported but rather as a dedicated inhibitor of N signaling. As an N antagonist, Dll3 promoted Xenopus laevis neurogenesis and inhibited glial differentiation of mouse neural progenitors. Finally, together with the modulator lunatic fringe, Dll3 altered N signaling levels that were induced by other DSL ligands