Post-traumatic cilia remaining inert in the anterior chamber for 50 years: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>The present report concerns what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first case of post-traumatic cilia that has remained inert for approximately 50 years after its inoculation into the eye.</p> <p>Case presentation</p> <p>A 69-year-old Caucasian woman whose right eye had been struck by a dining fork approximately 50 years earlier was examined on presentation two years ago. In her right eye, both uncorrected and best-corrected visual acuities were 0.1 (in decimal notation). Along with a nuclear cataract, a straight linear extension was found extending beneath the iris at the nine o'clock position reaching the center of the pupil, which appeared to be a cilium measuring 7 mm. After the removal of the cilia, an uncomplicated phacoemulsification was performed and a posterior chamber intra-ocular lens was implanted. Her post-operative course was uneventful, and visual acuity remained 1.0 for the 22-month follow-up period.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Intra-ocular cilia can be tolerated for as long as 50 years without causing any ocular reaction.</p

Prognostic Role of Gene Mutations in Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia Patients Treated With Hypomethylating Agents

Somatic mutations contribute to the heterogeneous prognosis of chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML). Hypomethylating agents (HMAs) are active in CMML, but analyses of small series failed to identify mutations predicting response or survival. We analyzed a retrospective multi-center cohort of 174 CMML patients treated with a median of 7 cycles of azacitidine (n = 68) or decitabine (n = 106). Sequencing data before treatment initiation were available for all patients, from Sanger (n = 68) or next generation (n = 106) sequencing. Overall response rate (ORR) was 52%, including complete response (CR) in 28 patients (17%). In multivariate analysis, ASXL1 mutations predicted a lower ORR (Odds Ratio [OR] = 0.85, p = 0.037), whereas TET2mut/ASXL1wt genotype predicted a higher CR rate (OR = 1.18, p = 0.011) independently of clinical parameters. With a median follow-up of 36.7 months, overall survival (OS) was 23.0 months. In multivariate analysis, RUNX1mut (Hazard Ratio [HR] = 2.00, p = .011), CBLmut (HR = 1.90, p = 0.03) genotypes and higher WBC (log10(WBC) HR = 2.30, p = .005) independently predicted worse OS while the TET2mut/ASXL1wt predicted better OS (HR = 0.60, p = 0.05). CMML-specific scores CPSS and GFM had limited predictive power. Our results stress the need for robust biomarkers of HMA activity in CMML and for novel treatment strategies in patients with myeloproliferative features and RUNX1 mutations. Keywords: Chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, Hypomethylating agents, Somatic mutations, Prognosi

Expression of the "stem cell marker" CD133 in pancreas and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It has been suggested that a small population of cells with unique self-renewal properties and malignant potential exists in solid tumors. Such "cancer stem cells" have been isolated by flow cytometry, followed by xenograft studies of their tumor-initiating properties. A frequently used sorting marker in these experiments is the cell surface protein CD133 (prominin-1). The aim of this work was to examine the distribution of CD133 in pancreatic exocrine cancer.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Fifty-one cases of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas were clinically and histopathologically evaluated, and immunohistochemically investigated for expression of CD133, cytokeratin 19 and chromogranin A. The results were interpreted on the background of CD133 expression in normal pancreas and other normal and malignant human tissues.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>CD133 positivity could not be related to a specific embryonic layer of organ origin and was seen mainly at the apical/endoluminal surface of non-squamous, glandular epithelia and of malignant cells in ductal arrangement. Cytoplasmic CD133 staining was observed in some non-epithelial malignancies. In the pancreas, we found CD133 expressed on the apical membrane of ductal cells. In a small subset of ductal cells and in cells in centroacinar position, we also observed expression in the cytoplasm. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas showed a varying degree of apical cell surface CD133 expression, and cytoplasmic staining in a few tumor cells was noted. There was no correlation between the level of CD133 expression and patient survival.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Neither in the pancreas nor in the other investigated organs can CD133 membrane expression alone be a criterion for "stemness". However, there was an interesting difference in subcellular localization with a minor cell population in normal and malignant pancreatic tissue showing cytoplasmic expression. Moreover, since CD133 was expressed in shed ductal cells of pancreatic tumors and was found on the surface of tumor cells in vessels, this molecule may have a potential as clinical marker in patients suffering from pancreatic cancer.</p

Role of DNA methylation in head and neck cancer

Head and neck cancer (HNC) is a heterogenous and complex entity including diverse anatomical sites and a variety of tumor types displaying unique characteristics and different etilogies. Both environmental and genetic factors play a role in the development of the disease, but the underlying mechanism is still far from clear. Previous studies suggest that alterations in the genes acting in cellular signal pathways may contribute to head and neck carcinogenesis. In cancer, DNA methylation patterns display specific aberrations even in the early and precancerous stages and may confer susceptibility to further genetic or epigenetic changes. Silencing of the genes by hypermethylation or induction of oncogenes by promoter hypomethylation are frequent mechanisms in different types of cancer and achieve increasing diagnostic and therapeutic importance since the changes are reversible. Therefore, methylation analysis may provide promising clinical applications, including the development of new biomarkers and prediction of the therapeutic response or prognosis. In this review, we aimed to analyze the available information indicating a role for the epigenetic changes in HNC

Partial Duplicate Detection for Large Book Collections

A framework is presented for discovering partial duplicates in large collections of scanned books with optical character recognition (OCR) errors. Each book in the collection is represented by the sequence of words (in the order they appear in the text) which appear only once in the book. These words are referred to as ``unique words\u27\u27 and they constitute a small percentage of all the words in a typical book. Along with the order information the set of unique words provides a compact representation which is highly descriptive of the content and the flow of ideas in the book. By aligning the sequence of unique words from two books using the longest common subsequence (LCS) one can discover whether two books are duplicates. Experiments on several datasets show that DUPNIQ is more accurate than traditional methods for duplicate detection such as shingling and is fast. On a collection of 100K scanned English books DUPNIQ detects partial duplicates in 30 min using 350 cores and has precision 0.996 and recall 0.833 compared to shingling with precision 0.992 and recall 0.720. The technique works on other languages as well and is demonstrated for a French dataset

Surgical rehabilitation following ocular chemical injury

PubMedID: 23713679Purpose: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the management of limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD) secondary to chemical ocular burns. Materials and methods: The charts of 48 eyes of 40 patients with grade 2 or higher chemical injury were evaluated retrospectively. Subjects with follow-up longer than 1 year were included. Medical treatment, surgical correction of abnormalities of ocular adnexial structures, limbal stem cell transplantation from patient's fellow eye, from living relatives or from cadaveric donor, amniotic membrane transplantation, conjunctival epitheliectomy, chelation with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid and penetrating keratoplasty were the treatment modalities. Outcome measures were ocular surface stability and corrected distance visual acuity (CDVA). Failure was defined as the appearance of persistent epithelial defect (nonhealing epithelial defect for more than 2 weeks) with progressive corneal conjunctivalization/vascularization and thinning, and also progression of conjunctivalization to the central 6mm of the cornea in eyes with subsequent keratoplasty. Results: The mean age of 31 male and 9 female patients were 32.32±12.6 years. LSCD was bilateral in 8 cases. The mean follow-up was 77.2±35.1 months. The presentations were in acute phase in 37.5%, in subacute phase in 32.5% and in chronic phase in 30% of the patients. Only 13 of 48 (27.1%) eyes obtained sufficient ocular surface stability through medical treatment; however, only 5 of these eyes achieved CDVA of less than 0.7 logMAR. Limbal stem cell transplantation was performed in 26 eyes as conjunctival limbal autograft, living-related conjunctival limbal allograft and keratolimbal allograft or as a combination of these transplantations. At the last visit, 30 eyes (62.5%) had an intact and stable ocular surface. Clear cornea was achieved in 11 (78.6%) of 14 eyes with grade 2 injury, in 9 (60%) of 15 eyes with grade 3 injury, in 5 (50%) of 10 eyes with grade 4 injury, in 1 (16.6%) of 6 eyes with grade 5 injury and in 1 (33.3%) of 3 eyes with grade 6 injury. The CDVA that was 1.66±0.99 logMAR initially improved to 0.87±0.85 logMAR at the last visit (p<0.001). Conclusion: While patients with low-grade chemical injury seem to benefit quite well from the medical treatment, amniotic membrane transplantation, limbal graft transplantation and subsequent keratoplasty; patients with severe injuries seem to be more prone to failure after all of the available treatment modalities. © 2014 Informa Healthcare USA, Inc