Response Rate Is Associated with Prolonged Survival in Patients with Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Treated with Gefitinib or Erlotinib

Introduction:Gaining a higher response rate (RR) has usually been determined as a primary end point in phase II trials evaluating the efficacy of new molecular targeted drugs. However, a relationship between clinical response and survival benefit has not been well studied in the patients treated with molecular targeted agents.Methods:Prospective trials of epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) monotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer were extracted from MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the annual meetings in 2007 of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, European Cancer Conference, and World Conference on Lung Cancer.Correlation between clinical response and survival was examined using linear regression analysis. We also tried to compare the significance of RR as surrogate markers for survival with that of disease control rate (DCR) by calculating the area under their receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.Results:We identified 24 phase II trials and 4 phase III trials with a total of 6171 patients and 30 treatment arms, including 22 arms for the gefitinib group and 8 arms for the erlotinib group. Both RR and DCR strongly correlated with median survival time (MST; p < 0.0001 and p = 0.003, respectively). In an ROC analysis, the area under the ROC curve predicting MST prolongation by RR was 0.918, which was higher than the area under the ROC curve by DCR.Conclusions:We found a significant relationship between RR and MST in clinical trials with EGFR-TKIs. RR could be an independent surrogate marker for MST in the current response criteria in the clinical trials of EGFR-TKIs

運動行動変容の段階および運動実施に対する自己効力感の測定尺度に関する研究 : 日本語版尺度の開発と高齢者への適用

The first objective of this study was to develop a Japanese version scale of the Stages of Exercise Behavior Change and Exercise Self-Efficacy. Data for study 1 were obtained from 282 walking event participants. The validity of criteria for the scale of Stages of Exercise Behavior Change and factorial validity and reliability for the scale of Exercise Self-Efficacy were examined. The results of study 1 were as follows : 1) The higher the Stages of Exercise Behavior Change, the higher the frequency and the more practice time for exercise. 2) It became clear as a result of a confirmatory factor analysis that GFI and AGFI of 1 factor model in Exercise Self-Efficacy were at an acceptable level (GFI.976 and AGFI.927). Moreover, the Cronbach α coefficient was. 806. The second objective of this study was to examine the application of two scales developed in Study 1 for older adults. Data for Study 2 were obtained from 226 visitors over 60 years of age to an interchangeable facility for older adults. The results of Study 2 were as follows : 1) There was the similar tendency as study 1 in two scales. 2) There was no linear relationship between the Stages of Exercise Behavior Change and Exercise Self-Efficacy, as indicated in the previous study

マイナー競技種目への社会化 : 実業団ホッケー選手に着目して

The purpose of this study was to explore the socialization process and sports careers of minor sports athletes. This research applied the "social learning theory" of Bandura (1969) to explain the socialization process. Sport role learning consists of three main elements, "significant others", "personal attributes", "socialization situations". Data for this study were collected by a mailed questionnaire to hockey team players (286 males) with assistance of team managers. The main findings were as follows : 1) A large number of the players had started hockey after entering high school. 2) About 70% of the players had started hockey at the school sports club. 3) Over 50% of the players had experience in sport-transfer. 4) The influence of senior team members, friends and teachers was stronger than the father\u27s influence in terms of socialization into hockey

Possibility of a White Dwarf as the Accreting Compact Star in CI Cam (= XTE J0421+560)

We present results from ASCA observations of the binary CI Cam both in quiescence and in outburst in order to identify its central accreting object. The quiescence spectrum of CI Cam consists of soft and hard components which are separated clearly at aound 2-3keV. A large equivalent width of an iron Ka emission line prefers an optically thin thermal plasma emission model to a non-thermal power-law model for the hard component, which favors a white dwarf as the accreting object, since the optically thin thermal hard X-ray emission is a common characteristic among cataclysmic variables (binaries including an accreting white dwarf). The outburst spectrum, on the other hand, is composed of a hard component represented by a multi-temperature optically thin thermal plasma emission and of an independent soft X-ray component that appears below 1 keV intermittently on a decaying light curve of the hard component. The spectrum of the soft component is represented well by a blackbody with the temperature of 0.07-0.12keV overlaid with several K-edges associated with highly ionized oxygen. This, together with the luminosity as high as ~1E38 erg/s is similar to a super-soft source (SSS). The outburst in the hard X-ray band followed by the appearance of the soft blackbody component reminds us of recent observations of novae in outburst. We thus assume the outburst of CI Cam is that of a nova, and obtain the distance to CI Cam to be 5-17kpc by means of the relation between the optical decay time and the absolute magnitude. This agrees well with a recent estimate of the distance of 5-9kpc in the optical band. All of these results from the outburst data prefer a white dwarf for the central object of CI Cam.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the Astrophysical Journal v601, n2, February 1, 2004 issu