1,721,162 research outputs found

    Bone marrow transplantation for lymphoma CR1

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    Purpose of rewiew: Despite several reports showing the superiority of autologous stem cell transplantation over conventional chemotherapy in the salvage treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, its use as part of first-line therapy in this disease is still controversial. The review highlights the most relevant studies on autologous stem cell transplantation for non-Hodgkin lymphoma at diagnosis published over the past year. Recent findings: Several recent studies have shown that autologous stem cell transplantation may offer survival benefits in patients with both diffuse large cell lymphoma and follicular cell lymphoma whose prognostic features are poor. An advantage of autologous stem cell transplantation has also been documented for other non-Hodgkin lymphoma subtypes, in particular mantle-cell lymphoma, in which autologous stem cell transplantation is probably the most effective first-line option presently available. Nevertheless, whether autologous stem cell transplantation is definitely better than conventional chemotherapy is still under discussion, and the issue is still less clear, given the new opportunities offered by rituximab combined with chemotherapy. Autologous stem cell transplantation may also benefit from the addition of rituximab as an in vivo purging agent. Thus, large randomized trials are required to fully define the role of autologous stem cell transplantation in first-line treatment for high-risk non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Such trials should compare autologous stem cell transplantation with chemotherapy, both supplemented with rifuximab, in the most frequent CD20+ lymphoma subtypes. The up-front use of autologouS stem cell transplantation might find support from the recent observation that patients who do not respond to this treatment may still have a good chance of being rescued by reduced-intensity allogeneic transplantation. Summary: Autologous stem cell transplantation remains a valid research strategy in first-line therapy and, along with new agents and nonmyeloablative allogeneic transplantation, may help to increase the cure rate for high-risk non-Hodgkin lymphoma

    Clinical relevance of minimal residual disease monitoring in non-Hodgkin's lymphomas: a critical reappraisal of molecular strategies

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    Although current treatments can induce clinical complete remissions in the vast majority of patients with indolent lymphoma, most of them actually relapse, because of the persistence of residual tumor cells which are undetectable using conventional diagnostic procedures. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based methods are increasingly used for minimal residual disease detection (MRD), and provide useful prognostic information. In this review, current approaches for MRD detection in indolent lymphomas are summarized. In addition, the prognostic aspects of molecular monitoring after transplantation procedures are discussed. The experience accumulated over the past decade shows that PCR analysis has a prognostic impact in several therapeutic programs including conventional and high-dose regimens. Major advantages coming from the introduction of molecular monitoring in clinical programs have been: (1) a rapid evaluation of the anti-tumor activity of innovative treatments; and (2) an early identification of patients with a high-risk of disease recurrence

    Lymphocyte transformation and autoimmune disorders

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    The many features that link autoimmune disorders (AD) and lymphoma are reviewed herein. Firstly, the epidemiology indicates the increased risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) development in many AD, and especially in Sjögren's syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus. In these AD, the relative risk of NHL occurrence varies between 2 and 4 up to 40 fold higher than in the general population, according to various surveys. Factors favouring or predicting NHL have been reported in detail. B-cell activation and proliferation are part of AD and are essential factors for the onset of malignant cell clones in a deregulated immunological environment. Targeting deregulated or malignant B-cells is the goal of some newly developed treatments. The prototype is anti-CD20 rituximab that has substantially modified the prognosis of B-cell NHL and is also an effective new treatment opportunity for some AD. Similarly, intensified treatments with autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplant (ASCT) that were developed for high-risk lymphoma are now under advanced investigation for use in some refractory AD. Thus, the successful use of rituximab and ASCT in both AD and NHL further emphasizes the close link between these two entities. This review provides details on the main epidemiological features regarding NHL incidence in AD, the pathogenetic factors that favour lymphoma onset and some recent advances in therapeutic approaches that are effective in both autoimmune and malignant lymphoproliferative disorders

    Intensive chemotherapy in patients with lymphoma : Management of the risk of hyperuricemia

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    Intensive chemotherapy with stem cell autograft is a well-established salvage treatment for relapsed/refractory lymphoma patients aged less than 65 years and it is also an effective treatment option for high-risk patients at diagnosis. Clinical applicability of autograft has been greatly amplified by the use of peripheral blood progenitor cells (PBPC), whose administration is simple and feasible, and results in lower toxicity. In addition, the development of several prophylactic measures preventing extrahemopoietic toxicities has markedly improved the feasibility and tolerability of the approach. In particular, the risk of nephrotoxicity is no more a major problem in the autograft setting since the use of proper treatments for the management of hyperuricemia, including forced hydration along with urinary alkalinization and the administration of the recombinant urate oxidase drug rasburicase. The high-dose sequential (HDS) chemotherapy program is a typical example of an intensive chemotherapy with PBPC autograft. A 15-year experience with the HDS approach in 240 lymphoma patients is reported here. The results demonstrate the clinical efficacy of HDS, with prolonged survival both in relapsed/refractory patients (54% alive) and in those treated frontline (72% alive). In addition, a very low incidence of extrahemopoietic toxicities was observed. In particular, nephrotoxicity was almost abolished, with 2 patients displaying only mild and transient renal dysfunction. In conclusion, the reported results demonstrate the therapeutic efficacy of HDS in the treatment strategy for lymphoma and emphasize the importance of delivering intensive chemotherapy with all the prophylactic measures able to minimize nephrotoxicity and other potential extrahemopoietic toxicities

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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