1,720,973 research outputs found
Ultrasonographic study of Peyronie's disease
No full textInduratio penis plastica (IPP) is a degenerative disease, which consists in a thickening of the albuginea tunica of cavernous corpora, especially on the dorsal aspect. In 25% of the cases a calcified deposit is present. This disease can determine a bending of the penis, usually upward, pain during erection and impotentia coeundi. It is associated with Dupuytren's disease in 25% of the cases. IPP is of unknown etiological origin. The more reliable etiological theories are the degenerative one (micro trauma and inflammation) and the autoimmune one. The assessment of IPP is based on story, physical examination, autophotography (which are necessary) and on imaging techniques such as ultrasound, color Doppler, CT, MRI and X-ray in mammography. Color Doppler has demonstrated to be the best technique because of its cost/benefit and cost/effectiveness ratio. RMI with gadolinium can determine plaques activity but it has a lower cost/benefit ratio. Color Doppler can determine the presence of an IPP plaque and its status, which is size, location, and degree of calcification. Some authors sustain that inflammation can be suggested by the presence of micro vascularization around the plaque. US can be very useful to detect plaque in a size not easily accessible by physical examination (on the dorsal aspect of the penis) and to demonstrate plaques in different evolution moment. Ultrasonography is the better technique to show directly albuginea tunica. Authors illustrate the methodology, which use intra-cavernous injection of prostaglandin E1 (PGE1) to induce erection and its semeiotic findings
Normal hepatocyte transplantation delays the emergence of chemically induced preneoplastic nodules in rat liver
Full text linkCancer often arises in a background of chronic tissue damage. It is also increasingly appreciated that such an injured tissue microenvironment might foster the selective emergence of altered cells, leading to neoplasia. Accordingly, reversal of chronic tissue damage could represent a potential strategy to counteract neoplastic disease. In these studies, we aim to investigate whether transplantation of normal cells in the context of an injured, neoplastic-prone microenvironment might impact on the evolution of the carcinogenic process. A rat model of chemically-induced hepatocarcinogenesis was used. Animals were given a single dose of diethylnitrosamine (DENA), followed by two injections of retrorsine (RS), a pyrrolizidine alkaloid that imposes a persistent block on hepatocyte cell cycle. At the end of this protocol, rats were either given no further treatment or injected, via the portal circulation, with 4 million normal hepatocytes isolated from a syngenic donor. A second group of animals was similarly exposed to DENA+RS protocol followed by transplantation of normal hepatocytes. After 3 months, rats given DENA+RS alone displayed numerous discrete nodular lesions (up to 30 per liver), ranging 1 to 3 mm in size. On the other hand, in animals receiving DENA+RS and transplantation, donor hepatocytes were able to repopulate over 50% host liver, as expected. Most importantly, both the number and the size of hepatocyte nodules were greatly reduced in these animals (percent nodular area was 1.8±0.3, down from a control value of 8.5±2.8). The above data indicate that strategies aimed at re-establishing a normal tissue microenvironment might be relevant to the management of neoplastic disease
Mixed adenoneuroendocrine carcinoma of the caecum presenting as extensive ileocolonic intussusception
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Cancer as a disease of tissue pattern formation
No full textThe diagnosis of neoplastic disease still lays its foundations on the detection of altered tissue morphology. Most importantly, cancer begins, at least in many cases as a disease with altered tissue pattern formation. It is therefore rather surprising that the issue regarding the possible mechanistic role of such property in the pathogenesis of cancer has received relatively little attention so far. To be more specific, we need to ask the following question: is altered tissue pattern formation a mere bystander, with its pervasive presence along the entire carcinogenic sequence, or does it play a role in fuelling this process? Pathways related to morphogenesis and to the establishment of cell polarity will be considered for their possible mechanistic involvement in early phases of neoplastic disease. Evidences and hypotheses relating altered tissue pattern formation to the emergence of the tumor microenvironment and to neoplastic progression will be discussed
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe 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
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