Urine miR-21-5p as a potential biomarker for predicting effectiveness of tadalafil in benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Aim: To investigate whether urine levels of miRNAs that regulate the function of endothelial cells are associated with effectiveness in benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) patients treated with a phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor, tadalafil.

Patients & Methods: We measured urine levels of three miRNAs (miR-21-5p, miR-126-5p & miR-155-5p) in 55 BPH patients before and after tadalafil administration to understand its effectiveness.

Results: Baseline urine miR-21-5p level was an independent predictor of response to tadalafil in multivariate regression analysis (odds ratio: 0.

Significance of twinkling artifact on ultrasound in the diagnosis of cystine urolithiasis.

Twinkling artifact (TA) refers to the finding characterized by both a high-echoic mass upon B-mode ultrasound (US) and turbulence-like signals over the entire mass without significant blood flow on color Doppler US. TA is a characteristic sign of urolithiasis, and there has been no previous report on this finding in the digestive tract. The authors recently encountered a 2-year 9-month-old boy with cystinuria presenting with an opacified abdominal mass.

[Validation of 2009 TNM classification based on a prognostic analysis of 350 patients treated for renal cell carcinoma].

Purpose: To validate 2009 TNM classification (7th edition) of renal cell carcinoma (RCC), we reevaluated our RCC database depends on 6th and 7th TNM staging and analyzed a prognostic divergence between subgroups.

Methods: A study population of 350 patients with RCC was retrospectively reviewed based on the TNM classification both 6th and 7th editions. Cause-specific survival (CSS) in each group was estimated using Kaplan-Meier method.

Needle applicator displacement during high-dose-rate interstitial brachytherapy for prostate cancer.

Purpose: To introduce an effective ambulatory technique in high-dose-rate interstitial brachytherapy (HDR-ISBT) for prostate cancer, we investigated the displacement distance using our novel calculation method.

Methods And Materials: Sixty-four patients treated with HDR-ISBT as monotherapy were examined. Of these, 4, 17, and 43 patients were administered treatment doses of 38 Gy (3 days), 49 Gy (4 days), and 54 Gy (5 days), respectively.

[Cryptorchidism and assisted reproductive technique].

The influence of cryptorchidism on male infertility is well-known. In this article the incidence of disturbance of spermatogenesis in cryptorchid patients and effect of assisted reproductive technique on such patients is reviewed.