The impact of celecoxib on outcomes in advanced prostate cancer patients undergoing androgen deprivation therapy.

Recent work suggests the selective Cox-2 inhibitor celecoxib delays progression to androgen independence in hormone sensitive prostate cancer (HSPC) through inhibition of the androgen receptor (AR) and ErbB signaling. However, human studies examining its effect on delaying disease progression while on hormone therapy are limited. This study explores the effect of celecoxib use on PC survival in VA patients undergoing androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for advanced PC.

Pediatric Videosomnography: Can Signal/Video Processing Distinguish Sleep and Wake States?

The term videosomnography captures a range of video-based methods used to record and subsequently score sleep behaviors (most commonly sleep vs. wake states). Until recently, the time consuming nature of behavioral videosomnography coding has limited its clinical and research applications.

Metformin Use is Associated with Improved Survival for Patients with Advanced Prostate Cancer on Androgen Deprivation Therapy.

Purpose: Metformin is commonly prescribed for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. We hypothesized that metformin plus androgen deprivation therapy may be beneficial in combination. Our objective was to assess this combination in a retrospective cohort of patients with advanced prostate cancer.

Sleep and Challenging Behaviors in the Context of Intensive Behavioral Intervention for Children with Autism.

This study examined the associations between sleep and challenging behaviors for average and night-to-night fluctuations in sleep, in 39 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) receiving intensive behavioral intervention (IBI). Child sleep was recorded (via actigraphy) for five nights in conjunction with clinician-reported observations of challenging behaviors. Results indicated that on average, poor sleep was associated with higher rates of repetitive behavior, negative affect, and a composite of overall challenging behaviors.

Effectiveness of a transrectal prostate needle biopsy protocol with risk-tailored antimicrobials in a veterans cohort.

Purpose: To prospectively implement a prostate biopsy protocol to identify high-risk patients for bleeding or infectious complications and use risk-tailored antimicrobials, patient education, and postbiopsy monitoring with the objective of reducing complications.

Materials And Methods: Overall, 637 consecutive patients from June 2014 to August 2016 underwent prostate biopsy at our Veterans Affairs hospital. In the protocol cohort, patients were screened before biopsy and prophylaxis was tailored (high risk = ceftriaxone; low risk = ciprofloxacin).

Prorenin independently causes hypertension and renal and cardiac fibrosis in cyp1a1-prorenin transgenic rats.

Plasma prorenin is commonly elevated in diabetic patients and appears to predict the development of diabetic nephropathy. However, the pathological role of prorenin is unclear. In the present study, a transgenic, inducible, hepatic prorenin-overexpressing rat model was generated and the effect of prorenin in organ injury was examined.

Texture analysis of small renal cell carcinomas at MDCT for predicting relevant histologic and protein biomarkers.

Purpose: To assess CT texture features of small renal cell carcinomas (≤ 4cm) for association with key pathologic features including protein biomarkers.

Methods: Quantitative CT texture analysis (CTTA) of small renal cancers (≤ 4cm) was performed on non-contrast and portal venous phase abdominal MDCT scans with an ROI drawn at the largest cross-sectional diameter of the tumor using commercially available software. Texture parameters including mean pixel attenuation, the standard deviation (SD) of the pixel distribution histogram, entropy, the mean of positive pixels, the skewness (i.

Mechanisms of cortisol - Substance use development associations: Hypothesis generation through gene enrichment analysis.

There are many theories about the mechanisms of associations between hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function (indexed by cortisol) and substance use. However, the potential for genes that contribute to both HPA function and substance use to confound the association (e.g.

Infant-Mother Acoustic-Prosodic Alignment and Developmental Risk.

Purpose: One promising early marker for autism and other communicative and language disorders is early infant speech production. Here we used daylong recordings of high- and low-risk infant-mother dyads to examine whether acoustic-prosodic alignment as well as two automated measures of infant vocalization are related to developmental risk status indexed via familial risk and developmental progress at 36 months of age.

Method: Automated analyses of the acoustics of daylong real-world interactions were used to examine whether pitch characteristics of one vocalization by the mother or the child predicted those of the vocalization response by the other speaker and whether other features of infants' speech in daylong recordings were associated with developmental risk status or outcomes.

Differential glucose requirement in skin homeostasis and injury identifies a therapeutic target for psoriasis.

Proliferating cells, compared with quiescent cells, are more dependent on glucose for their growth. Although glucose transport in keratinocytes is mediated largely by the Glut1 facilitative transporter, we found that keratinocyte-specific ablation of Glut1 did not compromise mouse skin development and homeostasis. Ex vivo metabolic profiling revealed altered sphingolipid, hexose, amino acid, and nucleotide metabolism in Glut1-deficient keratinocytes, thus suggesting metabolic adaptation.

Deletion of GLUT1 in mouse lens epithelium leads to cataract formation.

The primary energy substrate of the lens is glucose and uptake of glucose from the aqueous humor is dependent on glucose transporters. GLUT1, the facilitated glucose transporter encoded by Slc2a1 is expressed in the epithelium of bovine, human and rat lenses. In the current study, we examined the expression of GLUT1 in the mouse lens and determined its role in maintaining lens transparency by studying effects of postnatal deletion of Slc2a1.

The Adverse Survival Implications of Bland Thrombus in Renal Cell Carcinoma With Venous Tumor Thrombus.

Objective: To characterize the presence of bland (nontumor) thrombus in advanced renal cell carcinoma and assess the impact of this finding on cancer-specific survival.

Methods: A multi-institutional database of patients treated with nephrectomy with caval thrombectomy for locally-advanced renal tumors was assembled from 5 tertiary care medical centers. Using clinicopathologic variables including patient age, body mass index, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status, tumor stage, grade, nodal status and histology, and nearest-neighbor and multiple-matching propensity score matched cohorts of bland thrombus vs nonbland thrombus patients were assessed.

Percutaneous microwave ablation for local control of metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

Purpose: The purpose of the article is to evaluate the safety and oncologic efficacy of microwave ablation for metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC).

Materials And Methods: From September 2011 to December 2016, 33 mRCC were ablated in 18 patients using percutaneous microwave ablation. Sites of mRCC include retroperitoneum (n = 12), contralateral kidney (n = 6), liver (n = 6), lung (n = 5), adrenal gland (n = 5).

Connexin43 and zonula occludens-1 are targets of Akt in cardiomyocytes that correlate with cardiac contractile dysfunction in Akt deficient hearts.

While deletion of Akt1 results in a smaller heart size and Akt2 mice are mildly insulin resistant, Akt1/Akt2 mice exhibit perinatal lethality, indicating a large degree of functional overlap between the isoforms of the serine/threonine kinase Akt. The present study aimed to determine the cooperative contribution of Akt1 and Akt2 on the structure and contractile function of adult hearts. To generate an inducible, cardiomyocyte-restricted Akt2 knockout (KO) model, Akt2 mice were crossed with tamoxifen-inducible MerCreMer transgenic (MCM) mice and germline Akt1 mice to generate the following genotypes:Akt1; Akt2 (WT), Akt2; α-MHC-MCM (iAkt2 KO), Akt1, and Akt1; Akt2; α-MHC-MCM mice (Akt1/iAkt2 KO).

Insights into the Structural Complexity of Colloidal CdSe Nanocrystal Surfaces: Correlating the Efficiency of Nonradiative Excited-State Processes to Specific Defects.

II-VI colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs), such as CdSe NCs, are often plagued by efficient nonradiative recombination processes that severely limit their use in energy-conversion schemes. While these processes are now well-known to occur at the surface, a full understanding of the exact nature of surface defects and of their role in deactivating the excited states of NCs has yet to be established, which is partly due to challenges associated with the direct probing of the complex and dynamic surface of colloidal NCs. Here, we report a detailed study of the surface of cadmium-rich zinc-blende CdSe NCs.

Nox4 reprograms cardiac substrate metabolism via protein O-GlcNAcylation to enhance stress adaptation.

Cardiac hypertrophic remodeling during chronic hemodynamic stress is associated with a switch in preferred energy substrate from fatty acids to glucose, usually considered to be energetically favorable. The mechanistic interrelationship between altered energy metabolism, remodeling, and function remains unclear. The ROS-generating NADPH oxidase-4 (Nox4) is upregulated in the overloaded heart, where it ameliorates adverse remodeling.

Diagnostic evaluation of patients presenting with hematuria: An electronic health record-based study.

Background: To gain new insights into the origin and prevention of diagnostic delays in the evaluation of hematuria in an electronic health record (EHR)-based integrated care setting.

Methods: We performed a retrospective review of 298 consecutive patients with new-onset hematuria at a Veterans Affairs facility from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2013 excluding those where diagnostic evaluation was unnecessary (i.e.

Impact on quality of life of IMRT versus 3-D conformal radiation therapy in head and neck cancer patients: A case control study.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to prospectively and longitudinally compare the health-related quality of life (HRQOL) outcomes between head and neck (HN) cancer patients treated with parotid-sparing intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and patients treated with 3-dimensional conventional radiation therapy (3D-CRT).

Methods And Materials: Before and up to 12 months after treatment, HRQOL was recorded in patients with HN cancer who were referred to the Department of Oncology at Sahlgrenska University Hospital for curative IMRT. The study group's HRQOL was compared with a matched group of patients from previous descriptive HRQOL studies treated with 3D-CRT.

Pathologic Predictors of Survival During Lymph Node Dissection for Metastatic Renal-Cell Carcinoma: Results From a Multicenter Collaboration.

Purpose: To determine the therapeutic value of lymph node dissection (LND) during cytoreductive nephrectomy (CN) and assess predictors of cancer-specific survival (CSS) in metastatic renal-cell carcinoma.

Patients And Methods: We identified 293 consecutive patients treated with CN at 4 academic institutions from March 2000 to May 2015. LND was performed in 187 patients (63.

Mitochondrial Reactive Oxygen Species in Lipotoxic Hearts Induce Post-Translational Modifications of AKAP121, DRP1, and OPA1 That Promote Mitochondrial Fission.

Rationale: Cardiac lipotoxicity, characterized by increased uptake, oxidation, and accumulation of lipid intermediates, contributes to cardiac dysfunction in obesity and diabetes mellitus. However, mechanisms linking lipid overload and mitochondrial dysfunction are incompletely understood.

Objective: To elucidate the mechanisms for mitochondrial adaptations to lipid overload in postnatal hearts in vivo.

Evaluation of Common Use Brominated Flame Retardant (BFR) Toxicity Using a Zebrafish Embryo Model.

Brominated flame retardants (BFRs) are used to reduce the flammability of plastics, textiles, and electronics. BFRs vary in their chemical properties and structures, and it is expected that these differences alter their biological interactions and toxicity. Zebrafish were used as the model organism for assessing the toxicity of nine structurally-diverse BFRs.