Cytologic diagnosis of ocular melanocytoma: a case report.

Background: Pigmented lesions of the eye represent a challenging field from both clinical and pathologic approaches. The importance of a correct diagnosis in this case is enhanced by the delicate structures involved and their difficult accessibility.

Case: We report a case of a 51-year-old man with acute vision loss and the feeling of a foreign body in the left eye diagnosed with vitreous hemorrhage.

Choline acetyltransferase expression does not identify early pathogenic events in fetal SMA spinal cord.

We investigated the expression of choline acetyltransferase, a specific marker for cholinergic neurons, in control and spinal muscular atrophy fetuses and newborns. By immunoblot we observed at 12 and 15 weeks a similar pattern of choline acetyltransferase expression in spinal muscular atrophy with respect to controls, although at 22 weeks this expression was reduced, probably due to a smaller number of motor neurons in the spinal muscular atrophy spinal cord. By immunohistochemistry, the counting of positive and negative motor neurons for choline acetyltransferase immunostaining in control and spinal muscular atrophy fetuses showed a similar proportion at all stages analyzed.