Propranolol treatment for severe infantile hemangiomas: a single-centre 3-year experience.

Aim:   To evaluate the effectiveness, safety and tolerability of propranolol as single-agent treatment in patients with problematic, proliferative-phase, infantile hemangiomas (IHs).

Methods:   Oral propranolol was administered at a dose of 2 mg/kg/day to 28 children. Cardiologic evaluation was performed before treatment initiation.

Maternal smoking during pregnancy and risk for childhood leukemia: a nationwide case-control study in Greece and meta-analysis.

Background: Maternal smoking during pregnancy has been often implicated in the development of childhood leukemia with ambiguous results. Hence, we conducted a meta-analysis aiming to summarize current evidence and quantify any tentative impact.

Procedure: We retrieved one cohort (553 leukemias compared to 1,440,542 children), 20 case-control studies and also analyzed the updated Greek case-control dataset with unpublished data, yielding in total 11,092 cases and 25,221 controls.

Improvement of sun-related knowledge and protection practice.

The aim of this study was to examine changes in sun-related knowledge and sun protection practice among Greek mothers and children during 1993-2002. A total of 315 mothers in 1993 and 295 mothers in 2002, with their 649 and 491 children respectively, were randomly selected to answer the same questionnaire on sun-related issues. Sun knowledge and protection practice were determined by an index score.

Recent thymic emigrants and prognosis in T- and B-cell childhood hematopoietic malignancies.

The concentration of T-cell receptor rearrangement excision DNA circles (TRECs) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) is currently known to be a marker of recent thymic emigrants. We evaluated the hypothesis that TREC values would be lower in childhood T-cell hematopoietic malignancies than in childhood B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or healthy controls because the former category may reflect compromised thymic function. From the Greek national childhood leukemia/lymphoma database we obtained all 30 available T-cell leukemia/non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cases, 30 age- and sex-matched childhood B-cell origin cases of ALL and 60 healthy hospital controls.