Foraminal disc herniation Th9-Th10 mimicking abdominal pain.

Thoracic disc herniations (TDH) requiring surgery are rare. They usually present with pain and/or myelopathy. Only 6% are wide lateral, either intraforaminal or extraforaminal.

Decreased immunoreactive maspin expression in intermediate thickness and thick primary melanoma lesions.

Maspin is a member of the serpin family of protease inhibitors. It is a 42 kDa cytoplasmic protein that is reported to have tumour suppressor activity. The loss of maspin gene expression is correlated with increased invasiveness and the risk of metastases in breast cancer.

Expression of galectin-3 in primary and metastatic melanoma: immunohistochemical studies on human lesions and nude mice xenograft tumors.

Galectins are a large family of proteins which bind galactoside-containing glycans. Their role in cancer seems to be important since members of the family may mediate cell adhesion and modulate cell growth. Galectin-3 (Gal-3) is expressed in the nucleus, in the cytoplasm and on the cell surface, and can also be secreted into the extracellular matrix.

Giant cell tumours of the tendon sheath: lack of correlation between nm23-H1 expression and recurrence.

Some authors attribute recurrences of giant cell tumours to biological factors which are only expressed in some tumours. Grover et al. (1998) suggested that the risk for recurrence is associated with the down-regulation of the nm23-H1 gene.

Correlation between gender and cytomorphonuclear characteristics in human melanomas and in vitro evidence of sex steroid-induced modifications in the morphonuclear characteristics of three human melanoma cell lines.

The influence of gonadal steroids on human melanoma still remains a controversial issue. The aim of our study was to investigate whether sex steroids may influence the biological characteristics of human melanoma. Such biological characteristics were monitored at the morphological level by means of computer-assisted microscope analysis of Feulgen-stained nuclei, which provides 28 quantitative variables describing the nucleus morphometry (size, anisonucleosis level) and chromatin pattern.