The role of bipolar disorder and family wealth in choosing creative occupations.

Research in psychology and medicine has linked mental health disorders, and particularly bipolar disorder (BD), to employment in creative professions. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms for this link, which could be due to biology (primarily through a person's genes) or environmental (through socioeconomic status). Using administrative data on mental health diagnoses and occupations for the population of Denmark, we find that people with BD are more likely to be musicians than the population, but less likely to hold other creative jobs.

Cutaneous Adnexal Carcinoma with Apocrine Differentiation: A Challenging Diagnosis and Personalized Treatment with mTOR Inhibitor in a Very Rare Disease.

Cutaneous adnexal carcinoma with apocrine differentiation is a rare neoplasm arising from cutaneous adnexa, especially of the head and neck and trunk region. Because of its rarity, the diagnosis is challenging and often impossible to distinguish from metastatic cutaneous adenocarcinoma of the breast. The standard of care remains surgery for resectable disease.

Late intracranial metastasis from adenoid-cystic carcinoma of the parotid gland: Imaging, histologic and molecular features.

We describe the neuroradiologic, histologic, and genetic features of a very unusual intracranial dural metastasis from adenoid cystic carcinoma of the parotid gland detected 27 years after the initial diagnosis.

Yoga Protocol for Cancer Patients: A Systematic Exploration of Psychophysiological Benefits.

Background: Several studies report that practicing Yoga may lead to numerous psychophysiological benefits in patients undergoing treatment for cancer. Moreover, it may result in an effective alternative for coping with sleep disturbances, anxiety, depression and fatigue symptoms. A study based on the "Yoga in Oncology" project of the Foundation Poliambulanza was carried out, and it was designed to explore the benefits of Yoga, therefore corroborating Yoga as a therapeutic activity that can have a beneficial impact on patients diagnosed with cancer.

Impact of a Psycho-Educational Team in early Breast Cancer Patients' Coping Strategies: The Venere Project.

Aims And Background: The main purpose of our psycho-educational groups was to help women with breast cancer, learn how to cope with the physical, emotional, and lifestyle changes associated with cancer as well as with medical treatments that can be painful and traumatic. With this study, we wanted to detect the effects that group action had on the women who participated in it.

Methods: We studied a total of 97 patients who participated in 13 psycho-education groups.

Parents with cancer: Searching for the right balance between telling the truth and protecting children.

Objective: Recent scientific approaches to cancer patients draw attention to the psychological aspects of the disease and the involvement of their families, who are forced to reorganize themselves in order to manage the patient's illness. Functional responses to a stressful event facilitate open communication between family members and empathy for the patient's children, who need to be involved and informed about the illness in a clear and open fashion. The primary goal of this observational study was to explore the communication styles used by cancer-stricken parents with their children and to identify a correlation with the patient's levels of anxiety and depression and their ability to cope.

Gemcitabine Plus Nab-Paclitaxel as Second-Line and Beyond Treatment for Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer: a Single Institution Retrospective Analysis.

Metastatic pancreatic cancer still represent one of the most deadly disease for which there are few therapeutic options, especially in second line and beyond setting. Nabpaclitaxel plus gemcitabine activity was demonstrated in first line setting, but there are no clear evidence suggesting its use after that. We report a retrospective data analysis of 23 patients who received nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine after first line treatment at our Oncology Department.

Assessing cancer caregivers' needs for an early targeted psychosocial support project: The experience of the oncology department of the Poliambulanza Foundation.

Objective: Caregivers play a key role in the management of patients with cancer. However, some studies have suggested that caregivers have even more unmet needs than the patients.

Method: To better identify the needs and changes in the lifestyles of the caregivers in our practice and to plan a targeted support project to decrease caregiver burden, we administered the Caregiver's QoL Index-Cancer (CQoLC) to 200 consecutive caregivers.

Blind Snipers: Relevant Off Target Effects of Non-chemotherapeutic Agents in Oncology: Review of the Literature.

In recent years an increasing attention is focused on the potential effects of drugs on cancer incidence and/or cancer survival. Many medications of common use, developed for a variety of medical non-cancer situations, have been found to have potential anti- cancer effects. In this article, we performed an overview of the literature evidence for several commonly used non-cancer medications, such as aspirin, beta-blockers, metformin and other anti- diabetics, cardiac glycosides, anticoagulant heparin, statins, psychotropic drugs, vitamins, calcium and estrogens which have been shown to have anticancer effects, in observational and experimental studies.

Chemotherapeutic options for colorectal cancer patients with cardiovascular diseases.

The high incidence of cardiovascular disease and colorectal cancer in the world's population means that these two conditions may coexist in the same patient. In addition fluoropyrimidines, backbone for the treatment of colorectal cancer in both early stage and advanced disease, have a well-characterized cardio-toxicity, which limits their use in patients with heart disease and limits their reintroduction in those patients who have shown this toxicity. For the treatment of this, increasing proportion of patients is now possible to consider fluoropyrimidines-free chemotherapy regimens that are examined in this work, with the attempt to provide a possible treatment algorithm for various situations encountered in clinical practice.

Lack of a chemobrain effect for adjuvant FOLFOX chemotherapy in colon cancer patients. A pilot study.

Purpose: Chemotherapy improves the survival rate of stage III colon cancer patients. The combination of oxaliplatin, 5-fluorouracil, and leucovorin (the FOLFOX4 regimen) has emerged as the standard of care. This prospective study evaluates potential alterations in cognitive function in FOLFOX4-treated patients.

The use of bevacizumab and trastuzumab beyond tumor progression: a new avenue in cancer treatment?

The use of the Monoclonal Antibodies (MoAbs) Bevacizumab (B) and Trastuzumab (T) beyond clinical progression in colorectal and breast cancer treatment is among the hottest topics in today's clinical oncology. Both observational and prospective studies, based on a sound preclinical basis, seem to support the notion that, simply replacing the cytotoxic drugs combined with the two MoAbs would provide an additional clinical benefit without stopping the biological agent. The aim of this review is to provide a critical analysis of the available clinical data, while waiting for the confirmatory prospective clinical trials still ongoing.

Anti-EGFR therapy in colorectal cancer: how to choose the right patient.

The anti-epidermal growth factor receptor monoclonal antibodies cetuximab and panitumumab have established efficacy as single agent and in combination with chemotherapy in advanced colorectal cancer. However, only a small percentage of unselected patients (around 10%) are responsive to these costly agents. Mutations in the KRAS gene are associated with resistance to both cetuximab and panitumumab and account for approximately 30% to 40% of resistant patients.

The Renaissance of platinum-based chemotherapy for metastatic breast cancer.

Although anthracyclines and the taxanes comprise the most active first-line cytotoxic treatments in patients with hormone-insensitive or life-threatening metastatic breast cancer, many patients progress and require other chemotherapeutic agents. Platinum compounds have shown activity in a broad spectrum of human tumors in vitro and in vivo. For patients with metastatic breast cancer resistant to anthracyclines or taxanes, or who have received anthracyclines with or without taxanes in the adjuvant or neoadjuvant setting, no standard regimen exists and platinum-based chemotherapy is one of the several options available.

The potential role of pemetrexed in gastrointestinal cancer.

In 2004, the new-generation multitargeted antifolate pemetrexed was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma and as second-line monochemotherapy for advanced non-small cell lung cancer. However, pemetrexed as a single agent showed activity in preclinical and clinical studies, as well as in many other neoplasms such as gastrointestinal tumors, breast, head and neck, bladder and cervix cancer. Its tolerability profile is very favorable since the introduction of oral folic acid and vitamin B(12) supplementation in December 1999, and therefore, the maximum tolerated dose as single agent is probably higher than the dose actually utilized in clinical practice.