Anti-epidermal growth factor receptor skin toxicity: a matter of topical hydration.

Skin toxicity is a frequent complication of anti-epidermal growth factor receptor therapy, which can be an obstacle in maintaining the dose intensity and may negatively impact on the clinical outcome of cancer patients. Skin lesions depend on the disruption of the keratinocyte development pathways and no treatment is clearly effective in resolving the cutaneous alterations frequently found during anti-epidermal growth factor receptor therapy. Among systemic treatments, oral tetracycline proved to be useful in preventing skin manifestations.

[Prognosis of chronic lymphatic leukemia. Retrospective study of the survival period 47 patients].

Forty-seven consecutive patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) followed in the Clinica Medica and the Sezione di Ematologia of Ferrara from January 1966 to June 1979 were classified according to the staging system of Rai and to age, sex and the occurrence of enlarged spleen or liver or both. Analysis of actuarial survival curves revealed the following: 1) the method of staging proposed by Rai was confirmed to be a reliable predictor for prognosis of CLL; 2( neither age nor sex do appear to be prognostic factor; 3) the enlarged liver did not appear to make worse the prognosis of CLL, probably by hepatomegalies due to other aetiologies. Furthermore the bound of peripheral lymphocytosis of 15,000/mm3, also according to other authors, seems to be too high: numerous cases of undoubted CLL with smaller lymphocytosis ae left out of this and other statistics published on CLL.

[Indirect immunoelectrophoresis in the study of urinary proteins].

The indirect immunoelectrophoresis applied to the proteinurias is a simple and quick method, of usual execution, that makes use of not concentrated urines and discriminant between physiological and pathological proteinurias. The results obtained from a various casistic, collected in many years are presented. For the correlation which exist between morphological isototype and immunoelectropherogram, sometimes, it is possible to go up to the diagnosis of nephropathy also without applying to the renal biopsy.

[Malignant lymphoma present almost simultaneously in two brothers (author's transl)].

A diagnosis of poorly differentiated, nodular, lymphocytic malignant lymphoma was made in two brothers. One had been operated 10 years earlier for an adenocarcinoma of the descending colon. In addition, another brother had died from a primary tumor of the liver.