Differential reduction of psychological distress by three different types of meditation-based mental training programs: A randomized clinical trial.

Objective: There is little knowledge about which types of meditation-based training are effective for alleviating which facets of psychological distress. We investigated shared and specific effects of three meditation-based training programs on distress.

Method: 332 healthy adults were assigned to a retest control cohort or to one of three 3-month mental training cohorts including: the cultivation of mindfulness-based attention (), socio-affective skills such as compassion (), or metacognitive skills such as perspective taking ().

Myofibroblasts have an impact on expression, dimerization and signaling of different ErbB receptors in OSCC cells.

Introduction: Receptors of the ErbB family belong to the key players in cancer development and are targets of several therapeutic approaches. Their functional dependency on the tumor microenvironment, especially on CAFs is albeit still poorly understood. Our objective was to investigate the impact of CAF secretome on ErbB receptor expression and signaling behavior in OSCC.

Effects of activated fibroblasts on phenotype modulation, EGFR signalling and cell cycle regulation in OSCC cells.

Crosstalk between carcinoma associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) cells is suggested to mediate phenotype transition of cancer cells as a prerequisite for tumour progression, to predict patients' outcome, and to influence the efficacy of EGFR inhibitor therapies. Here we investigate the influence of activated fibroblasts as a model for CAFs on phenotype and EGFR signalling in OSCC cells in vitro. For this, immortalised hTERT-BJ1 fibroblasts were activated with TGFβ1 and PDGFAB to generate a myofibroblast or proliferative phenotype, respectively.

A combination of a ribonucleotide reductase inhibitor and histone deacetylase inhibitors downregulates EGFR and triggers BIM-dependent apoptosis in head and neck cancer.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) are the sixth most common malignant neoplasm and more than 50% of patients succumb to this disease. HNSCCs are characterized by therapy resistance, which relies on the overexpression of anti-apoptotic proteins and on the aberrant regulation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). As inherent and acquired resistance to therapy counteracts improvement of long-term survival, novel multi-targeting strategies triggering cancer cell death are urgently required.

Visual field progression outcomes in glaucoma subtypes.

Purpose: To determine whether glaucoma subtype is an independent risk factor for visual field (VF) progression.

Methods: We reviewed the charts of glaucoma suspects and glaucoma patients seen in a referral practice between 1999 and 2009. Automated pointwise linear regression analysis determined the rates of VF change.