Role of Pirfenidone in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis - A Longitudinal Cohort Study.

Background: But so far there is no proven pharmacological treatment for Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). As trials investigating different agents with different mechanisms of actions are going on, encouraging results have led to the licensing of the first IPF-specific drug, Pirfenidone.

Objective: To assess the proportion of IPF among interstitial lung disease patients and to assess their treatment response to Pirfenidone.

Peripheral dose measurements with diode and thermoluminescence dosimeters for intensity modulated radiotherapy delivered with conventional and un-conventional linear accelerator.

The objective of this paper was to measure the peripheral dose (PD) with diode and thermoluminescence dosimeter (TLD) for intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) with linear accelerator (conventional LINAC), and tomotherapy (novel LINAC). Ten patients each were selected from Trilogy dual-energy and from Hi-Art II tomotherapy. Two diodes were kept at 20 and 25 cm from treatment field edge.

Dopaminergic function and progression of Parkinson's disease: PET findings.

Recent PET studies in Parkinson's disease (PD) have shown that the progression of neurodegeneration follows an exponential decay pattern. Most of the damage to the nigrostriatal dopamine system occurs during the presymptomatic phase of the disease and the first few years following symptom onset. The progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons is accompanied by several functional adaptive changes in surviving nerve terminals, which lead to increased dopamine turnover and raise the risk of treatment-related motor complications.