Associations of acute-phase reactants with metabolic syndrome in middle-aged overweight or obese people.

Background: Metabolic syndrome, i.e. the clustering of visceral obesity, dyslipidemia, hyperglycemia, and hypertension, has become a major public-health challenge worldwide.

An inverse relationship between cumulating components of the metabolic syndrome and serum magnesium levels.

Metabolic syndrome has been defined as the presence of abdominal obesity combined with 2 of the following factors: hypertension, dyslipidemia, and impaired glucose tolerance, or diabetes mellitus. Magnesium is an essential cofactor for more than 300 enzymes involved in carbohydrate and lipid metabolism. In this study, we enrolled 117 consecutive overweight and obese patients and we measured serum magnesium levels together with fasting serum glucose, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triacylglycerols.

Granulosa cell tumor of the ovary: tumor review.

Granulosa cell tumors of the ovary are rare neoplasms that originate from sex-cord stromal cells. The long natural history of granulosa cell tumors and their tendency to recur years after the initial diagnosis are the most prominent of their characteristics. The secretion of estradiol is the reason for signs at presentation such as vaginal bleeding and precocious puberty.

Efficacy of the oral fluorouracil pro-drug capecitabine in cancer treatment: a review.

Capecitabine (Xeloda) was developed as a pro-drug of fluorouracil (FU), with the aim of improving tolerability and intratumor drug concentrations through its tumorspecific conversion to the active drug. The purpose of this paper is to review the available information on capecitabine, focusing on its clinical effectiveness against various carcinomas. Identification of all eligible English trails was made by searching the PubMed and Cochrane databases from 1980 to 2007.