Type I Chiari malformation presents without an associated hydromyelia in 30 to 70% of cases, yet there is no agreement regarding the optimal surgical treatment for these patients. We review our experience for treating symptomatic adult type I Chiari malformation without hydromyelia using a suboccipital bone decompression of the hindbrain and no duraplasty in 12 adult patients. Outcome was measured according to the Chicago Chiari Outcome Scale (CCOS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObject: Surgical indications for patients with pineal cysts are controversial. While the majority of patients harboring a pineal cyst require no treatment, surgery is a well-accepted option for a subset of those patients with secondary hydrocephalus or Parinaud's syndrome. The majority of pineal cysts are identified incidentally during workup for other potential conditions, which may or may not be related to the presence of the cyst.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Glioblastoma (GBM) is a highly aggressive malignancy and the most effective treatment regime has a high relapse rate. Increasingly, the development of therapies involves defining drug-diagnostic combinations where the presence of a molecular target or marker identifies patients who are most likely to respond to a specific therapy. Trials in other solid cancers have demonstrated clear utility in the incorporation of biomarkers to stratify patients to targeted treatment, however, there are no mutations that are currently used to inform treatment options for GBM.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudies in cell culture and mouse models of cancer have indicated that the soluble sphingolipid metabolite sphingosine 1-phosphate (S1P) promotes cancer cell proliferation, survival, invasiveness, and tumor angiogenesis. In contrast, its metabolic precursor ceramide is prodifferentiative and proapoptotic. To determine whether sphingolipid balance plays a significant role in glioma malignancy, we undertook a comprehensive analysis of sphingolipid metabolites in human glioma and normal gray matter tissue specimens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSelected reaction monitoring (SRM) is a mass spectrometry-based approach commonly used to increase analytical sensitivity and selectively for specific compounds in complex metabolomic samples. While the goal of well-designed SRM methods is to monitor for unique precursor-product ion pairs, in practice this is not always possible due to the diversity of the metabome and the resolution limits of mass spectrometers that are capable of SRM. Isobaric or near-isobaric precursor ions with different chromatographic properties but identical product ions often arise in complex samples.
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