Efficacy and Safety of an Attenuated-Dose Sunitinib Regimen in Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma: Results From a Prospective Registry in Singapore.

Background: The use of sunitinib at conventional doses (50 mg/d, 6-week cycles: 4 weeks of treatment, then 2 weeks of no treatment) in Asian patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) is associated with high real-world toxicities.

Patients And Methods: Patients with mRCC treated with sunitinib between 2005 and 2012 at 4 centers representing a near-national cohort (n = 160) in Singapore were evaluated. One hundred twenty-seven consecutive patients in 1 center were treated with a novel attenuated-dose sunitinib regimen (37.

Phase 2 study of high-dose proton therapy with concurrent chemotherapy for unresectable stage III nonsmall cell lung cancer.

Background: The authors sought to improve the toxicity of conventional concurrent chemoradiation therapy for stage III nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) by using proton-beam therapy to escalate the radiation dose to the tumor. They report early results of a phase 2 study of high-dose proton therapy and concurrent chemotherapy in terms of toxicity, failure patterns, and survival.

Methods: Forty-four patients with stage III NSCLC were treated with 74 grays (radiobiologic equivalent) proton therapy with weekly carboplatin (area under the curve, 2 U) and paclitaxel (50 mg/m(2)).

Toxicity and patterns of failure of adaptive/ablative proton therapy for early-stage, medically inoperable non-small cell lung cancer.

Purpose: To analyze the toxicity and patterns of failure of proton therapy given in ablative doses for medically inoperable early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Methods And Materials: Eighteen patients with medically inoperable T1N0M0 (central location) or T2-3N0M0 (any location) NSCLC were treated with proton therapy at 87.5 Gy (relative biological effectiveness) at 2.

Parathyroid disease.

Patients with parathyroid disease can have important musculoskeletal problems.Hypoparathyroidism can cause subcutaneous calcifications, tetany, muscle cramps,and paresthesias, but also myopathies and an ankylosing spondylitis-like back disease. Hypoparathyroidism can occur in SLE caused by antiparathyroid antibodies.

Molecular epidemiology and antimicrobial susceptibility of Salmonella enterica serotype Stanley isolates in Taiwan.

Background And Purpose: Salmonella enterica serotype Stanley became the third most common non-typhoidal Salmonella serotype among human isolates in 2004. The present study was conducted to gain further understanding of the epidemiology and antimicrobial suseptibility of S. Stanley.

Mammalian target of rapamycin and protein kinase A signaling mediate the cardiac transcriptional response to glutamine.

The addition of glutamine as a major nutrient to cultured neonatal rat cardiomyocytes produced an increase in myocyte size and the organization of actin into myofibrillar arrays. The cellular response was associated with increased abundance of the mRNAs encoding the contractile proteins, alpha-myosin heavy chain and cardiac alpha-actin, and the metabolic enzymes, muscle carnitine palmitoyl transferase I and muscle adenylosuccinate synthetase (ADSS1). Adss1 gene expression was induced approximately 5-fold in glutamine-treated rat neonatal cardiac myocytes.

Angiotensin II inhibits human trophoblast invasion through AT1 receptor activation.

Trophoblast implantation depends, in part, on the controlled production of plasmin from plasminogen, a process regulated by plasminogen activators and plasminogen activator inhibitors. We have determined that angiotensin II (Ang II) stimulates plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) synthesis and secretion in human trophoblasts in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. Our results indicate that Ang II activates PAI-1 gene expression through the AT1 receptor and involves the calcium-dependent activation of calcineurin and the nuclear translocation of NFAT.