Sex differences in lipid mediators derived from omega-3 fatty acids in older individuals with low-grade chronic inflammation.

The rate of cardiovascular disease (CVD) death is higher in men than women before age 50 y, but the gap between sexes significantly narrows after menopause. Lipid mediators derived from EPA, DHA and AA play a role in inflammation and CVD. The aim of our study was to assess whether plasma concentrations of these lipid mediators differ between postmenopausal women and men.

High Transcriptional Activity and Clinical Correlations in Eosinophils of Patients with Late-Onset Asthma.

Background: The immunological features of eosinophils in early-onset asthma (EOA) differ from those in late-onset asthma (LOA). Clinical trials of anti-interleukin-5 (IL-5) treatment for severe eosinophilic asthma showed a better response for LOA patients than EOA patients. We wonder if the transcriptional activity of activated eosinophils was different in EOA and LOA.

Xanthogranulomatous reaction to trametinib for metastatic malignant melanoma.

Trametinib, a mitogen-activated extracellular signal-regulated kinase (MEK) inhibitor, has demonstrated great promise in treating metastatic melanoma associated with BRAF V600E and V600K mutations; however, it also is highly associated with cutaneous adverse events (AEs). As both BRAF and MEK inhibitors become increasingly used to treat malignant melanoma, it is important to better characterize these AEs so that we can manage them. Herein, we present a case of a 66-year-old man who developed erythematous scaly papules on the face and bilateral upper extremities after beginning therapy with trametinib.

Ripple-Pattern Sebaceous Trichoblastoma.

A 28-year-old man of Middle-Eastern descent presented with a raised, pearly, slightly pigmented lesion on the right nasal ala. The lesion had been present for approximately 4 months. An excisional biopsy was taken, and the lesion measured 1.

Syringocystadenocarcinoma Papilliferum: A Rare Malignant Sweat Gland Tumor.

A 73-year-old Hispanic woman presented to the clinic with an erythematous, friable 3.0 cm × 2.7 cm × 0.

Histologic changes associated with talaporfin sodium-mediated photodynamic therapy in rat skin.

Background And Objective: Alternative treatments are needed to achieve consistent and more complete port wine stain (PWS) removal, especially in darker skin types; photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a promising alternative treatment. To this end, we previously reported on Talaporfin Sodium (TS)-mediated PDT. It is essential to understand treatment tissue effects to design a protocol that will achieve selective vascular injury without ulceration and scarring.

Immune biomarkers are more accurate in prediction of survival in ulcerated than in non-ulcerated primary melanomas.

Introduction: Ulcerated melanomas may have a unique biology and microenvironment. We test whether markers of immune infiltration correlate with clinical outcome in ulcerated compared to non-ulcerated primary melanoma tumors.

Methods: Sixty-two stage II-III cutaneous melanomas, 32 ulcerated and 30 non-ulcerated, were analyzed for tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs).

Histone Variant H2A.Z.2 Mediates Proliferation and Drug Sensitivity of Malignant Melanoma.

Histone variants are emerging as key regulatory molecules in cancer. We report a unique role for the H2A.Z isoform H2A.

Acute onset of a vesiculopustular rash in an ICU patient.

A 63 year-old woman with hyperthyroidism was admitted to the Medical Intensive Care Unit for ARDS following damage to her lungs from propylthiouracil. She was placed on 250 mg SSKI PO TID as an alternative therapy until thyroidectomy could be performed. Four days after admission, she abruptly developed an acneiform rash on her face, shown to be iododerma.

Fulminant hepatic failure attributed to ackee fruit ingestion in a patient with sickle cell trait.

We report a case of fulminant liver failure resulting in emergent liver transplantation following 3 weeks of nausea, vomiting, and malaise from Jamaican Vomiting Sickness. Jamaican Vomiting Sickness is caused by ingestion of the unripe arils of the Ackee fruit, its seeds and husks. It is characterized by acute gastrointestinal illness and hypoglycemia.

Four-dimensional intensity-modulated radiotherapy planning for dynamic multileaf collimator tracking radiotherapy.

Purpose: To develop a four-dimensional intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) planning method for dynamic multileaf collimator (DMLC)-based tumor tracking that takes respiratory motion into consideration.

Methods And Materials: Using the concept of optimal deformation, a series of apertures are placed at different phases in the same segment to ensure maximally similar dose contributions at various anatomic points. We used a direct aperture optimization method to find a set of segments that achieved an optimal dose distribution for aperture shapes at the reference phase and achieved corresponding optimal deformations at other phases that took respiratory motion into consideration.

A particle swarm optimization algorithm for beam angle selection in intensity-modulated radiotherapy planning.

Automatic beam angle selection is an important but challenging problem for intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) planning. Though many efforts have been made, it is still not very satisfactory in clinical IMRT practice because of overextensive computation of the inverse problem. In this paper, a new technique named BASPSO (Beam Angle Selection with a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm) is presented to improve the efficiency of the beam angle optimization problem.

Automatic beam angle selection in IMRT planning using genetic algorithm.

The selection of suitable beam angles in external beam radiotherapy is at present generally based upon the experience of the human planner. The requirement to automatically select beam angles is particularly highlighted in intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), in which a smaller number of modulated beams is hoped to be used, in comparison with conformal radiotherapy. It has been proved by many researchers that the selection of suitable beam angles is most valuable for a plan with a small number of beams (< or = 5).

Genetic algorithm based deliverable segments optimization for static intensity-modulated radiotherapy.

The static delivery technique (also called step-and-shoot technique) has been widely used in intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) because of the simple delivery and easy quality assurance. Conventional static IMRT consists of two steps: first to calculate the intensity-modulated beam profiles using an inverse planning algorithm, and then to translate these profiles into a series of uniform segments using a leaf-sequencing tool. In order to simplify the procedure and shorten the treatment time of the static mode, an efficient technique, called genetic algorithm based deliverable segments optimization (GADSO), is developed in our work, which combines these two steps into one.