Adjuvant chemoradiation therapy for adenocarcinoma of the distal pancreas.

Background: This study was designed to examine the effect of adjuvant 5-FU-based chemoradiation therapy (CRT) after distal pancreatectomy for adenocarcinoma of the distal pancreas.

Methods: All patients underwent curative resection for adenocarcinoma of the distal pancreas between December 1985 and June 2006. Patients who received adjuvant CRT were compared with those who underwent surgery alone.

Auditory development in the absence of hearing in infancy.

The auditory brainstem pathways require stimulation to mature, but do they develop in the absence of auditory input? To answer this, peaks of the electrically evoked auditory nerve (wave eN1) and brainstem response (eII, eIII, and eV) were measured in 117 children with early-onset deafness who had received cochlear implants. Data were collected at cochlear implant activation. In the absence of significant input, the interpeak latency eN1-eIII decreased over the first year of life but remained constant thereafter.

ATM, the Mre11/Rad50/Nbs1 complex, and topoisomerase I are concentrated in the nucleus of Purkinje neurons in the juvenile human brain.

The genetic disease ataxia telangiectasia (AT) results from mutations in the ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) gene. AT patients develop a progressive degeneration of cerebellar Purkinje neurons. Surprisingly, while ATM plays a criticial role in the cellular reponse to DNA damage, previous studies have localized ATM to the cytoplasm of rodent and human Purkinje neurons.