Publications by authors named "Julie De Smedt"
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates the impact of high-dose vitamin D supplementation on melanoma relapse in patients who have had curatively resected cutaneous melanoma (CM).* -
- A total of 436 patients were randomly assigned to either a vitamin D treatment group, receiving 100,000 IU monthly, or a placebo group, with follow-up lasting up to 116 months.* -
- Results showed that while vitamin D supplementation significantly increased serum levels, it did not noticeably improve relapse-free survival or reduce melanoma-related deaths compared to the placebo group.*
Article Synopsis
- Decreased expression of vitamin D receptors (VDR) in melanoma and melanocytic naevi compared to normal skin is observed, revealing a potential link to melanoma characteristics.
- A study involving 407 melanoma patients analyzed how VDR expression correlated with vitamin D levels, demographic factors, VDR genetic variants, and tumor pathology.
- Findings showed higher cytoplasmic VDR expression in patients with greater sun exposure and different genetic variants, while lower nuclear VDR expression was associated with tumor characteristics like mitosis and perineural invasion.
Preoperative assessment of Breslow thickness by means of sonography and clinical and dermoscopic criteria in white light dermoscopy has been reported, but up until now, the use of multispectral dermoscopy has not been investigated. Aim of this research is to determine whether multispectral dermoscopy and more specifically pigment maps can be used as a predictive marker for Breslow thickness in melanoma. Pigment maps are generated in real time from multispectral dermoscopic images and help to visualize the presence of pigment in a lesion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVitamin D status is influenced by well-known determinants, but factors associated with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in the cutaneous melanoma population are not well defined. The aim of this study was to confirm the well-known determinants and to assess new determinants for 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels in a cutaneous melanoma population. In a prospectively included cohort of 387 patients with cutaneous melanoma the association of 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels with sex, age, body mass index, time of blood withdrawal, Fitzpatrick phototype, vitamin D supplementation, score for intensity of lifetime sun exposure, smoking, education level, hair and skin colour, eye colour, total number of benign naevi, freckles and parameters of chronic sun damage was investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Hypoxia is pervasive in cancer and other diseases. Cells sense and adapt to hypoxia by activating hypoxia-inducible transcription factors (HIFs), but it is still an outstanding question why cell types differ in their transcriptional response to hypoxia.
Results: We report that HIFs fail to bind CpG dinucleotides that are methylated in their consensus binding sequence, both in in vitro biochemical binding assays and in vivo studies of differentially methylated isogenic cell lines.
Enhanced visualization of blood and pigment in multispectral skin dermoscopy.
Skin Res Technol
September 2020
Article Synopsis
- Dermoscopy is widely used in dermatology for skin cancer diagnosis, but traditional methods rely on analogue white light, while multispectral dermoscopy uses different wavelengths of light to enhance visualization of skin features.
- This technique produces "skin parameter maps" that highlight the concentration of pigment and blood in skin lesions, which is particularly useful for identifying keratinocyte skin cancers like basal cell carcinoma and Bowen's disease.
- The study concludes that these maps offer a more detailed understanding of skin lesions' inner structures and can serve as a valuable complement to conventional dermoscopy for improved diagnosis.
This study investigates which crash characteristics influence the probability that the crash is reported in the television news. To this purpose, all news items from the period 2006-2012 about traffic crashes from the prime time news of two Belgian television channels are linked to the official injury crash database. Logistic regression models are built for the database of all injury crashes and for the subset of fatal crashes to identify crash characteristics that correlate with a lower or higher probability of being reported in the news.
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