[The "red melanoma"--a rare form of amelanotic malignant melanoma].

The two major variants of amelanotic malignant melanoma are the verrucous and the polypoid forms. A further--albeit rare--red eczematous variety has also been described. We report two female patients with reddish, non-pigmented, scaly lesions on the upper arm and the shoulder that had developed 2 to 3 years previously.

Cutaneous ulcerations on hands and heels secondary to long-term hydroxyurea treatment.

Hydroxyurea is a chemotherapeutic agent used to treat myeloproliferative disorders and other non-neoplastic conditions. Cutaneous side-effects have been described in long-term therapy with hydroxyurea and include xerosis, hyperpigmentation, skin atrophy, erythema, alopecia, skin tumours and ulceration of the skin, particularly of the legs. We present a 71-year old patient with chronic myelocytic leukemia (CML) who developed extremely painful ulcers on the hands and heels as well as skin tumours while on long-term therapy with hydroxyurea.

Optimizing treatment parameters for hair removal using long-pulsed Nd:YAG-lasers.

Our aim was to determine the most effective treatment parameters for laser-assisted hair removal using long-pulsed Nd:YAG-lasers. 42 volunteers were treated with 1064 nm long-pulsed Nd:YAG-lasers. We used two different laser systems (Lyra XP, Wavelight and Smartepil II Deka-LMS) with various pulse lengths, fluences, and spot sizes.

High-pass-filtered magnetocardiogram and cardiomyopathy in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus.

Prolonged and/or fractionated depolarization due to tissue degeneration of the ventricular myocardium is a feature of cardiomyopathy. Signal averaged electrocardiography uses high-pass filters of the Butterworth type to quantify, noninvasively, fractionated high-frequency components at the end of the QRS complex. In this study a finite impulse response high-pass filter of the 90th order (cutoff at 37 Hz) was applied to magnetocardiograms (MCGs) and high-resolution electrocardiograms (ECGs) order to quantify high-frequency components throughout the myocardial depolarization.

Constitutive expression of the machinery for programmed cell death.

In the presence of cycloheximide (CHX) to inhibit protein synthesis, a high concentration of staurosporine (STS) induces almost all cells in explant cultures of 8/8 types of newborn mouse organs and 3/3 types of adult mouse organs to die with the characteristic features of apoptosis. Eggs and blastomeres also die in this way when treated with STS and CHX, although they are less sensitive to this treatment than trophectoderm or inner cell mass cells whose sensitivity resembles that of other developing cells. Human red blood cells are exceptional in being completely resistant to treatment with STS and CHX.