The Use of Social Media to Recruit Participants With Rare Conditions: Lynch Syndrome as an Example.

Background: Social media is increasingly being used as a means of recruiting participants, particularly for investigators whose areas of interest involve rare conditions or hard-to-reach populations. However, much of the literature to date has focused on paid advertisement recruitment.

Objective: We used Lynch syndrome (LS), a rare hereditary cancer syndrome, as a model to demonstrate the successful partnership between researchers and a Web-based patient education and advocacy organization to facilitate participant recruitment.

Pityriasis rosea in a hepatitis B-positive patient treated with pegylated interferon α2a: report of a case and review of the literature.

Pityriasis rosea (PR) is an acute, self-limiting exanthematous disease caused by the endogenous reactivation of human herpesvirus (HHV)-6 and/or HHV-7 infection in conditions of altered immunity. In addition, many drugs have been incriminated as possible triggers of PR-like eruptions, characterized by clinical, morphological and histopathological features that differ from typical PR. Here, we report a case of PR in a patient with chronic hepatitis B, receiving pegylated interferon α2a (PEG-IFN-α2a).

Adalimumab is more effective than azathioprine and mesalamine at preventing postoperative recurrence of Crohn's disease: a randomized controlled trial.

Objectives: Postsurgical recurrence of Crohn's disease (CD) is very frequent and, to date, only infliximab has been shown to be useful in preventing it. The efficacy of adalimumab (ADA) is poorly known. We evaluated whether the administration of ADA after resective intestinal surgery reduces postoperative CD recurrence.

Lynch syndrome: the patients' perspective.

People with Lynch syndrome have a high lifetime risk for the development of colorectal, endometrial and several other types of cancer. Lynch syndrome is caused by germline mutations in genes encoding DNA mismatch repair proteins. In this review, issues that concern Lynch patients are highlighted from the patients' perspective.

Hepatocellular carcinoma in patients without cirrhosis in Italy.

Background: In the Western world, hepatocellular carcinoma seldom develops in patients without cirrhosis, and reports describing the characteristics of non-cirrhotic patients with hepatocellular carcinoma are rather infrequent.

Methods: We evaluated the main clinical characteristics, treatment options, and survival of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma developed in non-cirrhotic liver among the 3027 consecutive cases of hepatocellular carcinoma accrued in the Italian Liver Cancer database during the last 20 years.

Results: We identified 52 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma in non-cirrhotic livers (1.