Systematic review of the treatment of Kienböck's disease in its early and late stages.

Purpose: To perform a systematic review of the treatment of Kienböck's disease to test the hypothesis that none of the reported treatments for Kienböck's disease is superior with respect to outcomes of pain, motion, grip strength, and radiographic measures.

Methods: We searched PubMed, Medline, and the Cochrane Review for articles published between 1998 and 2008 reporting outcomes of treatment for Kienböck's disease. Patients were grouped by stage of disease.

Telomeric transgenes are silenced in adult mouse tissues and embryo fibroblasts but are expressed in embryonic stem cells.

In addition to their role in protecting the ends of chromosomes, telomeres also influence the expression of adjacent genes, a process called telomere-position effect. We previously reported that the neo and HSV-tk transgenes located adjacent to telomeres in mouse embryonic stem cells are initially expressed at low levels and then become gradually silenced upon passage in culture through a process involving DNA methylation. We also reported extensive DNA methylation in these telomeric transgenes in three different tissues isolated from mice generated from one of these embryonic stem cell clones.