A concomitant tumour boost in bladder irradiation: patient suitability and the potential of intensity-modulated radiotherapy.

Background And Purpose: In radiotherapy (RT) of bladder cancer, dose escalation without increased adverse effects could be achieved with a concomitant bladder tumour boost. In this study we quantified (1) the fraction of patients suitable for this approach, and (2) the potential of intensity-modulated RT (IMRT) to achieve this boost while also sparing normal tissues.

Materials And Methods: The fraction of patients suitable for this boost approach was quantified using both a series of 30 radical therapy candidates, and a series of 15 consecutive RT patients.

Changes in the amplitude and timing of the hemodynamic response associated with prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle.

Disruption of the early stages of information processing in limbic brain circuits may underlie symptoms of severe neuropsychiatric disorders. Prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle (PPI) is diminished in many of these disorders and may reflect the disruption of this CNS function. PPI is associated with brain activity in many of the same regions in humans as it is in laboratory animals, suggesting that neuroimaging studies in humans may help localize deficits that can then be elucidated in animal models.

Outcome analysis of 300 prostate cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant androgen deprivation and hypofractionated radiotherapy.

Purpose: Neoadjuvant androgen deprivation and radical radiotherapy is an established treatment for localized prostate carcinoma. This study sought to analyze the outcomes of patients treated with relatively low-dose hypofractionated radiotherapy.

Methods And Materials: Three hundred patients with T1-T3 prostate cancer were treated between 1996 and 2001.

Diffusion tensor imaging reveals white matter reorganization in early blind humans.

Multiple functional methods including functional magnetic resonance imaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation, and positron emission tomography have shown cortical reorganization in response to blindness. We investigated microanatomical correlates of this reorganization using diffusion tensor imaging and diffusion tensor tractography (DTT). Five early blind (EB) were compared with 7 normally sighted (NS) persons.

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy in transitional-cell carcinoma of the bladder.

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy in transitional-cell carcinoma of the bladder (TCC) improves survival. This is one of the most important developments in the management of muscle-invasive bladder cancer in recent times. There is an improved absolute 5-year survival of at least 5% for T2-T4 disease.

Visual cortex activation in late-onset, Braille naive blind individuals: an fMRI study during semantic and phonological tasks with heard words.

Visual cortex activity in the blind has been shown in Braille literate people, which raise the question of whether Braille literacy influences cross-modal reorganization. We used fMRI to examine visual cortex activation during semantic and phonological tasks with auditory presentation of words in two late-onset blind individuals who lacked Braille literacy. Multiple visual cortical regions were activated in the Braille naive individuals.

Correlates of excessive daytime sleepiness in Parkinson's disease.

Measures of excessive daytime sleepiness, neuropsychologic function, and mood were assessed in twenty-two persons with mid-stage Parkinson's disease (PD) and sixteen age-matched healthy controls. Levodopa dose equivalents (LDE) were computed for the patients. While Epworth sleepiness score (ESS), Mini Mental State Exam, logical memory, Stroop, and the mood scales, reliably distinguished patients from controls, only the mood scales (especially anxiety) were reliably associated with ESS.

The management and outcome of patients with germ-cell tumours treated in the Edinburgh Cancer Centre between 1988 and 2002.

Aims: The aim of this retrospective analysis was to review the outcome of patients with germ-cell tumours treated in the Edinburgh Cancer Centre over the past 15 years, and to see whether there had been any changes over three 5-year cohorts.

Materials And Methods: Patients referred with gonadal and extra-gonadal primary germ-cell tumours, between 1988 and 2002, were identified from the departmental database, and survival by stage and prognostic group was analysed.

Results And Conclusions: The proportion of patients with stage I seminoma has significantly increased.

Reading embossed capital letters: an fMRI study in blind and sighted individuals.

Reading Braille activates visual cortex in blind people [Burton et al., J Neurophysiol 2002;87:589-611; Sadato et al., Nature 1996;380:526-528; Sadato et al.

Testicular sex cord-stromal tumours: the Edinburgh experience 1988-2002, and a review of the literature.

Aims: Sex cord-stromal tumours of the testis are uncommon tumours, accounting for around 5% of testicular neoplasms. Treatment is primarily surgical, with no adjuvant therapy of proven benefit. We present a single-centre experience over a period of 15 years.

A "Jekyll and Hyde" within: aggressive versus friendly interactions in REM and non-REM dreams.

We hypothesized that representations of social interactions in REM and non-REM (NREM) dreams would reflect differing regional brain activation patterns associated with the two sleep states, and that levels of aggressive interactions would be higher in REM than in NREM dreams. One hundred REM, 100 NREM, and 100 wake reports were collected in the home from 8 men and 7 women using the Nightcap sleep-wake mentation-monitoring system and scored for number and variety of social interactions. We found that (a) social interactions were more likely to be depicted in dream than in wake reports, (b) aggressive social interactions were more characteristic of REM than NREM or wake reports, and (c) dreamer-initiated friendliness was more characteristic of NREM than REM reports.

Human amygdala responsivity to masked fearful eye whites.

The amygdala was more responsive to fearful (larger) eye whites than to happy (smaller) eye whites presented in a masking paradigm that mitigated subjects' awareness of their presence and aberrant nature. These data demonstrate that the amygdala is responsive to elements of.

Caffeine ingestion before an oral glucose tolerance test impairs blood glucose management in men with type 2 diabetes.

Caffeine ingestion negatively affects insulin sensitivity during an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) in lean and obese men, but this has not been studied in individuals with type 2 diabetes. We examined the effects of caffeine ingestion on insulin and glucose homeostasis in obese men with type 2 diabetes. Men (n = 12) with type 2 diabetes (age = 49 +/- 2 y, BMI = 32 +/- 1 kg/m(2)) underwent 2 trials, 1 wk apart, in a randomized, double-blind design.

Cortical activity to vibrotactile stimulation: an fMRI study in blind and sighted individuals.

Blind individuals show visual cortex activity during Braille reading. We examined whether such cross-modal activations reflect processing somatosensory stimuli independent of language by identifying cortical activity during a one-back vibrotactile matching task. Three groups (sighted, early-onset, and late-onset [>12 years] blind) detected whether paired vibrations (25 and 100 Hz), delivered to the right index finger, differed in frequency.

Evaluation of a simple membrane-based nucleic acid preparation protocol for RT-PCR detection of potato viruses from aphid and plant tissues.

A rapid and simple protocol for preparing viral RNA from aphids (Myzus persicae) and potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) tissue (leaves, sprouts, and tubers) for reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was developed. The four-step method involves: (1) preparing plant crude sap or aphid macerates in a buffered detergent (Triton XL-80N) solution; (2) immobilizing clarified sap on a nitrocellulose membrane; (3) performing reverse transcription using eluted water extract from cut-out spot from membrane; and (4) amplifying cDNA through PCR.

Caffeine ingestion increases the insulin response to an oral-glucose-tolerance test in obese men before and after weight loss.

Background: Caffeine ingestion decreases the insulin sensitivity index (ISI) for an oral-glucose-tolerance test (OGTT) and decreases insulin-induced glucose disposal in lean male subjects during a hyperinsulinemic clamp.

Objective: We examined the effects of caffeine ingestion on insulin and glucose homeostasis in obese men before and after a nutrition and exercise intervention.

Design: Nine sedentary, obese [body mass index (in kg/m(2)): 34.

Transcutaneous bilirubin measurements and serum total bilirubin levels in indigenous African infants.

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine whether transcutaneous bilirubin (TcB) measurements correlate with serum total bilirubin (STB) levels in indigenous, darkly pigmented African newborns with varying degrees of skin pigmentation, some of which had developed kernicterus.

Methods: Jaundiced infants who were < or =2 weeks of age and admitted to Baptist Medical Center-Eku (Eku; n = 29) and Jos University Teaching Hospital (Jos; n = 98) in Nigeria were studied. TcB measurements using the BiliChek were made simultaneously with blood sampling for STB measurements by spectrophotometry before phototherapy.

Continuous electrophoretic purification of individual analytes from multicomponent mixtures.

Individual analytes can be isolated from multicomponent mixtures and collected in the outlet vial by carrying out electrophoretic purification through a capillary column. Desired analytes are allowed to migrate continuously through the column under the electric field while undesired analytes are confined to the inlet vial by application of a hydrodynamic counter pressure. Using pressure ramping and buffer replenishment techniques, 18% of the total amount present in a bulk sample can be purified when the resolution to the adjacent peak is approximately 3.

Treatment margins and treatment fractionation in conformal radiotherapy of muscle-invading urinary bladder cancer.

Background And Purpose: Different treatment margins and fractionation schedules are used in conformal radiotherapy (CRT) of urinary bladder cancer. This study compared intestine and rectum dose-volume histogram (DVH) data and normal tissue complication probability (NTCP) estimates for various clinically applied margins and fractionation schedules in bladder irradiation.

Patients And Methods: Normal tissue dose distributions in fifteen bladder cancer patients treated with CRT were studied using standard three- and four-field configurations.

A quantitative study of continuous flow-counterbalanced capillary electrophoresis for sample purification.

A systematic evaluation of continuous flow-counterbalanced capillary electrophoresis for microscale preparative applications is presented. The success of the technique was found to depend on the specific nature of the analyte and background electrolyte and was most heavily influenced by factors such as solution conductivity and rate of buffer depletion. The performance of the technique for the system studied was ultimately limited by contamination arising from changes in analyte mobilities during extended run times.

Possible Escape of a Recombinant Isolate of Potato virus Y by Serological Indexing and Methods of its Detection.

Surveys of commercial and seed potato fields for virus diseases (1998 to 2002) in Manitoba established that Potato virus Y (PVY) is of concern in seed potato production. To determine the prevalence of PVY strains, PVY-infected tubers identified by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) from surveys (2000 to 2001) were grown for symptom expression and strain characterization by strain-specific RT-PCR, bioassays, and serological assays. Of the samples collected (2000 to 2001) and tested by RT-PCR, 4.

Univalent salts as modifiers in micellar capillary electrophoresis.

The influence of three univalent salts (LiCl, NaCl and RbCl) on the separation of amino acids labelled with 3-(4-carboxybenzoyl)-quinoline-2-carboxaldehyde (CBQCA) in micellar capillary electrophoresis has been studied. Capacity factors for a series of eight CBQCA-labelled amino acids in a sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) micellar system containing different concentrations of salt were measured and were found to be related to both the hydrodynamic radius of the salt counter-ion (Li(+), Na(+), Rb(+)) and the relative hydrophobicity of the amino acid. Affinities of the analytes for the micelles were generally observed to decrease as the salt concentration in the background electrolyte was increased from 10 to 50 mM.

Radical radiotherapy and salvage cystectomy as the primary management of transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder. Results following the introduction of a CT planning technique.

The objective of this study was to review the results of our policy of primary radiotherapy (RT) and salvage cystectomy for transitional carcinoma (TCC) of the bladder in the light of changes in our radiotherapy planning procedure, in particular the introduction of CT planning. The case notes of 163 patients treated with radical radiotherapy using a CT planning technique were examined. The main endpoint for assessment was response at the time of the check cystoscopy 6 months after the completion of treatment.