Ulcerating nodules on a background of lower leg lymphoedema.

A patient presented with a 3-month history of a rapidly enlarging ulcerated tumour on his lower leg, occurring on a background of chronic idiopathic lymphoedema of approximately 10 years' duration. Histology revealed extensive infiltration of the dermis by a vascular tumour with pleomorphic and hyperchromatic endothelial cells, which stained positive for vascular markers CD31, CD34 and ERG. A diagnosis of lymphoedema-associated angiosarcoma was reached and our patient was treated with isolated limb perfusion with high-dose melphalan and tumour necrosis factor-alfa.

A case of gestational gigantomastia in a 37-years-old woman associated with elevated ANA: a casual linkage?

Hypertrophy of the breast (macromastia and gigantomastia) is a rare medical condition of the breast connective tissues. The etiology of this condition is still not clear; rarely, gigantomastia has been reported to develop in the setting of an autoimmune illness. We reported a case of a 37-years-old woman with undifferentiated connective tissue disease of 2-years duration presented with enlargement of breasts.

Placental aging and oxidation damage in a tissue micro-array model: an immunohistochemistry study.

To evaluate the expression of markers correlated with cellular senescence and DNA damage (8-hydroxy-2'-deoxy-guanosine (8-OHdG), p53, p21, APE1/Ref-1 (APE1), interleukin (IL-6 and IL-8) in placentas from healthy and pathologic pregnancies. This retrospective study considered a placental tissue micro-array containing 92 controls from different gestational ages and 158 pathological cases including preeclampsia (PE), HELLP syndrome (hemolysis, elevated liver enzymes, low platelet count), small for gestational age (SGA) fetuses, and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) occurring at different gestational ages. In this study, we demonstrated a significant influence of gestational age on the expression in the trophoblast of 8-OHdG, p53, p21, APE1, and IL-6.