Avoiding glucocorticoid administration in a neurooncological case.

Restricting glucocorticoid (GC) use in the treatment of patients with a solid tumor may help improving outcome. Here, we report administration of celecoxib rather than dexamethasone to prevent brain edema in a patient with a cerebellar glioblastoma multiforme WHO grade IV (GBM) upon the patient's request, as well as determining cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum concentrations. CSF concentration (0.

Clinical evaluation of an aerolysin-based screening test for paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria.

Background: Recently, a toxin produced by Aeromonas hydrophila was demonstrated to bind directly to the glycosyl-phosphatidyl-inositol (GPI) anchor. After coupling it to a fluorescent dye and applying it in fluorescence-activated cell scanning (FACS), this property was exploited to detect GPI-negative cells in the diagnosis of paroxysmal nocturnal haemoglobinuria (PNH).

Methods: We used this reagent according to a very simple staining protocol followed by single-colour FACS and compared the results in patients with PNH and normal controls with those obtained with antibody-mediated detection of cells lacking GPI-anchored proteins.

[Immunophaenotyping in the diagnosis of lymphoma].

The detection of specific disease markers by immunologic methods is becoming more and more important in lymphoma diagnosis. This has led to the incorporation of immunophaenotypic findings into the new WHO-classification. In comparison with conventional immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry bears the advantage of simultaneous demonstration of several antigens on the same cell.

Meningiomas may be a component tumor of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1.

Purpose: Recently, an increased incidence of some nonendocrine tumors are reported in patients with multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1 (MEN 1). There are rare reports of meningiomas and other central nervous system tumors in these patients, but it is unknown if they are more frequent or if allelic loss of the MEN1 gene is important in their pathogenesis. The aim of this study was to address these two latter questions.

Overexpression of epidermal growth factor and hepatocyte growth factor receptors in a proportion of gastrinomas correlates with aggressive growth and lower curability.

Purpose: Growth factor receptor expression and activation, particularly for epidermal growth factor (EGF) and hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), in many endocrine and nonendocrine tumors is important in determining tumor recurrence, growth, and aggressiveness. Whether this is true of neuroendocrine tumors such as gastrinomas is unclear.

Experimental Design: To address this question, we analyzed the extent of EGFR and HGFR expression in gastrinomas from 38 patients with Zollinger-Ellison syndrome and correlated it with clinical and tumor characteristics.