The use of adjuvant high-dose-rate breast brachytherapy in patients with collagen vascular disease: a collaborative experience.

Purpose: To analyze toxicity and cosmesis in patients with collagen vascular disease (CVD) treated with accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) via high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy.

Methods And Materials: This is a pooled analysis of patients with early stage and in situ breast cancer with CVD treated with adjuvant multicatheter or balloon brachytherapy. Physicians at multiple institutions were asked to review their experience and report data regarding toxicity and cosmesis in patients with CVD.

Casting-type calcifications with invasion and high-grade ductal carcinoma in situ: a more aggressive disease?

Hypothesis: Women with breast cancer who have casting-type microcalcifications associated with multifocal invasion and extensive ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) form a subset of patients with a poor prognosis. Our study aims to identify the mammographic and pathologic features of this group.

Design: Women with casting-type microcalcifications, multifocal invasion, and extensive DCIS were identified from our tumor board registry.

A reactive oxygen-generating system activates nuclear factor-kappaB and releases tumor necrosis factor-alpha in coronary smooth muscle cells.

Background: Recently we reported that bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) stimulates release of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) from porcine coronary arteries and smooth muscle cells cultured from those vessels. It has also been reported that plasma levels of TNF-alpha are elevated after myocardial infarction. Since it is known that the production of reactive oxygen intermediates (ROI) occurs during ischemia and ROI are suggested activators of the nuclear regulatory factor kappaB (NF-kappaB), we tested the hypothesis that release of TNF-alpha from smooth muscle cells could also be stimulated with a ROI-generating system.