Iatrogenic lumbar artery pseudoaneurysm after lumbar transpedicular fixation: Case report.

Only a few cases of iatrogenic lumbar injury have been reported in the literature. A 58-year-old male with severe back pain was admitted to our department. The patient was qualified for the transpedicular stabilization with interbody fixation at L4/L5 and L5/S1 levels.

The relationship between the rheological behavior of RBCs and angiogenesis in the morbidly obese.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between red blood cell (RBC) aggregation and deformability and angiogenesis parameters in obese patients.

Methods: We studied 35 obese subjects and 20 non-obese people as a control group. Angiogenesis was detected using Bio-Plex Pro Human Angiogenesis Multiplex Assays.

Evidence that haploinsufficiency of Ptch leads to medulloblastoma in mice.

The PTCH gene encodes a putative tumor suppressor protein; germline alterations in PTCH have been found in patients with the nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome (NBCCS). Medulloblastoma, a brain tumor, develops in about 3% of NBCCS patients, and mutations in PTCH have also been described in a subset of sporadic medulloblastomas. The search for the causes of medulloblastoma has been hindered by the lack of an appropriate model system for this tumor type.

Analysis of PTCH/SMO/SHH pathway genes in medulloblastoma.

Inactivation of the PTCH tumor suppressor gene occurs in a subset of sporadic medulloblastomas, suggesting that alterations in the PTCH pathway may be important in the development of this tumor. In order to address the frequency of genetic alterations affecting genes in this pathway, we used a combination of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) analysis, single-stranded conformational polymorphism (SSCP) analysis, and direct sequencing of DNA samples from sporadic primitive neuroectodermal tumors (PNETs). To identify alterations in the PTCH gene, we performed LOH analysis on 37 tumor DNA samples.