Study of germline mutations in patients with pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma in a tertiary level university hospital: Which patients have been studied and what results have been found?

Introduction: Current clinical practice guidelines recommend that a genetic study is considered in all patients diagnosed with pheochromocytoma or paraganglioma (PPGL). Our study objective was to know how many patients with PPGL undergo genetic studies at a non-specialized university hospital, the clinical factors involved in the decision to make the study, how many patients are found germline mutation, which are the affected genes, and what variables are related to presence of mutations.

Material And Methods: All patients diagnosed with PPGL at a tertiary university hospital from 2010 to 2015 were enrolled.

Medullary thyroid carcinoma and duodenal calcitonin-secreting neuroendocrine tumour: more than coincidence?

Unlabelled: Neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) are a heterogeneous group of neoplasms whose management can be problematic. In many cases, multiple tumours may occur in the same patient or his or her family, and some of these have now been defined genetically, although in other cases the underlying gene or genes involved remain unclear. We describe a patient, a 63-year-old female, who was diagnosed with a medullary thyroid carcinoma (MTC), which was confirmed pathologically after thyroidectomy, but whose circulating calcitonin levels remained elevated after thyroidectomy with no evidence of metastatic disease.

Iron deficiency interrupts energy transfer from a disconnected part of the antenna to the rest of Photosystem II.

Iron deficiency changed markedly the shape of the leaf chlorophyll fluorescence induction kinetics during a dark-light transition, the so-called Kautsky effect. Changes in chlorophyll fluorescence lifetime and yield were observed, increasing largely the minimal and the intermediate chlorophyll fluorescence levels, with a marked dip between the intermediate and the maximum levels and loss of the secondary peak after the maximum. During the slow changes, the lifetime-yield relationship was found to be linear and curvilinear (towards positive lifetime values) in control and Fe-deficient leaves, respectively.