Hyperglycemia induces attention and gait deficits in diabetic mellitus patients.

Aims: Patients with diabetes mellitus experience a large number of falls and bone fractures that are not related solely to complications of the disease. The purpose of our study was to determine whether transient hyperglycemia affects attentional functions and gait.

Methods: This was a case-control study.

[Andropause and testosterone deficiency: how to treat in 2012?].

Age-related hypogonadism is a clinical syndrome defined as a low serum testosterone level (< 11 nmol/l) with precise clinical symptoms: diminished libido, erectile dysfunction, and loss of morning erection. Testosterone supplementation has been shown to have a beneficial effect on muscle and fat mass as well as on bone mineral density, with more conflicting effects observed on muscle strength, sexual function, mood and quality of life. In spite of an inverse relationship between testosterone levels and various cardiovascular risk factors (obesity, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes mellitus), there is no evidence of a positive effect of testosterone replacement therapy towards these risk factors.

[Management of type 2 diabetes in 2010. Insulins and injectable drugs: role of the general practitioner].

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a complex metabolic disease inducing an important rise of the cardiometabolic risk. Medical care must therefore be targeted to multiple risk factor reduction and address all modifiable risk factors (high LDL-cholesterol, low HDL, hypertension, hyperglycaemia, tobacco), as well as sedentarity and obesity. Glycaemic control aimed to achieve HbA1C < 7% is associated with a reduction in microvascular and macrovascular complications.

Prevalence, aetiologies and significance of clubbing in a department of general internal medicine.

Background: Clubbing remains an amazing clinical sign. Its strong association with serious disease is still a clinical enigma. Moreover, the significance of diagnosing clubbing is not well established.

Mild chronic hyponatremia is associated with falls, unsteadiness, and attention deficits.

Objective: The study objective was to determine the eventual consequences (falls, unsteadiness, and cognitive impairment) of mild chronic hyponatremia, which is generally considered as asymptomatic.

Methods: In a case-control study, we focused on the incidence of falls among 122 patients (mean age 72+/-13 years) with asymptomatic chronic hyponatremia (mean serum sodium concentration [SNa] 126+/-5 mEq/L), who were admitted to the medical emergency department, compared with 244 matched controls. To explore the mechanisms of the excess of falls, we prospectively asked 16 comparable patients (mean age 63+/-15 years; SNa+/-2 mEq/L) to perform 8 attention tests and a gait test consisting of 3 steps "in tandem," in which we measured the "total traveled way" by the center of pressure or total traveled way.

HIV-1 glycoprotein 120 induces the MMP-9 cytopathogenic factor production that is abolished by inhibition of the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling pathway.

It has been previously shown that the HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein 120 (gp120) activates cell signaling by CXCR4, independently of CD4. The present study examines the involvement of different intracellular signaling pathways and their physiopathologic consequences following the CD4-independent interaction between CXCR4 or CCR5 and gp120 in different cell types: primary T cells, CD4(-)/CXCR4(+)/CCR5(+) T cells, or glioma cells. These interactions were compared with those obtained with natural ligands, stromal cell-derived factor 1 alpha (SDF-1alpha) (CXCL12) and macrophage inflammatory protein 1 beta (MIP-1beta) (CCL4) of their respective coreceptors.

Palmitoylation of CCR5 is critical for receptor trafficking and efficient activation of intracellular signaling pathways.

CCR5 is a CC chemokine receptor expressed on memory lymphocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells and also constitutes the main coreceptor for macrophage-tropic (or R5) strains of human immunodeficiency viruses. In the present study, we investigated whether CCR5 was palmitoylated in its carboxyl-terminal domain by generating alanine substitution mutants for the three cysteine residues present in this region, individually or in combination. We found that wild-type CCR5 was palmitoylated, but a mutant lacking all three Cys residues was not.

Autosomal dominant transmission of congenital thyroid hypoplasia due to loss-of-function mutation of PAX8.

Congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is a relatively frequent and potentially severe disease. It is classically subdivided into: 1) thyroid dysgenesis (TD), a defect in the organogenesis of the gland leading to hypoplastic, ectopic, or absent thyroid gland; or 2) thyroid dyshormonogenesis, a defect in one of the biochemical mechanisms responsible for thyroid hormone synthesis. Most cases of TD are sporadic, although familial occurrences have occasionally been described.

Spontaneous remission in a patient with therapy-related myelodysplastic syndrome (t-MDS) with monosomy 7.

We describe a case of spontaneously reversible refractory anaemia, a subtype of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), with monosomy 7 secondary to chronic treatment with azathioprine (AZA) in a young renal transplant recipient. AZA was stopped after that conventional cytogenetics and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) had demonstrated the existence of a monosomy 7 clone, 4 months later, haematological values had considerably improved and the karyotypic examination as well as the FISH analysis were normal. The spontaneous remission of this MDS with monosomy 7, which is usually associated with a particularly poor prognosis, could be due to the recovery of a better immunosurveillance following the withdrawal of AZA.