Radiation-induced cardiovascular disease: impact of dose and volume.

The radiation-induced cardiovascular pathology represents a major cause of morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing therapeutic chest irradiation. There is a broad range of clinical manifestations probably associated with dose, volume and technique of irradiation. From the assumption that prevention is the best way to manage radiation-induced cardiotoxicity, based on the pathophysiogenesis of heart structures, a number of reports of the literature are reviewed.

Epstein-Barr virus serology in nasopharyngeal carcinomas and other head and neck neoplasms in Italy.

This paper reports the results of the EBV-specific antibody response in 17 Italian nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients, 15 other head and neck tumor patients and 15 normal controls. Nucleic acid hybridization has been performed on the biopsy tissue from 4 of the NPC patients, and EBV-DNA was present in two undifferentiated (WHO 3) tumors, and absent in two samples of the keratinizing (WHO 1) type. EBV serology appears to be specifically related to NPC, more evidently for VCA-IgA and EA-IgG antibodies, and useful as an aid in diagnosis of NPC.