Background: This study aimed to determine the relationship between mammographic calcifications and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tumoral enhancement before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) and to assess the impact of these findings on surgical management.
Methods: This Institutional Review Board-approved, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-compliant retrospective study involved breast cancer patients who underwent NAC between 2009 and 2015. The study cohort comprised 90 patients with pre- and posttreatment MRI and mammograms demonstrating calcifications within the tumor bed either at presentation or after treatment. The data gathered included pre- and post-NAC imaging findings and post-NAC histopathology, particularly findings associated with calcifications. Comparisons were made using Fisher's exact test, with p values lower than 0.05 considered significant.
Results: Complete resolution of MRI enhancement occurred for 44% of the patients, and a pathologic complete response (pCR) was achieved for 32% of the patients. No statistically significant correlation between changes in mammographic calcifications and MRI enhancement was found (p = 0.12). Resolution of enhancement was strongly correlated with pCR (p < 0.0001). The majority of the patients with pCR demonstrated complete resolution of enhancement (79%, 23/29). No statistically significant relationship was found between changes in calcifications and rates of pCR (p = 0.06). A pCR was achieved most frequently for patients with resolution of enhancement and new, increasing, or unchanged calcifications (p < 0.0001).
Conclusions: Although calcifications seen on post-NAC mammography may be associated with benign disease, loss of MRI enhancement does not predict the absence of residual tumor with sufficient accuracy to leave calcifications in place. Complete excision of tumor bed calcifications remains standard practice and a substantial limitation to NAC use for downstaging patients to be eligible for breast conservation treatment.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1245/s10434-016-5741-y | DOI Listing |
Magn Reson Imaging
January 2025
Department of Medical Imaging, Pingyin people's Hospital, Jinan 250400, China.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a cornerstone of medical diagnostics, providing high-quality soft tissue contrast through non-invasive methods. However, MRI technology faces critical limitations in imaging speed and resolution. Prolonged scan times not only increase patient discomfort but also contribute to motion artifacts, further compromising image quality.
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January 2025
Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Innovative Institute of Tumor Immunity and Medicine (ITIM), Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Tumor Immune Microenvironment and Immunotherapy, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei 230022, China. Electronic address:
NSUN6 preferentially catalyzes the methylation of cytosine nucleotides in mRNA substrates, which enhances transcription. Dysregulation of NSUN6 catalysis drives the oncogenesis of certain cancers. In this study, we determined the crystal structure of human NSUN6 in complex with its S-adenosyl-L-methionine analog and a bound NECT-2 3'-UTR RNA substrate at 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell
January 2025
Program in Bioinformatics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA; Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 1A8, Canada; Center for Network Systems Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02218, USA; Department of Chemistry, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA; Department of Chemical Physiology and Biochemistry, Division of Oncological Sciences, Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR, USA. Electronic address:
Knowledge of protein-metabolite interactions can enhance mechanistic understanding and chemical probing of biochemical processes, but the discovery of endogenous ligands remains challenging. Here, we combined rapid affinity purification with precision mass spectrometry and high-resolution molecular docking to precisely map the physical associations of 296 chemically diverse small-molecule metabolite ligands with 69 distinct essential enzymes and 45 transcription factors in the gram-negative bacterium Escherichia coli. We then conducted systematic metabolic pathway integration, pan-microbial evolutionary projections, and independent in-depth biophysical characterization experiments to define the functional significance of ligand interfaces.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEBioMedicine
January 2025
Institute of Immunology, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany; Cluster of Excellence RESIST (EXC 2155), Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany; German Centre for Infection Research, Partner Site Hannover-Braunschweig, Hannover, Germany. Electronic address:
Background: Aging increases disease susceptibility and reduces vaccine responsiveness, highlighting the need to better understand the aging immune system and its clinical associations. Studying the human immune system, however, remains challenging due to its complexity and significant inter-individual variability.
Methods: We conducted an immune profiling study of 550 elderly participants (≥60 years) and 100 young controls (20-40 years) from the RESIST Senior Individuals (SI) cohort.
Cortex
December 2024
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Berlin, Germany; Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Department of Neurology, Leipzig, Germany; University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine Leipzig, Clinic for Cognitive Neurology, Leipzig, Germany.
Retrieving words quickly and correctly is an important language competence. Semantic contexts, such as prior naming of categorically related objects, can induce conceptual priming but also lexical-semantic interference, the latter likely due to enhanced competition during lexical selection. In the continuous naming (CN) paradigm, such semantic interference is evident in a linear increase in naming latency with each additional member of a category out of a seemingly random sequence of pictures being named (cumulative semantic interference/CSI effect).
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