Effects of an integrated yoga program in modulating perceived stress levels, anxiety, as well as depression levels and radiation-induced DNA damage were studied in 68 breast cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy. Two psychological questionnaires-Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)-and DNA damage assay were used in the study. There was a significant decrease in the HADS scores in the yoga intervention group, whereas the control group displayed an increase in these scores. Mean PSS was decreased in the yoga group, whereas the control group did not show any change pre-and postradiotherapy. Radiation-induced DNA damage was significantly elevated in both the yoga and control groups after radiotherapy, but the postradiotherapy DNA damage in the yoga group was slightly less when compared to the control group. An integrated approach of yoga intervention modulates the stress and DNA damage levels in breast cancer patients during radiotherapy.

Pyometra is an uncommon condition with an incidence of less than 1% in gynaecologic patients. Spontaneous rupture of pyometra in cervical cancer presenting as generalized peritonitis is very rare. Only four cases have been described in the English literature to the best of our knowledge and from a PubMed search. The index case is an elderly postmenopausal female who was diagnosed with cervical cancer, started on radiotherapy and presented with features of generalized peritonitis. Contrast-enhanced CT revealed uterine perforation at the fundus with multiple abdominal and pelvic collections. A brief review of all the cases of ruptured pyometra in cervical cancer in the literature and a discussion of the role of imaging is presented.

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Background Activins are members of the TGFβ-superfamily implicated in the pathogenesis of several immuno-inflammatory disorders. Based on our previous studies demonstrating that over-expression of Activin-A in murine lung causes pathology sharing key features of COVID-19, we hypothesized that Activins and their natural inhibitor Follistatin might be particularly relevant to COVID-19 pathophysiology. Methods Activin-A, Activin-B and Follistatin levels were retrospectively analyzed in 574 serum samples from 263 COVID-19 patients hospitalized in three independent centers, and compared with common demographic, clinical and laboratory parameters. Optimal-scaling with ridge-regression was used to screen variables and establish a prediction model. Result The Activin/Follistatin-axis was significantly deregulated during the course of COVID-19, correlated with severity and independently associated with mortality. FACT-CLINYCoD, a novel disease scoring system, adding one point for each of Follistatin>6235pg/ml, Activin-A>591pg/ml, Activin-B>249pg/ml, CRP>10.3mg/dL, LDH>427U/L, Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission, Neutrophil/Lymphocyte-Ratio>5.6, Age>61, Comorbidities>1 and D-dimers>1097ng/ml, efficiently predicted fatal outcome in an initial cohort (AUC: 0.951; 95%CI: 0.919-0.983, p<10 -6). Two independent cohorts that were used for validation indicated similar AUC values. Conclusions This study unravels strong link between Activin/Follistatin-axis and COVID-19 mortality and introduces FACT-CLINYCoD, a novel pathophysiology-based tool that allows dynamic prediction of disease outcome, supporting clinical decision making.

: The incidence of cancer is increasing worldwide, affecting a vast majority of the human population. As new different anticancer agents are being developed now, the requirement is to deal somehow with them and evaluate their safety. Among them, pyridine based drugs are contributing a lot, as it is one of the imperative pharmacophores occurring synthetically as well as naturally in heterocyclic compounds, and having a wide range of therapeutic applications in the area of drug discovery, thereby offering many chances for further improvement in antitumor agents via acting onto numerous receptors of extreme prominence. Many pyridine derivatives have been reported to inhibit enzymes, receptors and many other targets for controlling and curing the global health issue of cancer. Nowadays, in combination with other moieties, researchers are focusing on the development of pyridine-based new derivatives for cancer treatment. Therefore, this review sheds light on the recent therapeutic expansions of pyridine together with its molecular docking, structure-activity-relationship, availability in the market, and a summary of recently patented and published research works that shall jointly help the scientists to produce effective drugs with the desired pharmacological activity.