Minnie Sarwal and colleagues developed a gene expression assay using peripheral blood samples to detect patients with renal transplant at high risk for acute rejection. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

The laparoscopy group had significantly less postoperative pain and required less time to return to normal functional activities than the mini-incision group. In addition, the laparoscopic group showed significantly higher quality of life scores than the mini-incision group in 3 domains.

Our results suggest that IRF4 rs12203592 is associated with poorer melanoma-specific survival, largely mediated through Breslow thickness, reinforcing our previous findings related to rs12203592*T and tumour thickness. 1 This variant's adverse effect on survival may occur through its functional effect on IRF4 expression. The SNP is known to modulate IRF4 enhancer-mediated transcriptional regulation in melanocytes, and it may play a similar role in immune cells. 6 Increased IRF4 expression in immune cells and the subsequent activation of the TERT promoter has been shown to increase telomerase activity, which in turn has been associated with increased Breslow thickness and tumour progression. 7,8 In lymphocytes, rs12203592*T results in higher IRF4 expression, and it has been suggested that this may enable suppressive regulatory T cells to inhibit the immune response, enabling an acceleration in tumour growth and progression. 2 In conclusion, IRF4 rs12203592 appears to play a role in melanoma prognosis, which is seemingly mediated by the SNP's association with Breslow thickness at diagnosis. The effect on survival does not appear to be site specific. Further studies are now required to confirm the pathway and mechanism by which this SNP affects survival, and to determine the potential clinical and prognostic utility of these findings.

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