Given the limitations of a small prematurely terminated study, our results suggest that a-TAVI in its present form may be associated with complications and device success rates in low-risk patients similar or even inferior to those found in high-risk patients with aortic valve stenosis. This will probably change in the near future with improved catheter based devices and better pre-procedural assessment.

B cell homeostasis is regulated by multiple signaling processes, including nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB), BAFF-, and B cell receptor signaling. Conditional disruption of genes involved in these pathways has shed light on the mechanisms governing signaling from the cell surface to the nucleus. We describe a novel mouse strain that expresses solely and excessively a naturally occurring splice variant of CYLD (CYLDex7/8 mice), which is a deubiquitinating enzyme that is integral to NF-κB signaling. This shorter CYLD protein lacks the TRAF2 and NEMO binding sites present in full-length CYLD. A dramatic expansion of mature B lymphocyte populations in all peripheral lymphoid organs occurs in this strain. The B lymphocytes themselves exhibit prolonged survival and manifest a variety of signaling disarrangements that do not occur in mice with a complete deletion of CYLD. Although both the full-length and the mutant CYLD are able to interact with Bcl-3, a predominant nuclear accumulation of Bcl-3 occurs in the CYLD mutant B cells. More dramatic, however, is the accumulation of the NF-κB proteins p100 and RelB in CYLDex7/8 B cells, which, presumably in combination with nuclear Bcl-3, results in increased levels of Bcl-2 expression. These findings suggest that CYLD can both positively and negatively regulate signal transduction and homeostasis of B cells in vivo, depending on the expression of CYLD splice variants.

This paper presents partial findings of a larger research project focusing on what it means to live with a chronic illness. Getting in harmony with oneself is a movement towards, and a form of, acceptance of the chronic suffering and disease. Some patients achieve this level of acceptance, while for others the obstacles of everyday life make this movement towards acceptance difficult. Achieving harmony with oneself is conditioned by the existence of hope and spirit of life/life courage and by the pressure of doubts on this hope. Doubts can shake this hope so that instead of moving towards acceptance, the patient drifts towards hopelessness and despair. The research design is qualitative and uses a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. A total of 18 patients were interviewed, divided into three groups of six patients diagnosed with 'type I' diabetes, colitis ulcerosa and patients with coronary occlusion in the rehabilitation phase. The goal of the research was to derive patterns/themes common to the three diagnosed groups regarding the patients' view of health and disease in connection with chronic illness and to elucidate the significance of this view for how the patients coped with everyday life. The research method is inspired by Paul Ricoeur.

This study shows that self-responsibility and self-control are meaningful values in the activities and decisions of everyday life. Dignity and being respected as an individual are closely connected to being able to manage on one's own and being independent of others' help. The study also shows that including other people into one's life situation can be an important sign of self-management. However, the critical interpretation shows that it is the view of the human being which determines whether help from others and self-managing on one's own can be combined. With a relational view of the human being, i.e. the basic condition that people always enter into relations of dependence, there is no contradiction between independence and dependence. In contrast, an individualist, liberalist view of the human being promotes an attitude of blaming oneself with the potential for feelings of inadequacy and guilt. The study also shows that seeking out treatment in the alternative medical sector maintain a form of continued self-control and self-responsibility. The study concludes that the nurse must work to qualify her/his sensory-based, situationally determined attentiveness and her/his view of the human being, which will include directing her/his attention towards the patient's view of the human being, values and ways of relating to oneself and to one's choices. The research design is qualitative and takes a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. The data are based on interviews with 18 chronically ill patients, divided into three groups of six patients diagnosed with 'type I' diabetes, colitis ulcerosa and patients with coronary occlusion in the rehabilitation phase. Regardless of the diagnosis, the objective of the interview study was to highlight themes in the patients' views of health and illness related to their chronic condition and the significance of these views have for their mastery of everyday life. The research method is inspired by Paul Ricoeur.

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Use of intra- and postoperative inotropes was associated with increased mortality and major postoperative morbidity.

Clinical trials using monoclonal antibodies (mAb) against cell-surface markers have yielded encouraging therapeutic results in several cancer types. Generally, however, anticancer antibodies are only efficient against a subpopulation of cancers, and there is a strong need for identification of novel targets and human antibodies against them. We have isolated single-chain human mAbs from a large naïve antibody phage display library by panning on a single-cell suspension of freshly isolated live cancer cells from a human breast cancer specimen, and these antibodies were shown to specifically recognize cancer-associated cell-surface proteins. One of the isolated human antibody fragments, Ab39, recognizes a cellsurface antigen expressed on a subpopulation of cancer cell lines of different origins. Immunohistochemical analysis of a large panel of cancerous and normal tissues showed that Ab39 bound strongly to several cancers, including 45% breast carcinomas, 35% lung cancers, and 86% melanomas, but showed no or weak binding to normal tissues. A yeast twohybrid screen of a large human testis cDNA library identified the glucose-regulated protein of 78 kDa (GRP78) as the antigen recognized by Ab39. The interaction was confirmed by colocalization studies and antibody competition experiments that also mapped the epitope recognized by Ab39 to the COOH terminus of GRP78. The expression of GRP78 on the surface of cancer cells, but not normal cells, makes it an attractive target for cancer therapies including mAb-based immunotherapy. Our results suggest that the human antibody Ab39 may be a useful starting point for further genetic optimization that could render it a useful diagnostic and therapeutic reagent for a variety of cancers. [Cancer Res 2007;67(19):9507-17]

Long-term follow-up of low-risk patients undergoing simple cardiac surgery demonstrates a more than 10% higher mortality when receiving perioperative RBC transfusion. Even transfusion of 1-2 units seems to carry a risk of that magnitude.