Neurological symptoms might be associated with a Covid-19 infection. There are frequent reports in the last weeks. The neurological symptoms range from harmless side effects of a viral infection to meningoencephalitis and acute haemorrhagic necrotizing encephalopathy. Our patient reported burning headache and paresthesia as the initial symptoms mainly without other signs of viral infection like cough or fever. Such an initial neurological presentation seems to be rare. Most cases have neurological symptoms which can be expected after severe systemic viral infections like fever associated headache. Many COVID-19 patients with mild disease are at home and the further course is unknown. Our case shows, that neurological symptoms can be the first manifestation of an COVID-19 disease. While restricted paraesthesia has been reported in SARS-CoV-2 infections, hemisymptoms have not been described as initial symptoms.

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ABSTRACT:Surface-initiated living radical polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA) using copper/bipyridyl complex was carried out from silicon wafer immobilized with a 2-bromoisobutylate moiety, resulting in the assembly of polymer chains tethered by one end to a surface, a so-called ''polymer brush''. The thickness of the PMMA brush, which was estimated by ellipsometry and atomic force microscopy, increased linearly with the molecular weight of the chains, and was controlled by the free initiator concentration. The graft density of the PMMA brushes was estimated to be as high as 0.56 chains/nm 2 . The frictional properties of the high density PMMA brush were characterized by sliding the stainless ball probe on its surface across a width of 20 mm at a rate of 90 mm/min under loading of 0.49 N in air at room temperature. The PMMA brush was found to have a lower frictional coefficient and much better wear resistance than the corresponding spin-coated PMMA film because of the anchoring of the chain ends in the brush. In addition, the friction coefficient of the polymer brush significantly decreased in response to soaking in acetone and toluene, and increased in response to immersion in hexane. The tribological properties depended on the solvent quality.

We report a case of a 76-year-old man with situs inversus totalis (SIT) who developed early gastric cancer. He was successfully treated by laparoscope-assisted distal gastrectomy for the gastric cancer. This case suggests that patients with SIT with malignancy could also undergo laparoscopic surgery. To the best of our knowledge, no case of laparoscopic surgery for malignant neoplasms associated with SIT has been reported in the English literature. We therefore believe this is the first case report.

Abstract. Second mitochondria-derived activator of caspases/ direct inhibitor of apoptosis-binding protein with low pI (Smac/DIABLO) is released by mitochondria in response to apoptotic stimuli and is thought to regulate apoptosis by antagonizing inhibitors of apoptosis proteins, which play an important role in sensitization of cancer cells to various therapeutic regimens. The expression of Smac/DIABLO has been demonstrated in various cancer cells, though little is known about its clinical significance with respect to colorectal cancer. The current study was designed to evaluate the relationship between prognosis and Smac/DIABLO expression by clinicopathological analysis of patients with colorectal cancer. Smac/DIABLO expression was evaluated using immunohistochemical staining in 121 consecutive patients with colorectal cancer and the relationship between Smac/DIABLO expression and clinicopathological factors was analyzed. Smac/DIABLO-positive expression was detected in 80 of the 121 patients (66%). The incidence of lymph node and distant metastasis in Smac/DIABLOnegative cancer was significantly higher than that in Smac/DIABLO-positive cancer (P=0.0004 and P=0.003, respectively). While univariate analysis showed that survival in patients with Smac/DIABLO-negative expression was significantly poorer than in Smac/DIABLO-positive cases (P<0.0001), Smac/DIABLO-negative expression was a prognostic indicator independent of Dukes' staging and lymph node metastasis by multivariate analysis. This study proposes that the decrease of Smac/DIABLO expression is an independent factor determining the poorer prognosis of patients with colorectal cancer.