No abstract

BACKGROUND: Extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (ENKTL), nasal-type, is a distinct entity of lymphoid tissue. ENKTL is sensitive to radiotherapy (RT), but the prognosis is poorer than for other types of early lymphoma. The treatment schedule is controversial. METHODS: A phase 2 study was conducted of ''sandwich'' protocols, with earlier RT after an initial 2 to 3 cycles of LVP (L-asparaginase, vincristine, and prednisone), followed by further ''consolidation'' cycles. Patients aged 18 years and older who had previously untreated ENKTL and localized lesions in the upper aerodigestive tract were enrolled. The primary endpoints were objective response rate and complete remission rate. The secondary endpoints were 2-year overall survival, 2-year progression-free survival, and toxicity. This study is registered with www.Chictr.org, number ChicTR-TNC-00000394, and is ongoing for long-term follow-up. RESULTS: Twenty-six patients completed total therapy, which resulted in 88.5% response that included 21 patients (80.8%) with complete response (CR) and 2 patients (7.7%) with partial response. Three (11.5%) of 26 patients progressed during therapy. With a median follow-up of 27 months (range, 4-35 months), the 2-year overall survival was 88.5%, and the 2-year progression-free survival was 80.6%. Patients with CR had better prognosis than patients without CR. Only 2 patients (7.7%) experienced grade 3 leukocytopenia. No grade 4 toxicity or treatment-related deaths were observed. CONCLUSIONS: The research showed that the ''sandwich'' protocol of LVP combined with RT was a safe and effective treatment for localized nasal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma, and the results warrant further investigation into this protocol. Cancer 2012;118:3294-

Objective To examine the impact of distraction on the retention of rehearsed information in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). Methods Data refer to the neurocognitive examination of 134 patients (91 with FMS and 43 control subjects) presenting with memory loss. Four neurocognitive measures free of distraction, along with 2 measures with added distraction, were completed. Differences in the retention of rehearsed and unrehearsed information with a source of distraction present were calculated. Results Patients with FMS showed normal cognitive functioning on verbal memory tests free of distraction. Adding a source of distraction caused unrefreshed information to be lost at a disproportionate rate in patients with FMS. Over 87% of patients with FMS scored in the impaired range on a task of unrehearsed verbal memory. Adding a source of distraction to well‐rehearsed information produced a normal rate of recall in FMS. Conclusion Rehearsal mechanisms are intact in patients with FMS and play beneficial roles in managing interference from a source of distraction. In the absence of rehearsal, a source of distraction added to unrefreshed information signals a remarkable level of cognitive deficit in FMS that goes undetected by conventionally relied‐upon neurocognitive measures. We present a theory to promote understanding of the cognitive deficit of people with FMS based on reduced speed of lexical activation and poor recall after distraction.

DT is efficacious for screening for anxiety and depression in lymphoma patients.

Detection of circulating tumor cells remains a significant challenge due to their vast physical and biological heterogeneity. We developed a cell-surface-marker-independent technology based on telomerase-specific, replication-selective oncolytic herpes-simplex-virus-1 that targets telomerase-reverse-transcriptase-positive cancer cells and expresses green-fluorescent-protein that identifies viable CTCs from a broad spectrum of malignancies. Our method recovered 75.5–87.2% of tumor cells spiked into healthy donor blood, as validated by different methods, including single cell sequencing. CTCs were detected in 59–100% of 326 blood samples from patients with 6 different solid organ carcinomas and lymphomas. Significantly, CTC-positive rates increased remarkably with tumor progression from N0M0, N+M0 to M1 in each of 5 tested cancers (lung, colon, liver, gastric and pancreatic cancer, and glioma). Among 21 non-small cell lung cancer cases in which CTC values were consecutively monitored, 81% showed treatment-related decreases, which was also found after treatments in the other solid tumors. Moreover, monitoring CTC values provided an efficient treatment response indicator in hematological malignancies. Compared to CellSearch, our method detected significantly higher positive rates in 40 NSCLC in all stages, including N0M0, N+M0 and M1, and was less affected by chemotherapy. This simple, robust and clinically-applicable technology detects viable CTCs from solid and hematopoietic malignancies in early to late stages, and significantly improves clinical detection and treatment prognostication.