A total of 138 consecutive patients with bullous pemphigoid were included and were grouped ac-cording to the treatment they received: methotrexate, prednisone, a combination of both, or topical glucocorticoids (for mild disease).Result: Methotrexate was the most effective treatment, with only a few adverse effects and a tendency toward better survival rates in patients with moderate to severe disease. Conclusion:Methotrexate is an effective and safe drug and provides an excellent treatment option in patients with bullous pemphigoid.

MIB-1 is useful in evaluating proliferative activity and in predicting the aggressiveness in a variety of tumors. To investigate if MIB-1 immunoreactivity can add prognostic information to conventional prognostic variables in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC), 30 PTCs were evaluated using the MIB-1 antibody. For comparison, 10 follicular thyroid carcinomas (FTC), 8 anaplastic thyroid carcinomas (ATC), and 96 follicular thyroid adenomas (FTA) were similarly analyzed. The median MIB-1 index was 0.5% in FTA, 1.9% in PTC, 2.7% in FTC, and 16.2% in ATC. The 13 tumors from patients classified as having aggressive PTC (defined as dead from disease, persisting disease, or the occurrence of distant metastases) had significantly higher MIB-1 index (median, 5.4%) than the 17 patients with nonaggressive disease (median, 1.1%). MIB-1 index 1.85% or more was found to be an independently significant risk factor for a less favorable clinical course in PTC. Because of overlap of single values the utility of MIB-1 index as a clinical test is somewhat limited. Still, at levels where no overlap occurs (MIB-1 index 2 3.2% or ' 0.5%) the index seems to add information to the established prognostic parameters. MIB-1 index should therefore be considered in routine histopathology of PTC.

Determinants of increased risk of CMM death in stage I and II CMMs were increasing T-stage, presence of ulceration, presence of mitoses and VGP. This was not found for TILs or regression.

Almost half of the PTCs showed RET-TK expression; in only three was this explained by expression of a RET/PTC rearrangement. Instead, expression of WT-RET was detected in 45 per cent of the RET-TK-positive tumours and this expression was an independently significant risk factor for aggressive PTC. Presented in abstract form to the Millennium Meeting of Endocrine Surgeons held by the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, British Association of Endocrine Surgeons and Swedish Association of Endocrine Surgeons, London, UK, May 2000