Pulmonary disease caused by Mycobacterium avium complex usually occurs in patients with chronic lung disease or deficient cellular immunity, and its prevalence is increasing. We describe 21 patients (mean age, 66 years) with such infection without the usual predisposing factors, representing 18 percent of the 119 patients surveyed. Seventeen women and 4 men were given a diagnosis of M. avium complex from 1978 to 1987, with a stable incidence over the decade, on the basis of pulmonary symptoms, abnormalities on chest films, positive cultures, and in 14, biopsy evidence of invasive disease. Most of the patients (86 percent) presented with persistent cough and purulent sputum, usually without fever or weight loss. The cough was present for a mean of 25 weeks before the correct diagnosis was made. Radiographic patterns of slowly progressive nodular opacities predominated (71 percent); only five patients had cavitary disease at presentation. All patients responded initially to antimycobacterial therapy, but eight eventually relapsed when it was stopped. Four patients died of progressive pulmonary infection caused by M. avium complex. The extent of the initial pulmonary involvement was greater in patients with progressive disease than in those whose condition improved. We conclude that pulmonary disease caused by the M. avium complex can affect persons without predisposing conditions, particularly elderly women, and that recognition of this disease is often delayed because of its indolent nature.

Precise Post-op tissue-based test discriminates low from intermediate high risk prostate cancer disease progression in the postoperative setting. Guided by machine learning, the test enhances traditional Gleason grading with novel features that accurately reflect the biology of personalized risk assignment.

The Gleason grade is the most common architectural and morphological assessment of prostate cancer severity and prognosis. There have been numerous algorithms developed to approximate and duplicate the Gleason scoring system, mostly developed in standard H&E brightfield microscopy. Immunofluorescence (IF) image analysis of tissue pathology has recently been proven to be robust in developing prognostic assessments of disease, particularly in prostate cancer. We leverage a method of segmenting gland rings in IF images for predicting the pathological Gleason, both the clinical and the image specific grades, which may not necessarily be the same. We combine these measures with nuclear specific characteristics. In 324 images from 324 patients, our individual features correlate well univariately with the Gleason grades and in a multivariate setting have an accuracy of 85% in predicting the Gleason grade. Additionally, these features correlate strongly with clinical progression outcomes [concordance index (CI) of 0.89], significantly outperforming the clinical Gleason grades (CI of 0.78). Finally, in multivariate models for multiple prostate cancer progression endpoints, replacing the Gleason with these features results in equivalent or improved performances. This work presents the first assessment of morphological gland unit features from IF images for predicting the Gleason grade, and even replacing it in prostate cancer prognostics.

We report the case of a 71-year-old man on warfarin for chronic atrial fibrillation presenting with a massive spontaneous soft tissue bleed. Despite reversing the effects of warfarin with large doses of intravenous vitamin K and fresh frozen plasma, bleeding continued, and his prothrombin time and activated partial thromboplastin time remained prolonged. The prothrombin time and activated partial thromboplastin time failed to correct with 50% normal plasma. Further investigations confirmed a lupus inhibitor with low levels of factors II, V, VII and XI. Factor II, V and XI levels normalized, however, when the patient's plasma was diluted 1:16 in buffer, suggesting the lupus inhibitor may have been interfering with these factor assays causing artefactual low results. Factor VII levels remained consistently low at all dilutions. The patient subsequently died following a massive left haemothorax despite surgical intervention and treatment with activated recombinant factor VII concentrate. We presumed the primary problem was bleeding from a local vascular lesion but the patient was never well enough to undergo confirmatory angiography. This case highlights the fact that patients with lupus inhibitors can develop severe haemorrhagic complications, and illustrates the complexities involved in both the investigation and treatment of abnormal bleeding in these patients.

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