In this study Mx 2% topical solution was non-toxic but was not effective in the prevention of chemotherapy-induced alopecia.

No abstract

Oral pancreatic enzyme supplements, including those protected from gastric acidity by enteric coating, often achieve only partial correction of pancreatic steatorrhoea. To characterise the mechanisms involved in vivo, eight patients with steatorrhoea due to advanced pancreatic insufficiency and nine healthy controls were studied. Two sets of studies (smali bowel intubation and five day faecal fat quantification) were randomly performed while patients were either on enteric coated pancreatin or equivalent placebo. A 260 cm long multilumen tube was used for double marker perfusion of two 20 cm segments located in the duodenum and in the ileum respectively. Luminal pH, flow, and trypsin and lipase activity outputs were measured at each segment for four hours postcibally.Placebo treated patients with pancreatic steatorrhoea had low enzyme outputs in the duodenal test segment and even lower outputs in the ileal segment. Pancreatin treatment significantly decreased steatorrhoea (p<005) and increased luminal enzyme outputs (p<005). The increase was much greater in the ileal than in the duodenal segment. Thus enteric coated pancreatin treatment abolished the normal gradient between postcibal duodenal and ileal lipase output. The results suggest that enteric coated pancreatin nearly corrects severe pancreatic steatorrhoea. The ingested lipase was utilised inefficiently, however, as luminal enzyme activity in the ileum was enhanced to a greater extent than in the duodenum, and consequently the absorptive potential of the small bowel was only partially utilised. (Gut 1993; 34: 708-712)

Background. Quantification of tumor vascularization recently has been shown to a parameter of potential clinical significance. Several basic and clinical studies have demonstrated that tumor growth correlates significantly with angiogenesis. Methods. To determine the utility of quantification of tumor vascularization and mitotic index for the pathobiologic assessment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, a prospective study of 114 consecutively recruited primary neoplasms was performed. Tumors were also studied for differentiation, keratinization, nuclear atypia, growth pattern, inflammation, desmoplasia, vascular tumor emboli, and DNA content. Results. In this cohort, tumor vascularization was correlated with mitotic index (P < 0.001), nuclear grade (P = 0.03), presence of tumor emboli in the peripheral microvessels (P = 0.05), and lymph nodal status (P = 0.03). A strong relationship between poor differentiation and high N classification (P < 0.001), differentiation and keratinization (P < 0.001) and tumor cell emboli and clinically involved lymph nodes (P = 0.01) was also observed. Emboli were more rare in laryngeal and oropharynx/oral cavity tumors than in hypopharynx/epilarynx (P = 0.02). Conclusions. This study indicates that tumor vascularization, differentiation, and tumor emboli in peripheral microvessel network are important histologic parameters in the assessment of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Cancer 1995;75:1649‐56.

No abstract

(1) The zinc has little influence in the development of the dysplastic changes of the rat prostate mediated by cadmium. (2) The decrease of apoptosis has little influence in the development of dysplasia. (3) GSTP1 could play a role in the response to the oxidative stress in the dysplastic changes caused by cadmium.

Insulin resistance is a characteristic of late pregnancy, and adipose tissue is one of the tissues that most actively contributes to the reduced maternal insulin sensitivity. There is evidence that pregnancy is a condition of moderate inflammation, although the physiological role of this low-grade inflammation remains unclear. The present study was designed to validate whether low-grade inflammation plays a role in the development of insulin resistance in adipose tissue during late pregnancy. To this end, we analyzed proinflammatory adipokines and kinases in lumbar adipose tissue of nonpregnant and late pregnant rats at d 18 and 20 of gestation. We found that circulating and tissue levels of adipokines, such as IL-1β, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, and TNF-α, were increased at late pregnancy, which correlated with insulin resistance. The observed increase in adipokines coincided with an enhanced activation of p38 MAPK in adipose tissue. Treatment of pregnant rats with the p38 MAPK inhibitor SB 202190 increased insulin-stimulated tyrosine phosphorylation of the insulin receptor (IR) and IR substrate-1 in adipose tissue, which was paralleled by a reduction of IR substrate-1 serine phosphorylation and an enhancement of the metabolic actions of insulin. These results indicate that activation of p38 MAPK in adipose tissue contributes to adipose tissue insulin resistance at late pregnancy. Furthermore, the results of the present study support the hypothesis that physiological low-grade inflammation in the maternal organism is relevant to the development of pregnancy-associated insulin resistance.

This work was directed to evaluate immunoexpression of markers for apoptosis, resistance to apoptosis, and cell proliferation, as well as estimates of nuclear size in ventral prostate of rats treated with cadmium chloride and cadmium+zinc chloride because a possible protective effect of zinc has been postulated. The following variables were studied: volume fraction (VF) of Bcl-2 immunostaining, percentage of cells immunoreactive to proliferating cell nuclear antigen (LIPCNA) and p53 (LIp53), numerical density of caspase-3 immunoreactive cells (NV caspase-3), and estimates of volume-weighted mean nuclear volume (upsilonV). The LIPCNA and VF of Bcl-2 were significantly increased in the treated animals. The dysplasias (independent of their origin) showed a significant increase of the LIp53, NV caspase-3, and upsilonV in comparison with normal acini from treated and control animals. It can be concluded that cell proliferation is enhanced in long-term cadmium-exposed rats, and exposure to zinc combined with cadmium had no effect on any of the variables studied when comparing with normal acini. The increase of nuclear upsilonV could indicate a more aggressive behavior for pretumoral lesions.