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A recurrence of cancer is a traumatic and stressful experience, and a number of approaches have been proposed to manage or treat the associated psychological distress. Meditative techniques such as mindfulness may be able to improve an individual’s ability to cope with stressful life events such as cancer diagnosis or treatment. This single-arm mixed-methods study primarily aimed to determine the feasibility of using a mindfulness-based intervention in managing psychosocial distress in recurrent ovarian cancer. Twenty-eight participants took part in a mindfulness-based program, involving six group sessions, each lasting 1.5 hours and delivered at weekly intervals. The study found that the mindfulness-based intervention was acceptable to women with recurrent ovarian cancer and feasible to deliver within a standard cancer care pathway in a UK hospital setting. The results suggested a positive impact on symptoms of depression and anxiety, but further study is needed to explore the effectiveness of the intervention.

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For patients with mild lung dysfunction, a leucocyte-depleting arterial line filter improves postoperative oxygenation, reduces extravascular lung water accumulation, and reduces time on artificial ventilator after CPB. There may be an economic argument for the routine use of leucocyte-depleting filters for every patient during CPB.

Fifty patients undergoing elective coronary revascularisation were prospectively randomised to receive either a leucocyte-depleting or a control filter inserted into the arterial line of the cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) circuit. The concentration of exhaled nitric oxide (NO) was measured 15 min before and 30 min after CPB using a real-time chemiluminescence analyser (Logan Research, Northampton, UK). The baseline rate of exhaled NO production was 2.14 +/- 0.83 ppb/s in the control group, and 2.58 +/- 0.53 ppb/s in leucocyte-depleted group (p = 0.17). Following CPB, the mean rate of exhaled NO production in the control group had increased by 1.51 +/- 0.45 ppb/s to 3.65 +/- 0.81 ppb/s and in the leucocyte- depletion group had increased by 1.05 +/- 0.45 ppb/s to 3.64 +/- 0.62 ppb/s. The increase in exhaled NO production was significantly lower in the leucocyte depleted group (p = 0.002), indicating that leucocyte depletion suppressed the increase in exhaled NO production seen following CPB.

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Several immune cytokines, including interleukin-2 (IL-2), interleukin-7 (IL-7) and gamma interferon (INF-y), have been shown to interact with the sulphated polysaccharides heparin and heparan sulphate, so that the co-administration of cytokines with such sulphated sugars may improve current cytokine-based therapies. In this study, sulphated polysaccharides were extracted from the green alga Codiumfragile in cold water and purified by size exclusion chromatography. Gas chromatography~massspectroscopy indicated that they were galactans and/or arabinogalactans, and preliminary nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy analysis suggested that they consisted of repeating units of several monosaccharide residues, probably galactopyranose and arabinopyranose, which were sulphated. The binding of Codium fragile polysaccharIde and commercial preparations of fucoidan, carrageenans and heparin to IL-2. IL-7 and INF-}' was then assessed using an ELISA-based inhibition test. For all cytokines tested, inhibition by fucoidan was found to be strongest (80-90% inhibition), followed by heparin (65-80% inhibition), the Codium polysaccharide (40-59% inhibition) and finally the carrageenans (20-60% inhibition). The differential binding profiles obtained for the cytokines tested suggest the interactions between cytokines and sulphated polysaccharides are specific and could therefore be exploited in a therapeutic capacity.