Cooperative Oncology Group performance status (ECOG PS), prior recurrence rate, number of tumours and T category were independent predictors of time to recurrence ( P < 0.05). According to the EAU guidelines for predicting recurrence, the vast majority of Japanese patients were classified into intermediate risk.• The intermediate-risk patients were further divided into intermediate-low-risk and intermediate-high-risk subgroups based on the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer risk table, and a significant difference in the recurrence-free survival rates was found between these subgroups ( P < 0.001).• It was also found that patients with high risk combined with intermediate-high risk had significantly poorer recurrence-free survival rates than those with low risk combined with intermediate-low risk ( P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS• This is the first report on the ECOG PS as a potentially useful predictor for bladder tumour recurrence.• The risk group stratification of the EAU guidelines for recurrence might not be applicable to Japanese patients with Ta and T1 bladder tumours, but the subgroup classification of intermediate risk could be appropriate. What's known on the subject? and What does the study add? EAU guidelines on non-muscle-invasive bladder tumours have been widely used for the prediction of recurrence after TUR. However, there are substantial differences in bladder cancer incidence and mortality rates between European countries and Japan.This study provides useful factors for predicting recurrence and validation of EAU guidelines on the risk group stratification to predict recurrence in Japanese patients with stage Ta and T1 bladder tumours. OBJECTIVE• To validate the European Association of Urology (EAU) guidelines on risk group stratification to predict recurrence in Japanese patients with stage Ta and T1 bladder tumours. PATIENTS AND METHODS• A cohort of 592 Japanese patients who were treated with transurethral resection (TUR) and histopathologically diagnosed with Ta and T1 urothelial carcinoma of the bladder were enrolled in this retrospective study.• The primary endpoint of the present study was recurrence-free survival, and the median follow-up duration was 37 months in recurrence-free survivors. RESULTS• Multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed that the Eastern

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It has been postulated that unilateral testicular torsion causes damage to the contralateral testis and reduces fertility. However, in animal studies such an effect has not been fully proven by histopathologic examination or other conventional assays of spermatogenesis. We investigated the effect of unilateral testicular torsion on contralateral spermatogenesis in prepubertal rats using quantitative flow cytometric DNA analysis. Male rats were divided into three groups which underwent sham-operation, simple hemiorchiectomy or unilateral testicular torsion. Five weeks after these operations, fertility and spermatogenesis by flow cytometry were evaluated. No significant differences were observed in body weight, contralateral testicular weight or serum testosterone concentration among the three experimental groups. In the torsion group, mean seminiferous tubular diameter, number of foetuses, fertility rate and percentage of haploid cells were all significantly decreased compared to the other two groups. These results suggest that unilateral testicular torsion causes damage to the contralateral testis and consequently can reduce the future fertility of prepubertal rats.

The utility of the 5-bromodeoxyuridine (BrdUrd) labelling technique for the quantitative analysis of spermatogenic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) synthesis was investigated in the rat. Rat testicles were labelled by a single intraperitoneal injection of 100 mg kg-' of BrdUrd. The testicles were removed 1 h after injection, fked in Bouin's fluid and embedded in paraffin. BrdUrdlabelled cells were detected by immunohistochemical staining using a monoclonal anti-BrdUrd antibody. The number of BrdUrd-labelled tubules per total number of tubules (percent L.T.), the number of BrdUrd-labelled cells per total number of tubules (tubular ratio) and the number of BrdUrd-labelled cells per number of Sertoli cells (Sertoli cell ratio in BrdUrd-labelled cells) were calculated as indices of spermatogenic DNA synthesis during each stage of the seminiferous epithelial wave. BrdUrd labelling was found exclusively in the nuclei of spermatogonia and in preleptotene spermatocytes in the seminiferous epithelium. The percent L.T. was generally greater than 50%, except in stages VI, VII and XIV, and the tubular as well as Sertoli cell ratios in BrdUrdlabelled cells was greater than 2.0 and 0.15, respectively, in stages I, 11-111, v, VIII, X, and XII.The tubular ratio and Sertoli cell ratio in BrdUrdlabelled cells along the seminiferous epithelial wave had two distinct peaks. The distribution of the tubular ratio using the BrdUrd-labelling technique correlated well with the distribution previously established by measuring tritiated thymidine uptake per tubule. Thus, the BrdUrd labelling technique, which is more efficient than the tritiated thymidine labelling technique, can be used to quantitatively evaluate spermatogenic DNA synthesis.