Bartlettkelleher5048

© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Burn Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.Regional metastasis is the single most important prognostic factor in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Abnormal expression of N-myc downstream-regulated genes (NDRGs) has been identified to occur in several tumor types and to predict poor prognosis. In OSCC, the clinical significance of deregulated NDRG expression has not been fully established. In this study, NDRG1 relevance was assessed at gene and protein level in 100 OSCC patients followed-up by at least 10 years. Survival outcome was analyzed using a multivariable analysis. Tumor progression and metastasis was investigated in preclinical model using oral cancer cell lines (HSC3, SCC25) treated with EGF and orthotopic mouse model of metastatic murine OSCC (AT84). We identified NDRG1 expression levels to be significantly lower in patients with metastatic tumors compared to patients with local disease only (P=0.001). NDRG1 expression was associated with MMP-2, -9, -10 (P=0.022, P=0.002, P=0.042, respectively), and BCL2 (P=0.035). NDRG1 lower expression was able to predict recurrence and metastasis (log-rank test, P=0.001). In multivariable analysis, the expression of NDRG1 was an independent prognostic factor (Cox regression, P=0.013). In invasive OSCC cells, NDRG1 expression is diminished in response to EGF and this was associated with a potent induction of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) phenotype. This result was further confirmed in an orthotopic OSCC mouse model. Together, this data support that NDRG1 down-regulation is a potential predictor of metastasis and approaches aimed at NDRG1 signaling rescue can serve as potential therapeutic strategy to prevent oral cancer progression to metastasis. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email journals.permissions@oup.com.In a cluster randomized trial (CRT), groups of people are randomly assigned to different interventions. Existing parametric and semiparametric methods for CRTs rely on distributional assumptions or a large number of clusters to maintain nominal confidence interval (CI) coverage. Randomization-based inference is an alternative approach that is distribution-free and does not require a large number of clusters to be valid. Although it is well-known that a CI can be obtained by inverting a randomization test, this requires testing a non-zero null hypothesis, which is challenging with non-continuous and survival outcomes. In this article, we propose a general method for randomization-based CIs using individual-level data from a CRT. This approach accommodates various outcome types, can account for design features such as matching or stratification, and employs a computationally efficient algorithm. We evaluate this method's performance through simulations and apply it to the Botswana Combination Prevention Project, a large HIV prevention trial with an interval-censored time-to-event outcome. © The Author 2020. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.In the sector of occupational safety and health only a limited amount of studies are concerned with the conversion of inhalable to respirable dust. This conversion is of high importance for retrospective evaluations of exposure levels or of occupational diseases. For this reason a possibility to convert inhalable into respirable dust is discussed in this study. To determine conversion functions from inhalable to respirable dust fractions, 15 120 parallel measurements in the exposure database MEGA (maintained at the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance) are investigated by regression analysis. For this purpose, the whole data set is split into the influencing factors working activity and material. Inhalable dust is the most important predictor variable and shows an adjusted coefficient of determination of 0.585 (R2 adjusted to sample size). Further improvement of the model is gained, when the data set is split into six working activities and three material groups behalf of the British Occupational Hygiene Society.OBJECTIVES Compare the morphologic, laboratory, and clinical features of asymptomatic and symptomatic Castleman disease in the pediatric population. METHODS We reviewed clinical records and histopathology of patients with Castleman disease from 2 pediatric institutions. RESULTS Of 39 patients with pediatric Castleman disease, 37 had unicentric disease, all classified with the hyaline vascular variant of Castleman disease, 8 of which were clinically symptomatic. These 8 patients demonstrated abnormal laboratory findings, including microcytic anemia, elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein, and hypoalbuminemia. CRT-0105446 cost In addition, histopathologic evaluation showed that the 8 symptomatic cases had more hyperplastic germinal centers, fewer atrophic or regressed germinal centers, fewer mantle zones containing multiple germinal centers, reduced "onion skinning" of mantle zones, and fewer "lollipop" formations compared with the asymptomatic cases. CONCLUSIONS This series of pediatric Castleman disease showed that lymph nodes from asymptomatic patients generally demonstrated the more classic hyaline vascular histology, whereas those with symptoms could lack or have only focal classic findings. As such, reactive lymph nodes with subtle Castleman-like features should prompt clinical correlation to ensure proper diagnosis. © American Society for Clinical Pathology, 2020. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.Sweetness enhancement by aromas has been suggested as a strategy to mitigate sugar reduction in food products, but enhancement is dependent on type of aroma as well as sugar level. A careful screening of aromas across sugar levels is thus required. Screening results might, however, depend on the method employed. Both descriptive sensory analysis and relative to reference scaling were therefore used to screen 5 aromas across 3 sucrose concentrations for their sweetness enhancing effects in aqueous solutions. In the descriptive analysis, samples with added vanilla, honey, and banana aroma were rated as significantly sweeter than samples with added elderflower or raspberry aroma at all sucrose concentrations. In relative to reference scaling, honey aroma significantly increased the sweet taste compared to samples with added elderflower or no aroma at low and medium sucrose concentrations. Banana and raspberry aromas also increased the sweet taste significantly compared to the sample with added elderflower aroma at medium sucrose concentration in the relative to reference scaling.