The effect of testosterone treatment on prostate histology and apoptosis in men with late-onset hypogonadism

Objectives: To investigate the effect of testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) on prostate histology and apoptosis in men with late-onset hypogonadism (LOH).

Methods: The study included 25 men, having LOH with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level of 4?ng/ml or less. All patients underwent transrectal ultrasound guided prostate biopsy at baseline, and received testosterone undecanoate treatment for 1 year. Prostate biopsy was repeated at the end of 1 year of testosterone therapy. In addition to clinical and biochemical parameters, prostate histology and apoptotic index (AI) were compared before and after the TRT.

Results: The mean serum total testosterone significantly increased from 178.04?±?51.92 to 496.28?±?103.73?ng/dl (p?=?0.001). No significant differences were observed in serum total and free PSA level, prostate volume and maximal urinary flow rate. There were also no significant differences in AI, stroma/epithelial cells ratio, Ki-67 positive cells and atrophy score of prostate tissue before and after the TRT.

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that TRT did not affect serum PSA level, prostate volume and maximal urinary flow rate. This study also suggests that TRT does not cause the risk for prostate cancer development, because of no significant differences in prostate histology after TRT.     

Social documentary and personal investigations in contemporary South African photography: Tracey Derrick’s “One in Nine” series

A shell of white gauze floats against a split background in Tracey Derrick’s 2009 photograph, Inhabit – Habergeon – middle English, piece of armour to protect the neck and chest (Inhabit), both autonomous and materially frail. The shadowed wall lifts the calcified gauze towards the viewer, as its lithe body hovers above the vertical divide that separates light from dark. This position apart from the edge may be read as a passage missed or overcome. A year of invasive treatment following her diagnosis of stage two breast cancer in March of 2008 led South African documentary photographer Tracey Derrick to create a photographic series that combines her humanist sensibility with personal reflections on illness. Derrick represents meditations on her trajectory through illness in “One in Nine: My Year as a Statistic,” a collection of reposeful digital colour photographs – including Inhabit – that features the cast Derrick made to obtain accurate measurements for her prosthesis. This body of work complicates a widely held assumption that post-apartheid photography in South Africa focuses more on the individual than collective societal issues. Derrick’s unusual series warrants methodological treatment that attends to the complex ways in which the visual vocabulary and concerns of apartheid-era documentary photography overlap with the personal explorations associated with post-1994 photographic production. In this paper, I utilise socio-historical, psychoanalytic and phenomenological readings of Tracey Derrick’s photograph and “One in Nine” series to elicit an interpretation of the image and series as statement of agency within a metaphorical battle against an invisible, yet pervasive disease. By reading Derrick’s photograph through these theoretical lenses, I reveal her image to be a metaphoric assertion of tenacity and Derrick’s agency, and highlight the areas of overlap between Derrick’s documentary practice and her more personal “One in Nine” project.     

Navigating healthcare: gateways to cancer screening

This article is the first phase in the Gateways to Cancer Screening project – a user‐driven participatory research project that examines barriers and facilitators to preventive cancer screening for women with physical mobility disabilities. Through a systematic review of the existing literature on this subject we discover that, despite the fact that women with disabilities have the same biological risk of developing cancer as non‐disabled women, women with mobility impairments face systemic, architectural, procedural and attitudinal barriers to preventive cancer screening. Our goals are to identify barriers and facilitators to screening, identify the gaps in the existing literature related to issues of diversity and ultimately set the stage for disabled women to effect change through the telling of their own stories.     

The contribution of a history of heavy smoking to Scotland's mortality disadvantage

Scotland has a lower life expectancy than any country in Western Europe or North America, and this disadvantage is concentrated above age 50. According to the Human Mortality Database, life expectancy at age 50 has been lower in Scotland than in any other developed country since 1980. Relative to 15 developed countries that we have chosen for comparison, Scotland's life expectancy in 2009 at age 50 was lower by an average of 2.5?years for women and 1.6?years for men. We estimate that Scottish women lost 3.6?years of life expectancy at age 50 as a result of smoking, compared to 1.4?years for the comparison countries. The equivalent figures among men are 3.1 and 2.1?years. These differences are large enough for the history of heavy smoking in Scotland to account both for most of the shortfall in life expectancy for both sexes and for the country's unusually narrow sex differences in life expectancy.     

TWIST基因和蛋白与宫颈癌发生发展关系的研究

目的:检测TWIST基因在宫颈癌组织和宫颈正常组织中的表达,探讨其与宫颈癌发生?发展的相关性及在宫颈癌诊疗中的意义?方法:收集56例宫颈癌组织和35例宫颈正常组织,用实时定量PCR检测TWIST mRNA的表达;用Western blot检测TWIST蛋白的表达,并分析TWIST mRNA在宫颈癌中的表达水平与临床病理因素及高危型HPV病毒载量相关性?结果:实时定量PCR结果显示宫颈癌组织中TWIST mRNA表达高于宫颈正常组织,差异具有统计学意义(P < 0.01);Western blot在蛋白质水平上证实了这一点(P < 0.01)?宫颈癌组织中TWIST的表达与淋巴结转移相关(P = 0.022),但与年龄?FIGO分期?肿瘤大小?病理类型?肿瘤分化程度无关(P均> 0.05),Logistic回归分析显示,高水平的TWIST mRNA表达是淋巴结转移的独立危险因子(P < 0.05)?而TWIST基因的相对表达水平与高危型HPV病毒载量无相关性(r = 0.205,P > 0.05)?结论:宫颈癌组织中TWIST的表达上调,且与是否有淋巴结转移相关,TWIST的表达可能对宫颈癌的发生?发展及转移有重要作用?     

单中心食管胃结合部腺癌发病情况11年变化趋势

目的:研究食管胃结合部腺癌(adenocarcinoma of the esophagogastric junction,AEG)发病情况的变化趋势?方法:回顾分析2001年1月~2011年12月南京医科大学第一附属医院收治的4 685例胃癌病例,其中AEG1 824例,非食管胃结合部腺癌(non-esophagogastric junction adenocarcinoma,NEGA)2 861例?研究AEG在胃癌中所占比例变化趋势?早期食管胃结合部腺癌(early adenocarcinoma of esophagogastric junction,EAEG)检出率变化趋势?AEG 性别年龄分布及比较AEG和NEGA患者发病年龄和性别比的差异?结果:该中心11年来AEG在胃癌中所占比例无明显变化;2007~2011年EAEG的检出率为12.23%(135/1 104),2001~2006年为8.47%(61/720),前者显著高于后者(P = 0.013);AEG患者平均发病年龄以及男女性别比均显著高于NEGA患者[(62.7 ± 9.5)岁 vs (59.1 ± 12.7)岁,P < 0.001;1 434∶390 vs 1 990∶871,P < 0.001)]?结论:AEG在胃癌中所占比例无明显增高;近5年EAEG检出率显著增高;AEG好发于男性老年患者?     

Statistical inference for Cox proportional hazards models with a diverging number of covariates

For statistical inference on regression models with a diverging number of covariates, the existing literature typically makes sparsity assumptions on the inverse of the Fisher information matrix. Such assumptions, however, are often violated under Cox proportion hazards models, leading to biased estimates with under-coverage confidence intervals. We propose a modified debiased lasso method, which solves a series of quadratic programming problems to approximate the inverse information matrix without posing sparse matrix assumptions. We establish asymptotic results for the estimated regression coefficients when the dimension of covariates diverges with the sample size. As demonstrated by extensive simulations, our proposed method provides consistent estimates and confidence intervals with nominal coverage probabilities. The utility of the method is further demonstrated by assessing the effects of genetic markers on patients' overall survival with the Boston Lung Cancer Survival Cohort, a large-scale epidemiology study investigating mechanisms underlying the lung cancer.