BACKGROUND The use of calcitonin screening for the rare medullary thyroid cancer (MTC) is controversial due to questions of efficacy, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness. This study reports the results of a large prospective validation using a machine-trained algorithm (MTC Classifier) to preoperatively identify MTC in fine-needle aspiration biopsies in lieu of calcitonin measurements. METHODS C...

Based on literature, it is possible to hypothesize that multidrug resistance (MDR) and angiogenic phenotypes are linked to each other in human liver cancer cells. Our goal is to assess whether MDR cells trigger angiogenesis and to study the possible molecular mechanisms involved. Conditioned medium from parental drug-sensitive P5 cells (P5-CM) and MDR-positive P1(0.5) cells [P1(0.5)-CM] stimula...

Background. Functional studies indicate that sympathetic efferents are located in the superficial subepicardium and vagal efferents are located in the subendocardium. It is possible that electrical shocks applied directly to the heart might affect the function of these autonomic nerves. Methods and Results. Low(<1 J), medium(6 to 16 J), or high(30 to 35 J) energy truncated monophasic exponentia...

Introduction: Little is known about the effects stem cell mobilizers (GCSF) such as neulasta (pegfilgrastim) or neupogen (filgrastim) during pregnancy, and these are often withheld from women undergoing chemotherapy during pregnancy. Materials and Methods: Women receiving chemotherapy during pregnancy were identified from the Cancer and Pregnancy Registry maintained at Cooper University Hospita...

Y ang and Chan (1) express uncertainty regarding immortal time bias, an established and rigorously founded principle in epidemiology and statistical sciences, and use data from the Hong Kong Diabetes Registry to quantify the effect of statin use on cardiovascular outcomes. Using the time-fixed approach, known to introduce immortal time bias, they find that statin use is associated with a 34% re...

In a recent article in Diabetes Care, Suissa and Azoulay (1) concluded that the impressive results of the metformin-associated reduced cancer risk were due to many researchers failing to adjust for immortal time bias and not using time-dependent analysis of drug exposure. However, this conclusion is not justified since it remains controversial whether immortal time would introduce substantial b...

In the comment by Bodmer et al. (1), the authors question our assertion that several of their studies suffered from time-window bias (2). Perhaps there are subtleties about this bias that need to be further clarified. In the authors’ breast cancer study (3), cases and controls were matched on age, sex (although all females), general practice, and index date (i.e., the calendar date of the breas...

For vertebrates, the control of their body fluid homeostasis is fundamental to life. Osmoregulation in teleost fishes is achieved by integrated water and ion transport in osmoregulatory organs such as the gills, kidney and intestine (Evans, 1993; Bentley, 2002). Freshwater (FW) teleosts face water load and ion loss through their body surface, and therefore excrete excess water by producing dilu...