BACKGROUND The incidence of melanoma is increasing worldwide. Guidelines for clinical skin exam for improving early diagnosis of melanoma remain inconsistent, and current data on factors associated with regular skin screening on a population basis are limited. METHODS We used self-reported data from 50,044 members of the California Twin Program, a population-based cohort of twins born in Cali...

Phaeochromocytoma during pregnancy is rare and life-threatening to both mother and fetus (1). Pregnancy leads to diagnostic difficulty, whereas early diagnosis and appropriate management improves the prognosis (2). Only a few hundred cases managed during pregnancy have been reported and, a s far as we know, there are no publications of bilateral tumour managed during pregnancy. We report a preg...

Because of the increase in incidence of coccidioidomycosis among the elderly in Arizona between 1990 and 1996, a case-control study was conducted to look at risk factors for disease among these persons. Cases (n=89) were persons aged > or =60 years with laboratory-confirmed coccidioidomycosis; 2 control groups were selected, the first by use of random-digit dialing (geographic controls, n=91) a...

BACKGROUND The segmentation of cancerous areas in breast images is important for the early detection of disease. Thermal imaging has advantages, such as being non-invasive, non-radiation, passive, quick, painless, inexpensive, and non-contact. Imaging technique is the focus of this research. METHODS The proposed model in this paper is a combination of surf and corners that are very resistant....

MOTIVATION The identification of robust lists of molecular biomarkers related to a disease is a fundamental step for early diagnosis and treatment. However, methodologies for the discovery of biomarkers using microarray data often provide results with limited overlap. These differences are imputable to 1) dataset size (few subjects with respect to the number of features); 2) heterogeneity of th...

Five-year survival rate for patients with all cancers combined, in China, is only 30.9%, which is much lower than those in developed countries. The three main reasons for the low cancer curative rates in China include differences in the spectrum of cancer types, in early detection rates, and in the percentage of cancer patients receiving standardized treatment between China and developed countr...

Through early diagnosis of symptoms, the Alzheimer's disease process can be decelerated. The main concern is to encourage the population at risk to take responsible actions at the earliest stage of the onset of the disease. Persuasive communication is essential to achieve this. In an experimental study, the evaluation of awareness messages for early diagnosis containing weak and strong argument...

BACKGROUND Although advances in early detection and treatment of cancer improve overall population survival, these advances may not benefit all population groups equally and may heighten racial/ethnic differences in survival. METHODS We identified cancer cases in the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program, who were ages > or = 20 years and diagnosed with one invasive cancer in 199...

Renal cancers comprise a wide variety of neoplasms with quite different genetic and molecular characteristics and clinical behaviors. Several issues of significant note have arisen in association with our increased understanding of these tumors, including questions regarding early diagnosis, the evaluation of cystic lesions, the behavior of tumors occurring in young patients, and insights regar...

BACKGROUND New first-line drug regimens for treatment of tuberculosis (TB) are in clinical trials: emergence of resistance is a key concern. Because population-level data on resistance cannot be collected in advance, epidemiological models are important tools for understanding the drivers and dynamics of resistance before novel drug regimens are launched. METHODS We developed a transmission m...