persons and mortality rate of 498.0/1000 persons, which is second only to that of lung cancer, ranking the second most malignant cancer and the most malignant tumor of the gastrointestinal tract. High incidence of GC is observed in East China, Southwest China, North China and Central China. In these areas, morbidity and mortality are two times higher in males than in females, and higher in rura...

Lupus erythematosus and vitiligo are diseases of autoimmune origin. Reports in the literature suggest patients are more likely to suffer more than 1 autoimmune disease (30% of patients with generalized vitiligo have another autoimmune disease).1 However, there are few reports of cutaneous lupus erythematosus in association with vitiligo. We describe a 42-year-old woman with no family history of...

Considering that the left ventricle is a thick-walled body that maintains its volume while reducing intracavitary volume by two thirds, it should come as no surprise that the ventricular wall thickens during systole and that there is a transmural gradient in wall thickening. Wall thickening on the inner wall may exceed values of 40% measured by a variety of techniques. These values far exceed t...

V thromboembolism (VTE) affects 1-2 per 1000 people in the general population each year, usually as deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) of the leg or pulmonary embolism (PE).1 Venous thromboembolism is a common, yet challenging diagnostic problem among both inpatients and outpatients. Clinical pre-test probability assessment is a cornerstone of the algorithms for the exclusion, or diagnosis of VTE.2,3 F...

During polyploidization the megakaryocyte (MK) undergoes endomitosis, which involves skipping late anaphase and cytokinesis.1,2 As a regulator of anaphase and cytokinesis, our laboratory implicated survivin in this process due to the absence of survivin protein in endomitotic mouse MKs,3 which are typically of high ploidy. Gurbuxani et al4 also noted survivin’s down-regulation at the mRNA level...

Race and Sex Differences in the Effects of Dietary Potassium Intake on the Risk of Stroke To the Editor: We read with great interest the 2 articles by Fang et al1 and Bazzano et al2 on the association between dietary potassium intake and stroke mortality. The study by Fang et al has revealed an inverse association between hazard of stroke death and dietary potassium intake in hypertensive men a...

Peripheral artery disease (PAD), which consists of partial or complete obstruction of the arteries in the lower limbs, is one of the most common manifestations of atherosclerosis, affecting 27 million individuals in Europe and North America.1 Its main symptomatic expression, intermittent claudication, was first described by the French veterinarian Bouley2 in a horse affected by progressive limp...

spent approximately $27 billion out-of-pocket (not covered by insurance) on alternative medicine treatments. This is equivalent to the out-of pocket expense for the same period on U.S. physician services. The use of herbal medicines increased fivefold between 1990 and 1997; the use of folk remedies increased at a similar rate; and the use of megavitamins and homeopathy more than doubled.1 Accor...

Detection of Right-to-Left Shunt With Transcranial Doppler Is Affected by Body-Positioning To the Editor: We read with great interest the recent study by Caputi et al regarding the postural dependency of right-to-left shunt (RLS) detection using contrast-enhanced transcranial Doppler (TCD).1 After using TCD to detect the bubble-load in 2 different body positions (recumbent and standing) in cons...

With increasing andwidespreaduse of bloodproducts in clinical practice, many adverse effects have been observed, although most of the risks involved are now better understood. Common adverse effects include transmission of infectious agents, hemolytic reactions, and circulatory issues such as overload and transfusion-related lung injury. Less well known are the adverse effects on hemostatic fun...