HEMORRHAGIC PANCREATITIS is a more lethal disease than edematous pancreatitis [2, 5, 81. For prognostic and therapeutic purposes it would be useful to be able to distinguish between the two forms of pancreatitis, but present methods are inadequate. Levels of serum amylase, an index of the degree of ductal obstruction of the pancreas, depend on a functioning acinar cell [l]. Amylase and lipase l...

BP: bullous pemphigoid DIF: direct immunofluorescence TNF-a: tumor necrosis factorealpha INTRODUCTION Up to 20% of cases of bullous pemphigoid (BP) show an atypical presentation, exhibiting localized distribution or non-bullous lesions, such as eczematous, urticarial, prurigolike, and erythema multiformelike papules and plaques. These atypical presentations can be associated with a delay in dia...

Apoptosis is a morphologically defined form of programmed cell death (PCD) that is mediated by the activation of members of the caspase family. Analysis of death-receptor signaling in lymphocytes has revealed that caspase-dependent signaling pathways are also linked to cell death by nonapoptotic mechanisms, indicating that apoptosis is not the only form of PCD. Under physiological and pathologi...

Mazzon E, Cuzzocrea S. Role of TNFin ileum tight junction alteration in mouse model of restraint stress. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 294: G1268–G1280, 2008. First published February 28, 2008; doi:10.1152/ajpgi.00014.2008.—Restraint stress induces permeability changes in the small intestine, but little is known about the role of tumor necrosis factor (TNF)in the defects of the TJ fun...

Correlations may affect propagation processes on complex networks. To analyze their effect, it is useful to build ensembles of networks constrained to have a given value of a structural measure, such as the degree-degree correlation r, being random in other aspects and preserving the degree sequence. This can be done through Monte Carlo optimization procedures. Meanwhile, when tuning r, other n...

Seventeen months after kidney transplantation for the treatment of nephrotic syndrome, a retroperitoneal mass was incidentally detected in a 30-year-old man during routine follow-up. Ultrasonography revealed a mass measuring 5.5 cm×4.3 cm located between the liver and the atrophic right kidney, which showed markedly heterogeneous internal echogenicity. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography disp...

The deep inferior epigastric perforator (DIEP) flap is considered to be the gold standard for autologous breast reconstruction. This study evaluates the outcome of unilateral DIEP flap reconstructions, comparing university with a community hospital setting. A total of 77 unilateral DIEP flaps were performed at one university hospital and two community hospitals by the same two surgeons. Outcome...

Thirty-four healthy blood donors, found to be persistent HBAg carriers, have been investigated by means of serial liver function tests, bromsulphthalein (BSP) retention, and liver biopsy. Thirty-one of the donors had histological abnormalities including one with cirrhosis, three with chronic aggressive hepatitis, and 11 with chronic persistent hepatitis. In 13 biopsies there were focal areas of...