“
“Introduction: Immunosuppressive drugs are associated with an increased risk of infections and in some cases neoplasia, particularly non-melanoma skin cancers. This paper describes the development of a model to test the effects of immunosuppressive drugs on local invasion and metastases of a squamous cell carcinoma
in syngeneic, immunocompetent mice.
Methods: SCC VII cells were labeled with 655 quantum dots (QDs), injected intramuscularly into C3H HEN mice and traffic and progressive growth in the draining popliteal lymph node were evaluated.
Results: SCC VII cells express RAE-1, an NKG2D ligand, and were sensitive to natural killer (NK) cells in vitro. QDs were stable in SCC VII cells and showed no evidence GSK461364 of toxicity to the cells. In vivo, confocal microscopy showed that QD-labeled SCC VII cells could migrate to the draining node and microfluorimetry showed progressive traffic of QDs to the node. There was no evidence of systemic toxicity of QDs. Primary immunosuppression in SCID and SCID-beige mice and treatment of normal mice with immunosuppressive agents (anti-asialoGM1 and cyclophosphamide) can enhance traffic of QDs and/or metastases to the
draining lymph node. In contrast, cyclosporine had no effect on traffic or metastases.
Conclusion: This model of local invasion and metastases this website may be useful in immunotoxicology for identifying and characterizing the hazard posed by selective immunosuppressive Cyclosporin A drugs. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.”
“Background: Before trans-catheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), assessment of cardiac function and accurate measurement of the aortic root are key to determine the correct size and type of the prosthesis. The aim of this study was to compare cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) and trans-thoracic echocardiography (TTE) for the assessment of aortic valve measurements and left ventricular function in high-risk elderly patients submitted to TAVI.
Methods: Consecutive patients with severe aortic stenosis and contraindications for surgical aortic valve replacement were screened from
April 2009 to January 2011 and imaged with TTE and CMR.
Results: Patients who underwent both TTE and CMR (n = 49) had a mean age of 80.8 +/- 4.8 years and a mean logistic EuroSCORE of 14.9 +/- 9.3%. There was a good correlation between TTE and CMR in terms of annulus size (R-2 = 0.48, p < 0.001), left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) diameter (R-2 = 0.62, p < 0.001) and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) (R-2 = 0.47, p < 0.001) and a moderate correlation in terms of aortic valve area (AVA) (R-2 = 0.24, p < 0.001). CMR generally tended to report larger values than TTE for all measurements. The Bland-Altman test indicated that the 95% limits of agreement between TTE and CMR ranged from -5.6 mm to + 1.0 mm for annulus size, from -0.45 mm to + 0.25 mm for LVOT, from -0.45 mm(2) to + 0.25 mm2 for AVA and from -29.2% to 13.2% for LVEF.