Prior malignancy impact on survival outcomes of glioblastoma multiforme; population-based study.

BACKGROUND: Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients with a prior malignancy are usually excluded from clinical trials on GBM based on the assumption that this history will affect their survival outcomes. This practice may affect clinical trial accrual and limit the gathering of knowledge essential to the formulation of therapeutic options for this patient population. However, not much is known about the real impact of these prior malignancies on the survival of patients with subsequent GBM. We aimed to investigate the degree of such an impact. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program to analyze data of GBM patients diagnosed between 1973 and 2014. We calculated the overall and GBM-specific survival of these patients using the unadjusted Kaplan-Meier test and the multivariable covariate-adjusted Cox models. RESULTS: Of 51,158 GBM patients, 3,076 had a prior malignancy. The unadjusted Kaplan-Meier test showed worse overall and GBM-specific survivals for patients who had a prior history of cancer. However, after adjusting for age at diagnosis of GBM, sex, race, marital status, and conduction of surgery, multivariable covariate-adjusted Cox models showed that having a prior malignancy did not significantly affect neither overall survival (HR = 1.025, 95%CI = .986 - 1.066, p = .213) nor GBM-specific survival (HR = 1.005, 95%CI = .963 - 1.049, p = .810). CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that the broad practice of excluding patients with a prior history of cancer should be reconsidered as it may adversely affect accrual, trial completion rates, and generalizability of the results.

Hyperbaric oxygen and aerobic exercise in the long-term treatment of fibromyalgia: A narrative review.

Chronic pain is one of the most common clinical presentations in the primary care settings. In the US, Fibromyalgia (FM) affects about 1-3% of adults and commonly occurs in adults between the ages of 40-50 years. FM causes widespread muscular pain and tenderness with hyperalgesia and allodynia and may be associated with other somatic complaints. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has been utilized and has recently shown promising effects in the management of FM and other chronic pain disorders. In HBOT, the intermittent breathing of 100% oxygen in a pressurized chamber where the pressure is higher than 1 atmosphere absolute (ATA) has been utilized. HBOT exhibits a significant anti-inflammatory effect through reducing production of glial cells and inflammatory mediators which results in pain alleviation in different chronic pain conditions. HBOT can also influence neuroplasticity and affects the mitochondrial mechanisms resulting in functional brain changes. In addition to that, HBOT stimulates nitric oxide (NO) synthesis which helps in alleviating hyperalgesia and NO-dependent release of endogenous opioids which seemed to be the primary HBOT mechanism of antinociception. Moreover, aerobic exercise and meditative movement therapies (MMT) have gained attention for their role in pain alleviation through different anti-inflammatory and antioxidant mechanisms. In this review, we aim to elucidate the different mechanisms of HBOT and aerobic exercise in attenuating pain as adjuvant therapy in the multidisciplinary treatment strategy of chronic pain, and more particularly fibromyalgia.