Children with autism can express social emotions in their drawings.

OBJECTIVES: The study aimed to examine the ability of children with an Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) to depict social (pride and shame) vs. basic (happiness and sadness) emotions in their human figure drawings. METHODS: Eleven children with a formal diagnosis of an ASC matched on gender and verbal mental age with 11 children with typical development (TD) participated in a series of tasks examining their emotional understanding, as well as their ability to depict a person experiencing the emotions under investigation and a person with no emotions. Drawings were assessed for their overall emotional expressiveness and the types of graphic cues employed to express emotions. RESULTS: Results showed that children with ASC produced less expressive drawings of basic emotions than their controls. However, they did not differ from the control group in their overall expressiveness in drawing social emotions, despite their reduced performance in tasks assessing understanding of social emotions. Additionally, children with ASC used significantly less graphic cues to depict emotions than children with TD, while some qualitative differences between the two groups were observed. CONCLUSION: The study underlines the value of drawing as a tool to investigate emotion understanding in children with ASC.

Lactate dehydrogenase 5 isoenzyme overexpression defines resistance of prostate cancer to radiotherapy.

BACKGROUND: Radiotherapy provides high-cure rates in prostate cancer. Despite its overall slow clinical growth, high proliferation rates documented in a subset of tumours relate to poor radiotherapy outcome. This study examines the role of anaerobic metabolism in prostate cancer growth and resistance to radiotherapy. METHODS: Biopsy samples from 83 patients with prostate cancer undergoing radical hypofractionated and accelerated radiotherapy were analysed for MIB1 proliferation index and for lactate dehydrogenase isoenzyme LDH5, a marker of tumour anaerobic metabolism. Ninety-five surgical samples were in parallel analysed. Correlation with histopathological variables, PSA and radiotherapy outcome was assessed. Dose-response experiments were performed in PC3 and DU145 cancer cell lines. RESULTS: High MIB1 index (noted in 25% of cases) was directly related to Gleason score (P<0.0001), T3-stage (P=0.0008) and PSA levels (P=0.03). High LDH5 (noted in 65% of cases) was directly related to MIB1 index (P<0.0001), Gleason score (P=0.02) and T3-stage (P=0.001). High Gleason score, MIB1, LDH5 and PSA levels were significantly related to poor BRFS (P=0.007, 0.01, 0.03 and 0.01, respectively). High Gleason score (P=0.04), LDH5 (P=0.01) and PSA levels (P=0.003) were significantly related to local recurrence. MIB1 and T-stage did not affect local control. Silencing of LDHA gene in both prostate cancer cell lines resulted in significant radiosensitisation. CONCLUSIONS: LDH5 overexpression is significantly linked to highly proliferating prostate carcinomas and with biochemical failure and local relapse following radiotherapy. Hypoxia and LDHA targeting agents may prove useful to overcome radioresistance in a subgroup of prostate carcinomas with anaerobic metabolic predilection.

Neuroendocrine carcinoma in adenoma of the sigmoid.

BACKGROUND: Neuroendocrine cell tumor in adenoma of the sigmoid is a rare neoplasm coexistence and it is considered as a mixed glandular-neuroendocrine neoplasm. DESCRIPTION OF CASE: An 84-year-old woman underwent surgical removal of a tumor located in the sigmoid, diagnosed as adenocarcinoma on a previous biopsy. On gross examination, apart from the ulcerated tumor, a polyp measuring 2 cm was observed, which histologically corresponded to a villotubular adenoma. In two sites of the adenoma, solid nests of smaller cells were observed, having small amount of cytoplasm, round nuclei with finely stippled chromatin. Mitoses were abundant. These cells were located in the lamina propria and muscularis mucosa, without disturbing the polyp architecture, and showed immunophenotypic characteristics of neuroendocrine carcinoma (NEC). The histologic findings set the diagnosis of mixed adenoma and NEC. The patient remains free of recurrence or metastasis by NEC, after two years of follow up. CONCLUSION: The recognition of NEC in an adenoma will help to avoid potential diagnostic pitfalls. Mixed adenoma and NEC is rare, with uncertain biological behavior. This case reinforces the view that NECs without infiltration of submucosa may have a better prognosis.

Correlation of proliferating cell nuclear antigen assessment, histologic parameters and age with survival in patients with glioblastoma multiforme.

A series of 27 glioblastomas multiforme were studied to compare the prognostic value of age and histologic parameters known to influence survival with that of proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA). The labelling index (LI) of PCNA has been found in previous studies to correlate well with flow cytometry, tritiated thymidine, bromodeoxyuridine incorporation and Ki 67. The histologic parameters estimated were endothelial proliferation, number of mitoses per high power field, cellularity and a grading of necroses. The correlation coefficients between survival and each of the histologic parameters as well as with age were found to be negative but statistically insignificant. The values of these correlations in descending order were survival/age (r = -0.22), survival/endothelial proliferation (r = -0.20), survival/mitoses (r = -0.16), survival/cellularity (r = -0.07) and survival/necroses (r = -0.04). The correlation coefficient between survival and PCNA LI was also found to be negative, higher than those between survival and other estimated parameters (r = -0.37) but in a wide variation and still statistically insignificant. Despite this variation, our finding that for PCNA LI > 35% no patient survived more than 6 months may be of clinical importance.