Alternative treatment approach for anterior subgingival dental lesions: Forced eruption using attractive magnets.

This article reports the use of a minimally invasive technique to address a challenging clinical problem in the esthetic zone. The clinical steps taken to achieve forced eruption by 1.5-2.0 mm of a maxillary central incisor that presented minimal clinical crown because of caries are described in detail. This subsequently allowed the successful placement of a crown. The tooth was extruded by forces generated between 2 neodymium-iron-boron magnets. One was affixed to the palatal surface of the tooth, and the other was embedded in a thermoformed splint. Weekly circumferential supracrestal fiberotomies were performed to enable extrusion without osseous migration. The extrusion was clinically and radiographically detectable after 6 weeks of magnetic force application. After an initial retention period of 8 weeks, the maxillary incisors were restored with lithium-disilicate ceramic veneers and crowns.

Catastrophic intracerebral hemorrhage in a young infant with Wilms tumor.

We present a 7-month-old male infant with stage I Wilms tumor who unexpectedly died from a catastrophic intracerebral hemorrhage, 4 months after completion of chemotherapy and complete surgical resection of the tumor. The precise etiology underlying the fatal event remains unclear as postmortem was refused, but we postulate spontaneous hemorrhage from an underlying cerebral vascular malformation as the most likely cause, which led to the child's unfortunate demise. Although extremely rare, cerebral vascular anomalies have previously been reported in children with Wilms tumor. The coexistence of the 2 uncommon disorders may be related to their congenital origin. Wilms tumor diagnosed in very young infants have clinical and morphologic attributes that do not pertain in older children and the risk of associated congenital anomalies is also much higher among those discovered in the first year of life. This raises the question whether routine magnetic resonance imaging should not be performed in infants less than a year with Wilms tumor, as part of the initial evaluation, to exclude cerebral metastases and underlying vascular malformations.

Detection of ligands for selectins in the oligosaccharide fraction of human milk.

BACKGROUND: Human milk contains a large variety of oligosaccharides which show struc tural similarities with ligands for selectins, a family of cell adhesion molecules which are involved in many cell-cell interactions. AIM OF THE STUDY: Due to their structural similarity with selectin ligands, human milk oligosaccharides were labelled with phosphatidyl ethanolamine to be able to investigate specific effects of antibodies against carbohydrate epitopes. METHODS: Various monoclonal antibodies against physiological selectin ligands were used to determine whether epitopes within human milk oligosaccharides are recognized. Oligosaccharides were isolated from human milk, transferred into neoglycolipids and separated using high performance thin layer chromatography prior to incubation with monoclonal antibodies for the selectin ligands sialyl-Lewis a (sLe a), sialyl-Lewis x (sLe x), Lewis x (Le x) and Lewis y (Le y) after Western blotting. Fast atom bombardment-mass spectrometry was then used to identify antibody-binding compounds. Results In the immunoassays all ligand epitopes except for Le y were detected in the oligosaccharide fraction of human milk. Anti-sLe a showed the most distinct reaction with N-acetylneuraminic acid containing neoglycolipids of which two were identified as neuraminylfucosyl-lacto-N-hexaose and neuraminyl-lacto-N-tetraose. Such oligosaccharides as well as similar structures are present in relatively high concentrations in human milk. CONCLUSIONS: The presence of sialyl-Lewis ligands on milk oligosaccharides together with their abundancy in human milk may suggest that they could be selectin ligands and they may be part of inflammatory processes.