Vestibular migraine screening in a migraine-diagnosed patient population, and assessment of vestibulocochlear function.

OBJECTIVE: The primary aim of this study is to do a vestibular migraine scan in a population of patients with migraine diagnosis using the most recent standardized diagnosis criterion which is International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICHD) 3 Beta and to identify the epidemiological data. The second part of the study involves performing several vestibulocochlear tests on patients who received vestibular migraine (VM) diagnosis to collect data that may be important for diagnostic purposes by comparing the patients with normal population when necessary. DESIGN: Blind, cross-sectional study. SETTING: Tertiary referral hospital. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred patients were scanned for VM using ICHD 3 Beta guideline. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: In order to evaluate the vestibulocochlear functions of the patients with VM diagnosis, audiometry, tympanometry, electrocochleography (EcochG), computerized dynamic posturography (CDP) and video head impulse test (vHIT) were performed; besides in order to evaluate the significance of the results of the tests, second group was formed with migraine patients without any vestibular complaints and control group was formed from healthy population when needed. RESULTS: VM prevalence was determined to be 21% in migraine patients which is much higher than stated in current literature. No significant difference was observed between migraine and VM patients with respect to audiometric and tympanometric measurements. According to the CDP results, balance defects were present in VM patients, even during attack-free periods. EcochG data suggests average SP/AP scores of VM patients are significantly higher than migraine patients. Furthermore, the number of patients who exceeded a limit value of 0.4 or 0.5 in SP/AP scores was significantly higher in VM patients than in migraine patients. Also vHIT results show that nearly half the VM patients, which is a significant ratio, have saccadic movements and this is thought to be compatible with peripheral vestibular involvement. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest VM disease is more common than previously thought. We believe that further EcochG-based studies would shed light on the controversial topic on the intersection and disjunction sets of MD and VM diseases. Although the results of the present study are compatible with peripheral vestibular effects, it is not possible to rule out another central mechanism at some other level.

[Alveolar soft tissue sarcoma]. / Alveoläres Weichteilsarkom.

Alveolar soft part sarcoma is a malignant soft part tumor the etiology of which has not yet been clarified. Histopathological examinations show an alveolar or pseudoglandular pattern. PAS-positive, diastase resistant intraplasmic inclusion bodies are characteristic for this tumor which occurs in the head and neck region; mainly the tongue and the orbita. Primary therapy includes total resection which can later be combined with radiotherapy or chemotherapy. The present study involves a 17 year old patient. We totally removed the tumor and then used radiotherapy. The postoperative examinations over 3 years showed neither local recurrence nor distant metastases.

Evaluation of oxidative stress parameters in blood of patients with laryngeal carcinoma.

OBJECTIVES: In this study, plasma lipid peroxidation as assessed by thiobarbituric acid reactive substances and erythrocyte antioxidant status markers namely CuZn superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, glutathione and plasma levels of vitamin C and E were investigated in 20 patients with larygneal carcinoma and 15 healthy controls. DESIGN AND METHODS: Lipid peroxidation was observed to be significantly higher (0.01 > p > 0.001) in the larynx carcinoma group in comparison to the healthy controls. Both stage I + 11 and stage III carcinoma patients were observed to have significantly higher thiobarbituric acid reactive substances than the control group. A significant difference was found in plasma vitamin E level between the control group and stage I + 11 and stage III carcinoma patients (p < 0.01, 0.05 > p > 0.02, respectively). RESULTS: Our findings reveal the presence of increased lipooxidative damage in laryngeal carcinoma patients, but no change with respect to the endogenous antioxidant components-GSH, GSH Px, and CuZn SOD.

Serum proteins with NAD+ glycohydrolase activity and anti-CD38 reactivity--elevated levels in serum of tumour patients.

NAD+ glycohydrolase activities in serum samples from cancer patients were two- to three-fold higher than the activities in samples from healthy controls. SDS-PAGE analysis of serum samples followed by Western blotting revealed the presence of two proteins of approximately 45 and approximately 21 kDa that were immunoreactive with human CD38-specific monoclonal antibodies T16, HIT2 and OKT 10. These proteins appeared to be more abundant in serum from cancer patients. NAD+ glycohydrolase activity in serum could be enriched by immunoaffinity chromatography by using T16-Sepharose 4B. The results suggest that the relative abundance of proteins immunologically related to CD38 may account for the elevated levels of glycohydrolase activities in serum of tumour patients.