Anxiety and depression symptoms among gas and oil industry workers.

BACKGROUND: Oil and gas industry workers appear to suffer from anxiety and depression more frequently than the general population. AIMS: To establish the prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms among offshore workers working for an oil and gas company and to identify the main stressors that lead to symptoms of these disorders. METHODS: One thousand seven hundred and forty-seven workers employed in an offshore oil and gas company in the Middle East completed the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) and Patient Health (PHQ-9) questionnaires. Anxiety and depressive symptoms were estimated from these surveys. RESULTS: Anxiety and depression symptoms were reported by nearly 15% of workers surveyed. Ordered logistic regression analyses showed that age, rotation length, years of service and local origin (versus expatriate) were significant predictors for symptoms of anxiety. With adjustment for age, older local workers had a lower risk of anxiety symptoms than expatriates. CONCLUSIONS: Younger workers, workers with longer rotations and those with fewer years of service were more likely to report anxiety symptoms. In addition, older local workers and expatriates had a lower prevalence of anxiety symptoms than younger local workers. Future recommendations should address improvements in psychological health of offshore workers in the gas and oil industries.

A positive feedback loop of ER-α36/EGFR promotes malignant growth of ER-negative breast cancer cells.

It is prevailingly thought that estrogen signaling is not involved in development of estrogen receptor (ER)-negative breast cancer. However, there is evidence indicating that ovariectomy prevents the development of both ER-positive and -negative breast cancer, suggesting that estrogen signaling is involved in the development of ER-negative breast cancer. Previously, our laboratory cloned a variant of ER-α, ER-α36, and found that ER-α36 mediated nongenomic estrogen signaling and is highly expressed in ER-negative breast cancer cells. In this study, we found that ER-α36 was highly expressed in 10/12 cases of triple-negative breast cancer. We investigated the role of mitogenic estrogen signaling mediated by ER-α36 in malignant growth of triple-negative breast cancer MDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-436 cells that express high levels of ER-α36 and found that these cells strongly responded to mitogenic estrogen signaling both in vitro and in vivo. Knockdown of ER-α36 expression in these cells using the small hairpin RNA method diminished their responsiveness to estrogen. ER-α36 physically interacted with the EGFR/Src/Shc complex and mediated estrogen-induced phosphorylation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and Src. EGFR signaling activated ER-α36 transcription through an AP1 site in the ER-α36 promoter, and ER-α36 expression was able to stabilize EGFR protein. Our results, thus demonstrated that ER-α36 mediates nongenomic estrogen signaling through the EGFR/Src/ERK signaling pathway in ER-negative breast cancer cells and suggested that a subset of ER-negative breast tumors that expresses ER-α36, retains responsiveness to mitogenic estrogen signaling.

The first case of Li-Fraumeni syndrome in Bosnia and Herzegovina: case report.

Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS) is a very rare autosomal dominant and highly penetrant cancer syndrome characterized by early-onset primary tumours, including soft tissue and bone sarcoma, breast cancer, leukemia, brain tumours and adrenocortical carcinoma. Here we report the first evidence-based case of LFS in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the whole Balkan region. A ten year-old girl developed multiple primary tumours (rhabdomyosarcoma) during a period of eight years, as well as fibroadenoma of the breast. Sequential analysis revealed a germ line mutation of TP53 in exon 8, a common mutation in patients with LFS, in both the patient and her mother.