Clinical and radiological results after implantation of the femoral neck preserving Delfi M hip prosthesis: a case series.

Various types of bone preserving total hip prostheses with a proximal force transmission concept have been developed for younger adults, one of these being the implant "Delfi M®", produced by ESKA until 2009. Since the demand could not meet the expectations, the production was stopped due to economic reasons so that only 31 implants of this type were sold and even less actually implanted. This study followed up 15 Delfi M® prostheses in 12 patients for 3.1 years and represents the only existing valid data about this implant.Demographical, preoperative and postoperative data including clinical scores (HOOS and mHHS) were collected retrospectively. Postoperative X-rays were analyzed by an independent radiologist. One implant had to be exchanged due to an infection and another one due to excessive implant migration. The mHHS and the HOOS scores showed a significant improvement after surgery. In the radiological analysis, there were no signs of radiolucent lines or osteolyses.This trial demonstrates good clinical and radiological midterm results for the Delfi M prosthesis. Limitations of this study are a small sample size and a follow-up time of 3 years at only one timepoint.

Interleukin 32 promotes hematopoietic progenitor expansion and attenuates bone marrow cytotoxicity.

The identification of soluble factors involved in stem cell renewal is a major goal in the assessment of the BM niche. We have previously shown that human endothelial cell (EC) supernatants can induce the proliferation of hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs), especially after stimulation with IL-1ß. To identify new potential growth factors, we compared the expression profile of IL-1ß-stimulated ECs over 4, 8 and 16 h with non-stimulated ECs using oligonucleotide microarrays covering more than 46,000 transcripts. Most significant changes were detected after 4 h. Utilization of Gene Ontology annotation for the stimulated EC transcriptome indicated multiple upregulated genes encoding extracellular proteins with a cell-cell signaling function. Using flow cytometry, delta, colony and cobblestone assays, we assessed the proliferative capacities of 11 gene products, i.e. IL-8, IL-32, FGF-18, osteoprotegerin, Gro 1-3, ENA78, GCP-2, CCL2 and CCL20, which are not known to induce HPC expansion. Notably, IL-32 and to a lesser degree osteoprotegerin and Gro 3 significantly induced the proliferation of HPCs. Furthermore, IL-32 attenuated chemotherapy-related BM cytotoxicities by increasing the number of HPCs in mice. Our findings confirm that the combination of microarrays and gene annotation helps to identify new hematopoietic growth factors.