Diving deep for the needle in the haystack: An outbreak investigation of Burkholderia cenocepacia bacteremia.

In an Indian oncology setting, between August and December 2021, 56 patients, developed Burkholderia cenocepacia bacteremia. An investigation revealed a contaminated batch of the antiemetic drug palonosetron. The outbreak was terminated by withdrawing the culprit batch and the findings were reported promptly to regulatory authorities.

A retrospective study on finding correlation of pioglitazone and incidences of bladder cancer in the Indian population.

OBJECTIVES: This retrospective cohort study analyzed the clinical data of cancer patients conducted in a cancer hospital, Chennai to assess the correlation (if any) between use of antidiabetic agents including pioglitazone and the incidence of bladder cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Totally, 5079 cancer patients' with and without diabetes were included and analyzed in this retrospective study. RESULTS: A total of 1077 patient data were screened out of a total of 5079. A total of 20 patients were found to have bladder cancer. Out of 1077 patients, 31 were pioglitazone users on the drug for not less than 2 years. The remaining 1046 were on other drugs other than pioglitazone. It is observed that 1 out of 31 developed bladder cancer in the pioglitazone group 19 out of 1046 developed bladder cancer in the nonpioglitazone group. The result of the analysis indicates that there is no significant (P = 0.918) association between pioglitazone and bladder cancer. CONCLUSION: In this retrospective study, the number of diabetic patients on pioglitazone with bladder cancer was fewer than the diabetic patients on other medications with the disease. Further, no link could be established between any specific drug use and bladder cancer. Least number of patients with bladder cancer was on pioglitazone, suggesting that pioglitazone alone cannot be considered a cause for increased incidence of bladder cancer in diabetic patients.

Primary esophageal T-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Primary non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of the esophagus is a rare disease. We report a 52-year-old man who had a polypoid mass in the esophagus at endoscopy. Histology was suggestive of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; immunohistochemistry was positive for CD3, CD45 RO, LCA. He was treated with 6 cycles of CHOP and is disease-free 14 months later.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia presenting as breast mass.

We present here a 34 years female who presented with bilateral breast lumps as the initial manifestation of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She was treated with consolidation chemotherapy and showed good response.

Impact of high-dose cytosine arabinoside in poor-prognosis acute lymphoblastic leukemia: Cancer Institute experience, Chennai, India.

High-dose cytosine arabinoside (HD-AraC) has been used in relapsed and refractory cases of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). Sixty-two poor-prognosis ALL patients were treated with HD-AraC between 1983 and 1995 at the Cancer Institute, Chennai, India. Of them, 37 had experienced a relapse, 16 were partial responders (refractory) to the induction regimen, and 9 were high risk due to central nervous system or testicular involvement or total counts above 200,000/mm3 at presentation. Of the 37 patients with relapses, 22 (59.5%) achieved complete remission (CR) and 10 had no evidence of disease (NED); of the 16 refractory group patients, 10 achieved CR and 2 had NED; and of the 9 high-risk patients, 5 had NED at the end of the study. The 5-year event-free survival (EFS) values of relapsed, refractory and high-risk group categories were 21.7%, 12.5%, and 55.6%, with a mean duration of 41 months, 18 months, and 85 months, respectively. Total alopecia and grade IV myelosuppression were the predominant toxicities. HD-AraC is an effective drug in the treatment of relapsed and refractory acute leukemias and can overcome relative drug resistance in high concentrations.