Breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma: clinical follow-up and analysis of sequential pathologic specimens of untreated patients shows persistent or progressive disease.

Breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) is a distinctive type of T-cell lymphoma that arises around textured-surface breast implants. In a subset of patients, this disease can involve surrounding tissues, spread to regional lymph nodes, and rarely metastasize to distant sites. The aim of this study was to assess sequential pathologic specimens from patients with breast implant-associated ALCL to better understand the natural history of early-stage disease. To achieve this goal, we searched our files for patients who had breast implant-associated ALCL and who had undergone earlier surgical intervention with assessment of biopsy or cytologic specimens. We then focused on the patient subset in whom a definitive diagnosis was not established, and patients did not receive current standard-of-care therapy at that time. We identified a study group of ten patients with breast implant-associated ALCL in whom pathologic specimens were collected 0.5 to 4 years before a definitive diagnosis was established. A comparison of these serial biopsy specimens showed persistent disease without change in pathologic stage in three patients, progression in five patients, and persistence versus progression in two patients. Eventually, six patients underwent implant removal with complete capsulectomy and four underwent partial capsulectomy. Seven patients also received chemotherapy because of invasive disease, three of whom also received radiation therapy, two brentuximab vedotin after chemotherapy failure, and one allogeneic stem cell transplant. Eight patients achieved complete remission and two had partial remission after definitive therapy. At time of last follow-up, six patients were alive without disease, one had evidence of disease, one died of disease, and two patients died of unrelated cancers. In summary, this analysis of sequential specimens from patients with breast implant-associated ALCL suggests these neoplasms persist or progress over time if not treated with standard-of-care therapy.

PointCartesian-Net: enhancing 3D coordinates for semantic segmentation of large-scale point clouds.

Collecting accurate outdoor point cloud data depends on complex algorithms and expensive experimental equipment. The requirement of data collecting and the characteristics of point clouds limit the development of semantic segmentation technology in point clouds. Therefore, this paper proposes a neural network model named PointCartesian-Net that uses only 3D coordinates of point cloud data for semantic segmentation. First, to increase the feature information and reduce the loss of geometric information, the 3D coordinates are encoded to establish a connection between neighboring points. Second, a dense connect and residual connect are employed to progressively increase the receptive field for each 3D point, and aggregated multi-level and multi-scale semantic features obtain rich contextual information. Third, inspired by the success of the SENet model in 2D images, a 3D SENet that learns the relation between the characteristic channels is proposed. It allows the PointCartesian-Net to weight the informative features while suppressing less useful ones. The experimental results produce 60.2% Mean Intersection-over-Union and 89.1% overall accuracy on the large-scale benchmark Semantic3D dataset, which shows the feasibility and applicability of the network.

Indolent T-cell lymphoproliferative disease of the gastrointestinal tract.

Primary gastrointestinal (GI) T-cell lymphoma is an infrequent and aggressive disease. However, rare indolent clonal T-cell proliferations in the GI tract have been described. We report 10 cases of GI involvement by an indolent T-cell lymphoproliferative disease, including 6 men and 4 women with a median age of 48 years (range, 15-77 years). Presenting symptoms included abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, food intolerance, and dyspepsia. The lesions involved oral cavity, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and colon. The infiltrates were dense, but nondestructive, and composed of small, mature-appearing lymphoid cells. Eight cases were CD4(-)/CD8(+), 1 was CD4(+)/CD8(-), and another was CD4(-)/CD8(-). T-cell receptor-γ chain gene rearrangement identified a clonal population in all 10 cases. There was no evidence of STAT3 SH2 domain mutation or activation. Six patients received chemotherapy because of an initial diagnosis of peripheral T-cell lymphoma, with little or no response, whereas the other 4 were followed without therapy. After a median follow-up of 38 months (range, 9-175 months), 9 patients were alive with persistent disease and 1 was free of disease. We propose the name "indolent T-LPD of the GI tract" for these lesions that can easily be mistaken for intestinal peripheral T-cell lymphoma, and lead to aggressive therapy.

Opto-mechanisms design of extreme-ultraviolet camera onboard Chang E lunar lander.

The extreme-ultraviolet camera mounted on the Lander of China Chang-E lunar exploration project launched in 2013 is the first instrument used to imaging from the lunar surface to the whole plasmasphere around the earth. Taking into account both the lunar environment conditions and the weight and volume constraints, a single spherical mirror and a spherical microchannel plate detector make up the compact optical system. An optimized opto-mechanical design was presented using Finite Element Analysis Model, and the detail design for the important assemblies of the 2-axis platform, the primary mirror, the aperture door mechanism and MCP detector were all specially addressed for their environmental adaptability and reliability. Tests of mechanical characteristics have demonstrated that the position and pointing accuracy and its stability meets the operation requirements of 2'. Vibration results have shown that the EUVC has adequate stiffness and strength safety margin to survive in launch and the moon environments. The imaging performance with the resolution of 0.08° is measured after vibration, in agreement with the predicted performance.

Decomposition analysis of PM2.5 emissions based on LMDI and Tapio decoupling model: study of Hunan and Guangdong.

This paper takes energy consumption PM2.5 emission as research object, and quantitatively analyzes the PM2.5 emission level in Hunan and Guangdong provinces from 2012 to 2017. We build a PM2.5 emission decomposition model divided by five sectors, including industry, transportation, construction, resident, and other, and use attribution method and Tapio decoupling index to analyze the relationship between economic development and PM2.5 emission level. The results show that (1) the difference in PM2.5 emissions between the two provinces appeared in 2015; (2) the contribution rate of total PM2.5 emissions is 83.1%, and coal consumption is the determine factor of PM2.5 emissions; industry is the main source of sector contribution with rate of 70.91%; (3) Guangdong's pollution control capacity is much higher than that of Hunan, while Hunan's PM2.5 marginal emission-reduction potential is much higher than that of Guangdong; (4) economic growth is the first increasing emission reason of PM2.5 emission changes, while the intensity of industrial energy consumption is the first reduction emission reason; (5) there is a big difference between the economic development of the two provinces and the decoupling of PM2.5 pollution.

Gastric mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma and Helicobacter pylori infection: a review of current diagnosis and management.

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori)-associated gastritis is one of the most common infectious diseases in the United States, China and worldwide. Gastric mucosa-associated tissue lymphoma (MALT lymphoma) is a rare mature B-cell neoplasm associated with H. pylori infection that is curable by antibiotics therapy alone. The pathological diagnosis of gastric MALT lymphoma can be reached by histological examination, immunohistochemical staining and B-cell clonality analysis. H. pylori eradication is the choice of therapy for early-stage gastric MALT lymphoma. High response rates and long-term survival have been reported in refractory and localized diseases treated with low-dose radiation therapy. Systemic chemotherapy is recommended for advanced-stage gastric MALT lymphoma and cases with large B-cell lymphoma transformation. Recent advances in the pathological diagnosis and management of gastric MALT lymphoma are reviewed in this article.

No relationship between IL-1B gene polymorphism and gastric acid secretion in younger healthy volunteers.

AIM: To investigate the influence of IL-1B-511 gene polymorphism on IL-1B mRNA expression and gastric acid output in individual with or without Helicobacter pylori (H pylori) infection. METHODS: IL-1B mRNA expression and gastric acid secretion in 117 health volunteers were assayed using semi-quantitative RT-PCR and gastric juice assay, respectively. Pepsinogen (PG) I and II of 255 subjects (including 117 health volunteers) were also examined. RESULTS: T/T genotype individuals with H pylori infection had a more decreased PG I/II ratio. In gastric antrum mucosa, the individuals with H pylori infection had higher IL-1B expression than those without H pylori infection, but there was no obvious difference among each genotype. In gastric corpus, the individuals with H pylori infection had a significantly higher IL-1B expression than those without H pylori infection. IL-1B-511T/T genotype was markedly higher as compared with the other two genotypes. Both maximal acid output and basic acid output were similar among each genotype in IL-1B-511 gene locus, regardless of H pylori infection. CONCLUSION: IL-1B-511 T allele does not decrease gastric acid output, although it has a stimulated influence on IL-1B expression. Consequently, the pathway, through which IL-1B plays a central role in gastric cancer development, might not depend on low acid, but on the other regulation mechanisms.

Needle-core biopsy in the pathologic diagnosis of malignant lymphoma showing high reproducibility among pathologists.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the role of needle-core biopsy in the pathologic diagnosis of lymphoma. METHODS: One hundred and five cases with clinical suspicion for lymphoma were studied by 3 hematopathologists mimicking daily diagnostic service. The diagnostic result sheets were analyzed for diagnostic accuracy and reproducibility. The histologic pattern recognition by the 3 hematopathologists was also analyzed. RESULTS: The overall diagnostic accuracy, based on the consensus diagnosis, was 85% to 87%. High reproducibility of diagnosis in lymphoma was observed among pathologists. The tissue size was associated with the percentage of definitive diagnosis. Histologic patterns were well recognized on core tissues. CONCLUSIONS: Needle-core biopsy is an effective technique for the diagnosis of lymphoma and should be considered the first-line procedure for cases with suspicion for lymphoma.

Cytotoxic peripheral T cell lymphoma arising in a patient with nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma: a case report.

In this paper, we describe a case of nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma with the subsequent development of a peripheral T cell lymphoma. This case is unusual in that the sheets of atypical and small to intermediate-sized T cells in the diffuse component were CD8 positive and expressed cytotoxic proteins. The diagnosis of peripheral T cell lymphoma was supported by the demonstration of a clonal T cell receptor beta chain gene rearrangement by Southern blot analysis. Peripheral T cell lymphoma with a cytotoxic phenotype is a rare entity with an aggressive clinical behavior. As such, this report emphasizes the need to consider a diagnosis of coexisting peripheral T cell lymphoma in cases of nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma with atypical features, such as few or poorly defined B cell macronodules and diffuse T cell areas. The examination of both T cell receptor gamma and beta chain gene rearrangements should be performed to confirm such cases.

Gene arrays in lymphoma: Where will they fit in?

Molecular diagnostics for lymphoid malignancies has undergone substantial technical evolution during the past two decades, moving from labor-intensive investigations of individual abnormalities to high-throughput genome-wide analyses. Accordingly, its role has expanded to new fields such as monitoring of minimal residual disease and, more recently, outcome prediction in specific lymphoma subtypes. One novel technology that has had a major impact on the molecular diagnosis of lymphoid malignancies is gene expression profiling by DNA microarrays. It has provided robust and distinct molecular signatures for the most common types of lymphomas and has identified novel subsets that would not be identified by conventional methods. It also has led to the construction of molecularly defined prognostic models in these lymphoma subtypes and to a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of lymphomagenesis. This development will undoubtedly transform diagnostic medicine in the near future and lead us into an era when tumor diagnosis will incorporate the information of critical molecular abnormalities that will have significant impact on disease outcome in each individual tumor sample. Future treatments are likely to be founded on effective, individualized, and mechanism-based therapies with the least toxicity.

Soluble vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 1, and not receptor 2, is an independent prognostic factor in acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes.

BACKGROUND: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and its receptors (VEGFRs) are major regulators of angiogenesis, which plays a key role in the growth and dissemination of solid tumors and hematologic neoplasms. METHODS: The authors measured the plasma concentrations of soluble VEGFR1 (sVEGFR1) and sVEGFR2 in 133 patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and in 80 patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) at the time of initial presentation and compared clinical behaviors. RESULTS: A reverse correlation was observed between plasma sVEGFR1 levels and the rate of complete remission (CR) in patients with AML, but not in patients with MDS. In contrast, increased plasma levels of sVEGFR2 were correlated with a lower CR rate in patients with MDS, but not in patients with AML. Cox regression model analysis demonstrated that plasma levels of sVEGFR1, but not sVEGFR2, were independent prognostic factors in both patients with AML and patients with MDS. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that different mechanisms are involved in the pathophysiology of AML and MDS. The concentration of sVEGFR1 and sVEGFR2 in plasma should be considered a significant factor in guiding antiangiogenic therapy for AML and MDS. They may play a role in the pharmacodynamics of therapeutic agents that are supposed to bind directly to these receptors.