Evaluation of the Impact of a senior mentor program on medical students' geriatric knowledge and attitudes toward older adults.

Medical schools throughout the country struggle with how best to train students to provide quality, patient-centered care to the burgeoning population of older adults. The Senior Sages Program (SSP) is a longitudinal Senior Mentor Program (SMP) that offers students the opportunity to learn about the aging process and core geriatric medicine concepts through the eyes of an aging expert: their Senior Sage. The SSP marries a robust electronic curriculum with an SMP and online discussion board. The aim of this program evaluation was to measure the impact on students' geriatric knowledge and attitudes toward older adults. This asynchronously facilitated course improved students' geriatric knowledge and facilitated stability of positive attitudes toward older adults. The majority of students felt that their SSP interactions were meaningful and valuable to their clinical development. The combination of SMP and electronic curricula offer a feasible, practical way to bridge the geriatric training chasm.

A case report of sevelamer-associated recto-sigmoid ulcers.

BACKGROUND: Optimal phosphorous control is an important aspect of the care of patients with end-stage renal disease, and phosphate binders are usually needed. CASE PRESENTATION: A 74-year-old woman with end-stage renal disease on maintenance hemodialysis presented to the emergency room with abdominal discomfort, rectal pain, and blood-tinged stools. Initial concern was for a rectal carcinoma, based on the symptoms and imaging in initial computerized tomography of the abdomen showing rectal wall thickening, and her clinical presentation. She had been treated with the phosphate binder sevelamer for two months. In this case report, we explore the unique features of sevelamer-associated recto-sigmoid ulcers which led to her symptoms. CONCLUSION: Sevelamer is widely used in chronic kidney disease and end-stage renal disease patients with hyperphosphatemia. It is a crosslinked polymeric amine that binds phosphates and bile acids; it is not systemically absorbed. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first reported case of recto-sigmoid ulcers associated with use of this phosphate binder. Nephrologists, pathologists, and gastroenterology sub-specialists should be aware of this recently-reported entity in patients on sevelamer with suggestive symptoms, as this medication is widely used in renal patients.

The changing incidence of primary central nervous system lymphoma is driven primarily by the changing incidence in young and middle-aged men and differs from time trends in systemic diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

There has been an overall decline in the United States incidence of Primary CNS Lymphoma (PCNSL) from 1998 to 2008. This study's intent was to characterize the cohorts contributing to it. First, calculated the PCNSL incidence rates from nine Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registries for time period 1973 to 2008. Second, examined the time trends overall and by age and gender. Third, used 1992-2008 SEER data from the same registries to obtain overall trends for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Last, rates were age-adjusted to the 2000 US standard population and reported per 100,000 person-years. Rates continued to increase in women at all ages and men aged 65 and older. In men aged 20-39 and 40-64 years incidence rates peaked in 1995 and then declined dramatically, stabilizing after 1998. The trends in the incidence of PCNSL over this time frame were significantly different from DLBCL for ages 20-39 (P < 0.001) and 40-64 (P < 0.001) years but were not different for the 65 years and older age group (P = 0.99). The overall PCNSL incidence rate declined since 1995 and was driven primarily by the changing incidence in young and middle-aged men. The rate has continued to increase in men aged 65 years and older and in women. The trends in incidence in the younger age groups over this time period did not parallel those observed for DLBCL.

Utilization of Patient Electronic Messaging to Promote Advance Care Planning in the Primary Care Setting.

BACKGROUND: Advance care planning (ACP) is an instrumental mechanism aimed at preserving patient autonomy. Numerous interventions have been proposed to facilitate the implementation of ACP; however, rates of completed advance directives (ADs) are universally low. Patient electronic portal messaging is a newer tool in patient-provider communication which has not been studied as a method to promote ACP. In this study, we hypothesized that the use of ACP-specific patient electronic messages would increase rates of AD completion in patients aged 65 years and older in an academic primary care practice. METHODS: All primary care patients, aged 65+, who had previously enrolled in a patient electronic messaging system, within an academic primary care practice, were included for randomization. Two hundred patients were randomized to receive an electronic message. The primary outcome was the proportion of patients in each group who completed an AD, 3 months after intervention. Secondary outcomes included clinical utility of the completed ADs and proportion of patients who viewed their electronic messages. RESULTS: The intervention group completed an AD 5.5% of the time when compared to 2% in the control group (odds ratio 3.2 [1.6-6.3]). Up to 74.5% of patients opened their electronic messages. CONCLUSION: Among primary care patients aged 65 years and older, use of AD-specific electronic messaging statistically significantly increased the rate of AD completion, but the absolute number of completed AD remained relatively low. These data suggest that this valuable communication tool holds opportunities for further improvement. Older, frailer adults were more likely to complete an AD, and prompted directives were more likely to include a written expression of the individual's health-care values and preference.

Sleeping beauty-mediated somatic mutagenesis implicates CSF1 in the formation of high-grade astrocytomas.

The Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon system has been used as an insertional mutagenesis tool to identify novel cancer genes. To identify glioma-associated genes, we evaluated tumor formation in the brain tissue from 117 transgenic mice that had undergone constitutive SB-mediated transposition. Upon analysis, 21 samples (18%) contained neoplastic tissue with features of high-grade astrocytomas. These tumors expressed glial markers and were histologically similar to human glioma. Genomic DNA from SB-induced astrocytoma tissue was extracted and transposon insertion sites were identified. Insertions in the growth factor gene Csf1 were found in 13 of the 21 tumors (62%), clustered in introns 5 and 8. Using reverse transcription-PCR, we documented increased Csf1 RNAs in tumor versus adjacent normal tissue, with the identification of transposon-terminated Csf1 mRNAs in astrocytomas with SB insertions in intron 8. Analysis of human glioblastomas revealed increased levels of Csf1 RNA and protein. Together, these results indicate that SB-insertional mutagenesis can identify high-grade astrocytoma-associated genes and they imply an important role for CSF1 in the development of these tumors.

Whole-body sleeping beauty mutagenesis can cause penetrant leukemia/lymphoma and rare high-grade glioma without associated embryonic lethality.

The Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon system has been used as a somatic mutagen to identify candidate cancer genes. In previous studies, efficient leukemia/lymphoma formation on an otherwise wild-type genetic background occurred in mice undergoing whole-body mobilization of transposons, but was accompanied by high levels of embryonic lethality. To explore the utility of SB for large-scale cancer gene discovery projects, we have generated mice that carry combinations of different transposon and transposase transgenes. We have identified a transposon/transposase combination that promotes highly penetrant leukemia/lymphoma formation on an otherwise wild-type genetic background, yet does not cause embryonic lethality. Infiltrating gliomas also occurred at lower penetrance in these mice. SB-induced or accelerated tumors do not harbor large numbers of chromosomal amplifications or deletions, indicating that transposon mobilization likely promotes tumor formation by insertional mutagenesis of cancer genes, and not by promoting wide-scale genomic instability. Cloning of transposon insertions from lymphomas/leukemias identified common insertion sites at known and candidate novel cancer genes. These data indicate that a high mutagenesis rate can be achieved using SB without high levels of embryonic lethality or genomic instability. Furthermore, the SB system could be used to identify new genes involved in lymphomagenesis/leukemogenesis.