[Hedrocele, an unknown pelvic organ prolapse]. / Mise au point sur l'hédrocèle, un trouble de la statique pelvienne méconnu.

Pelvic floor disorders are frequent and source of symptoms which can be invalidating for patients. Between them, hedrocele is a pathology often unknown and clinically difficult to diagnose. It is a herniation of fat pad, small bowel or sigmoid colon in the recto-uterine pouch (cul-de-sac of Douglas) exercising a mass effect on the anterior wall of the rectum. Pelvic magnetic resonance imaging with morphological sequences and dynamic sequences in thrust can be very useful, allowing a comprehensive study of pelvic floor dysfunction and confirming the complete diagnosis, especially before surgery. We suggest you some examples to illustrate this pathology in order to emphasize the importance of its diagnosis, especially preoperative. A better understanding of this pelvic floor dysfunction would improve the care of patients.

[Neonatal subcutaneous fat necrosis with hypercalcemia: efficiency of a low dose of corticosteroids]. / Cytostéatonécrose néonatale compliquée d'une hypercalcémie symptomatique: efficacité des corticoïdes à faible dose.

We report the case of a newborn with macrosomia, extensive subcutaneous fat necrosis and symptomatic hypercalcemia. Low doses of prednisone were efficient, while dietary intervention, hyperhydratation and furosemide were not. Treatment of hypercalcemia in this specific neonatal condition are discussed.

Quantitative HOX expression in chromosomally defined subsets of acute myelogenous leukemia.

We used a degenerate RT-PCR screen and subsequent real-time quantitative RT-PCR assays to examine the expression of HOX and TALE-family genes in 34 cases of chromosomally defined AML for which outcome data were available. AMLs with favorable cytogenetic features were associated with low overall HOX gene expression whereas poor prognostic cases had high levels. Characteristically, multiple HOXA family members including HOXA3-HOXA10 were jointly overexpressed in conjunction with HOXB3, HOXB6, MEIS1 and PBX3. Higher levels of expression were also observed in the FAB subtype, AML-M1. Spearmann correlation coefficients indicated that the expression levels for many of these genes were highly inter-related. While we did not detect any significant correlations between HOX expression and complete response rates or age in this limited set of patients, there was a significant correlation between event-free survival and HOXA7 with a trend toward significance for HoxA9, HoxA4 and HoxA5. While patients with elevated HOX expression did worse, there were notable exceptions. Thus, although HOX overexpression and clinical resistance to chemotherapy often coincide, they are not inextricably linked. Our results indicate that quantitative HOX analysis has the potential to add new information to the management of patients with AML, especially where characteristic chromosomal alterations are lacking.