Atopic dermatitis (AD) management in an Italian pediatric clinic.

AIM: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common, chronic relapsing inflammatory skin disease characterized by dry skin and variable pruritus sometimes associated with allergic disease in other organs as asthma and rhinoconjunctivitis. AD affects deeply the Quality of Life, thus can be extremely disabling and may cause psychological problems for both affected children and their families. METHODS: In order to investigate the estimated prevalence of the disease and the beliefs of the Italian pediatricians, a group of 437 Italian family pediatricians covering a population of almost 380000 children participated in a study based on a questionnaire of 38 items. RESULTS: According to answers of the participants, the incidence of AD has been estimated around 10% of the population and food allergy is believed to be the trigger of the acute phase of the disease in infants. As a second opinion, dermatologists are consulted more frequently than allergologists. CONCLUSION: The use of emollients is advised in general whilst topical corticosteroids treatment is prescribed only in selected cases; more than 50% of pediatricians do not prescribe topical calcineurin inhibitors.

p53 and PCNA expression in advanced colorectal cancer: response to chemotherapy and long-term prognosis.

In a series of 71 patients with advanced colorectal cancer treated with biochemically modulated 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and methotrexate (MTX), we investigated the relationship between the proliferating-cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) (PC10) and p53 (Pab1801) primary-tumor immunohistochemical expression with respect to clinical response and long-term prognosis. Nuclear p53 expression was demonstrated in 44% of samples (any number of positive tumor cells) while all tumors showed a certain degree of PCNA immunostaining. PCNA immunostaining was correlated with histopathologic grade and p53 expression, while p53 was not correlated with any of the parameters considered. The probability of clinical response to biochemically modulated 5-FU was independent of p53 and PCNA expression. p53 expression (all cut-off values) was not associated with short- or long-term clinical prognosis, whereas patients with higher PCNA primary-tumor expression showed longer survival from treatment and survival from diagnosis, according to univariate and multivariate analysis, particularly in the sub-set of colon-cancer patients. We conclude that the clinical response of advanced-colorectal-cancer patients to biochemically modulated 5-FU and MTX cannot be predicted by PCNA and p53 primary-tumor expression, but high PCNA expression appears to be independently related to long-term prognosis.

[Receptor assessment of primary breast carcinoma and synchronous metastatic lymph nodes: histochemical study]. / Assetto recettoriale del carcinoma mammario primitivo e della metastasi linfonodale sincrona: studio istochimico.

Several AA, utilizing the biochemical method (DCC) showed the presence or absence of hormonal receptor in either synchronous or metachronous metastatic nodes (N) can reproduce the receptor assessment (AR) of the primary breast tumor (T). We evaluated the AR in T and in synchronous N, by using two morphological methods, immunocytochemical and histofluorescent, to detect the nuclear Estrogen Receptor (ER1) and cytoplasmic sites of the II type (ER2 and PgR2). We studied 50 patients who underwent radical mastectomy for breast cancer N+. In this series we founded a high correlation between AR in T and in N: 82% for ER1, 94% for ER2, and 92% for PgR2. Also we observed 4 cases (2 ER1 and 2 PgR2) which presented the receptor in N only. These data are comparable to results obtained with the DCC method and confirm the opportunity to perform also morphological techniques to evaluate AR in breast cancer to take into consideration also cellularity and tumor heterogeneity informations.