[Testicular metastases from prostate cancer]. / Hodenmetastasen eines Prostatakarzinoms.

Testicular metastases from prostate cancer is an uncommon occurrence and only 100 cases have been reported in the literature. Bilateral metastases are even more uncommon; however, testicular metatases may occur especially in cases of advanced prostate cancer. This article reports two cases with bilateral testicular metastases from prostate cancer.

Vaginal metastasis of lung cancer: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Lung cancer is the second most common malignant tumor, with increasing incidence in the female population. The most frequent metastatic sites are the regional lymph nodes and surrounding areas as well as liver, adrenal gland, bones and brain. Metastases in the vagina of primary lung cancer have not been previously reported. CASE REPORT: Lung cancer was diagnosed in a 67-year-old, postmenopausal woman. Two years following partial lung resection (right apical lobe, R0-resection, CR), the patient complained of increasing problems with urination. A suspect tumor was identified with palpation and confirmed sonographically. Histological and immunohistochemical examinations of a vaginal excisional biopsy revealed metastatic adenocarcinoma, with the staining reactivity as primary lung neoplasm. Anterior exenteration was performed. CONCLUSION: Some cases of vaginal metastases from extragenital tumors have been previously reported. This is the first report of vaginal metastases from primary lung cancer. We suggest that adenocarcinoma especially tend to form metastases in the female genital tract. The present case emphasizes that, in women with unclear symptoms and findings in the small pelvis (e.g. urination problems, suspect vaginal tumor), the formation of such metastases should be taken into account.

Pyomyositis: diagnostic value of color Doppler sonography.

The color Doppler sonographic appearance of pyomyositis and the usefulness of this technique in guiding needle aspiration of an intramuscular abscess in a 15-year-old diabetic girl are described.

Changes in turbidity during microtubule assembly in brain extracts from normal chickens and chickens with muscular dystrophy.

When extracts of brain from normal and dystrophic chickens were incubated at 30 degrees C under conditions that favored microtubule assembly, the increase in turbidity of the extract from the dystrophic animal was approximately 50% less than the increase in the turbidity of the extract from the normal animal. In developmental studies using age-matched normal and dystrophic chickens this difference in turbidity was observed only with chickens 65 days ex-ovo or older. The extent of microtubule assembly, as determined by a sedimentation methodology, was a linear function of the total protein concentration in the extract and was equal in extracts from normal and dystrophic chickens. In contrast, the total increase in turbidity was much larger than could be accounted for by sedimenting microtubules and varied in a non-linear manner with the total protein concentration. There was no increase in turbidity when brain extracts that were prepared by centrifugation at 100,000 g X 40 min were incubated at 30 degrees C. The condensation reaction of the tubulin in these high speed extracts with microtubules was equal in the extracts from normal and dystrophic animals. These studies indicate that a developmentally regulated difference in brain extracts from normal and dystrophic chickens can be demonstrated by turbidimetric methods but this difference is unrelated to the formation of microtubules in these extracts. These studies support the concept that muscular dystrophy is also accompanied by a change in the central nervous system.

Heterogeneity of tropomyosin and actin in normal and diseased muscle.

Actin and tropomyosin in muscle samples from normal humans, from human fetuses between 12 and 17 gestational weeks, and from patients with a variety of neuromuscular disorders were studied with two-dimensional electrophoresis using isoelectric focusing with either a broad pH range (8.6-4.5) or a narrow pH range (5.9-3.8) for the first dimension and either SDS or SDS-urea for the second dimension. With the broad pH range, two brothers with Duchenne muscular dystrophy were noted to have a less acidic variant of alpha-tropomyosin in biceps muscle which was not found in biceps muscle from other patients or controls. Studies of 8 additional biopsy specimens from patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and comparison with both fetal and normal human muscle using the narrow pH range revealed multiple forms of actin and tropomyosin which varied from individual to individual. This heterogeneity appeared to be unrelated to the dystrophic state but also obscured the ability to detect a change in actin or tropomyosin which could be related to dystrophy.

Fragmentation analysis of normal and dystrophic avian muscle.

A difference between normal and dystrophic avian muscle was demonstrated by comparing the patterns of fragmentation of muscle during homogenization. Fragmentation was monitored by morphological methods and by viscometry. This method of fragmentation analysis depends on the principle that the viscosity of a suspension is an exponential function of the partial volume fraction occupied by the suspended particles; the more a tissue is fragmented into smaller pieces, the greater the viscosity of the resulting homogenate. Increasing the duration of homogenization of either fresh muscle in buffer or glycerinated muscle in relaxing solution gradually increased the viscosity of the homogenate of normal muscle, whereas the viscosity of the homogenate of dystrophic muscle remained approximately constant. This difference in viscosity indicated that dystrophic muscle was sheared into larger pieces which were resistant to further fragmentation. Electron microscopic examination showed that the homogenate of dystrophic muscle contained rows of sarcomeres, whereas normal muscle was sheared into amorphous masses of myofilaments.

Persistence of the expression of beta-tropomyosin in dystrophic avian pectoral muscle.

The isotype pattern of tropomyosin was investigated in normal and dystrophic avian pectoral muscle using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Previous reports have shown that adult pectoral muscle of chickens contains only the alpha-subunit of tropomyosin and a breast-type troponin-T (TN-T), whereas pectoral fetal muscle contains both alpha-and beta-tropomyosin and leg-type TN-T. The change from the fetal to the adult forms begins shortly after hatching. It has been previously reported that avian dystrophic pectoral muscle contains both the leg- and breast-type TN-T; we show that in avian dystrophic muscle there is also persistent expression of the beta-subunit of tropomyosin.