A new colour vision arrangement test to detect functional changes in diabetic macular oedema.

AIM: A study was undertaken to investigate the correlation between colour discrimination tests and the presence of macular oedema in patients with type I diabetes to find a sensitive diagnostic tool for the detection of early functional changes. METHODS: The study was performed in 39 type I diabetic patients, 10 with and 29 without macular oedema. The examination included biomicroscopy, fundus photography of the macula, videofluorescein angiography, the LogMAR visual acuity chart, Farnsworth-Lanthony desaturated D-15 test, and the new Mollon-Reffin "Minimalist" test for colour vision deficiencies version 6.0. RESULTS: A highly significant correlation was found between the tritan value of the Mollon test and the presence of clinically significant macular oedema (p<0.0015), with a high sensitivity (88.9%) and specificity (93.3%). The DD-15 test was not significant (p=0.345) and showed low sensitivity for the presence of macular oedema (36%). All variables concerning the grading of macular oedema showed a highly significant association with the tritan values of the Mollon test (p<0.0001). CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the Mollon-Reffin "Minimalist" test version 6.0 is the best colour discrimination test for detecting macular oedema, with higher specificity and sensitivity than the other methods used in the study.

Prognostic value of cathepsin D expression and association with histomorphological subtypes in breast cancer.

This study investigated the prognostic value of immunohistochemically detected cathepsin D expression in 103 invasive ductal carcinomas of the breast at stages pT1 and 2. We also assessed the association between cathepsin D expression and histomorphological tumour subtypes (invasive ductal carcinoma with extensive intraductal component, multifocal tumour). Cathepsin D expression was examined at two cut-off levels (positive and highly positive) and separately identified within the epithelial and stromal component of all tumours. Positive and highly positive epithelial expression was detected in 32 (31.1%) and 20 (19.4%) patients respectively. Stromal expression was found in 35 (34%) and 19 (18.4%) cases respectively. Epithelial cathepsin D expression was associated with stage and nuclear grade, but not with lymph node or oestrogen receptor status. Positive and highly positive epithelial cathepsin D expression showed significant prognostic value for overall survival (P = 0.003 and 0.01) and recurrence-free interval (P = 0.04 and 0.02). Cathepsin D expression in stromal cells was not associated with either several established prognostic factors or survival. Multivariate analysis revealed that cathepsin D expression failed to be an independent predictor of patients' outcome. Cathepsin D expression shows no significant association with histomorphological subtypes of breast cancer. Our study supports the prognostic impact of immunohistochemically detected cathepsin D expression in the epithelial component of breast cancer.