Clinical Reasoning: A Woman With Progressive Painless Sequential Monocular Vision Loss.

A 68-year-old woman with a history of diabetes mellitus type 2, depression, and migraines presented with painless, acute, consecutive vision loss affecting the right eye for 1 week and the left eye for 2 weeks. Neuro-ophthalmic examination was notable for visual acuities of finger-counting peripherally, a central scotoma, anterior uveitis, vitritis, and placoid macular pigmentary changes in each eye (OU). Proprioception was diminished in the bilateral lower extremities. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) revealed hyper-reflectivity and attenuation of the outer retina OU with normal inner retinal architecture and reflectivity. Fluorescein angiography (FA) demonstrated normal filling of the central retinal arteries with patchy choroidal perfusion in the right eye and targetoid punctate foci of leakage in the macula OU. Before the recognition of intraocular inflammation and findings on OCT and FA, the patient was treated for presumed central retinal artery occlusion at an outside hospital. Additional diagnostic testing at our institution revealed an alternate diagnosis. This case highlights a rare presentation of a well-known disease entity and underscores the importance of avoiding diagnostic anchoring in clinical practice.

Engagement with a Text-Messaging Intervention Improves Adherence in Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes: Brief Report.

Adherence to diabetes management is a challenge for adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Positive psychology interventions have improved adherence to treatment recommendations in adults with chronic health conditions but have not been widely tested in pediatric populations. We hypothesized that higher engagement with a text-messaging intervention to promote positive affect would increase the effects on diabetes management among adolescents with T1D. Adolescents with T1D (n = 48) and their caregivers were randomized to either an attention control condition or a novel positive psychology intervention delivered through personalized automated text messaging. We examined rates of engagement (percent response to text messages) in relation to demographic factors, and we explored the effect of engagement in relation to adherence and glycemic control. Adolescent engagement was good (mean response rate of 76%) over the 8-week intervention. Engagement was related to adolescents' gender, race, baseline glycemic control, and blood glucose monitoring, but not to treatment type (pump vs. injection), diabetes duration, age, or household income. There was a significant effect of level of engagement on better caregiver-reported adherence, but adolescents' engagement was not related to self-reported adherence or glycemic control. These results indicate feasibility and initial efficacy of using automated text-messaging to deliver an intervention aimed at promoting adherence in adolescents with T1D.

Blockade of miR-150 maturation by MLL-fusion/MYC/LIN-28 is required for MLL-associated leukemia.

Expression of microRNAs (miRNAs) is under stringent regulation at both transcriptional and posttranscriptional levels. Disturbance at either level could cause dysregulation of miRNAs. Here, we show that MLL fusion proteins negatively regulate production of miR-150, an miRNA widely repressed in acute leukemia, by blocking miR-150 precursors from being processed to mature miRNAs through MYC/LIN28 functional axis. Forced expression of miR-150 dramatically inhibited leukemic cell growth and delayed MLL-fusion-mediated leukemogenesis, likely through targeting FLT3 and MYB and thereby interfering with the HOXA9/MEIS1/FLT3/MYB signaling network, which in turn caused downregulation of MYC/LIN28. Collectively, we revealed a MLL-fusion/MYC/LIN28⊣miR-150⊣FLT3/MYB/HOXA9/MEIS1 signaling circuit underlying the pathogenesis of leukemia, where miR-150 functions as a pivotal gatekeeper and its repression is required for leukemogenesis.