BACKGROUND: Angiogenic activity defined by microvessel density or measurement of vascular endothelial growth factor is a key process under physiological and malignant conditions in steroid hormone responding organs. The aim of this study was to relate microvessel density (MVD) in primary breast cancer to reproductive data and use of exogenous hormones. MATERIAL AND METHODS: MVD was calculated retr

Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for a Lorentz space L8phi,q) to have a trivial conjugat space. Analogous results are derived for quasi-normed spaces

Background: HIV-1 infection is associated with an increased incidence of and mortality from tuberculosis. Few community studies have examined the effect of HIV-2 on tuberculosis. Methods: We investigated the association between HIV-1, HIV-2 and active tuberculosis in four districts (population 42 709) in Bissau, capital of Guinea-Bissau, with the highest known seroprevalence of HIV-2 infection in

We examined aerobic and anaerobic microbial carbon dioxide (C02) and methane (CH4) exchange in peat samples representing different profiles at natural, mined, mined-abandoned, and restored northern peatlands and characterized the nutrient and substrate chemistry and microbial biomass of these soils. Mining and abandonment led to reduced nutrient and substrate availability and occasionally drier co

This article represents the proceedings of a symposium at the 2002 annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in San Francisco, CA, organized and cochaired by Mats Berglund and Sten Thelander. The presentations were (1) Preventive interventions against hazardous consumption of alcohol, by Mikko Salaspuro; (2) Treatment of alcohol withdrawal, by Johan Franck; (3) Psychosocial treatment fo

PURPOSE: In this population-based study, risk factors for primary intracerebral hemorrhage (PICH) and PICH subtypes were explored in a nested case-control design.METHOD: Risk factors were determined in 22,444 men and 10,902 women (mean age 47 years) who participated in a health-screening programme between 1974 and 1991. 147 subjects with CT or autopsy-verified first-ever PICH during the follow-up

BACKGROUND: Brain stem herniation due to raised intracranial pressure (ICP) is a common cause of mortality in severe bacterial meningitis, but continuous measurements of ICP and the effects of ICP-reducing therapy in these patients have, to our knowledge, not been described. METHODS: During a four-year period, an ICP-monitoring device was implanted in patients admitted to our hospital with severe

The synthesis and in vitro cytotoxicity toward various tumor cell lines of (+/-)-tridemethylisovelleral, an analogue of the bioactive fungal sesquiterpene (+)-isovelleral retaining the bicyclo[4,1,0]hept-2-en-1,2-dicarbaidehyde system but lacking the three methyl groups, is reported. The cytotoxicity of tridemethylisovelleral toward several tumor cell lines was found to be comparable with those of

A total of 10,474 unicompartmental knee arthroplasties was performed for medial osteoarthritis in Sweden between 1986 and 1995. We sought to establish whether the number of operations performed in an orthopaedic unit affected the incidence of revision. Three different implants were analysed: one with a high revision rate, known to have unfavourable mechanical and design properties; a prosthesis wh

Immunization of mice with type II collagen (CII), a cartilage-restricted protein, leads to collagen-induced arthritis (CIA), a model for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). CIA symptoms consist of an erosive joint inflammation caused by an autoimmune attack, mediated by both T and B lymphocytes. CD4+ alphabeta T cells play a central role in CIA, both by helping B cells to produce anti-CII antibodies, and b

Background: Many studies have been conducted on the accuracy of prenatal ultrasound diagnosis of foetal CNS-malformations. These studies were mostly hospital-based or, sometimes, multicentre studies. We present here a population-based study of the prenatal diagnosis of spina bifida in Sweden over a period of 31 years. Methods: We compared the number of newborns with spina bifida and the elective t

Objective: To investigate the effects of treatment with paraffin bath in patients with systemic sclerosis (scleroderma). Methods: In 17 patients with scleroderma one hand was treated daily with paraffin bath in combination with hand exercise. The other hand was treated with exercise only and was considered a control. Hand function was estimated before treatment and after 1 month of treatment, conc

[1] This paper takes a novel approach to a known basic difficulty with computer simulations of nonlinear dynamical systems relevant to climate modeling. Specifically, we show by minimal examples how small systematic modeling errors might survive averaging over an ensemble of initial conditions. The resulting predictive errors can grow slowly enough initially that they may be overlooked without con

An improved Volume of Fluid (VOF) method is presented which is applicable to high density ratio 3D flows for a large range of bubble Reynolds number (Re). The method is based on the Navier-Stokes equations for incompressible multi-phase flows which are discretized on a Cartesian staggered grid. The multi-grid technique together with the pressure-velocity coupling scheme for multi-phase flows have

In numerous medical and scientific fields, knowledge of the optical properties of tissues can be applied. Among many different ways of determining the optical properties of turbid media; integrating sphere measurements are widely used. However, this technique is associated with bulky equipment, complicated measuring techniques, interference compensation techniques, and inconvenient sample handling

alpha-Microglobulin, a 26 kDa lipocalin present in plasma and tissues, carries a set of unknown chromophores, bound to C34, K92, KI 18 and KI 30, which cause its charge and size heterogeneity. In man, the protein is found in two forms, full length and lacking the C-terminal tetrapeptide LIPR (t-alpha(1)-microglobulin), both which are heme-binding and the latter with heme-degrading properties. We r

Previous work has demonstrated that most strains of the human pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes bind kininogens through M protein, a fibrous surface protein and virulence determinant. Here we find that strains of several other pathogenic bacterial species, both Gram-positive and Gram-negative, isolated from patients with sepsis, also bind kininogens, especially kininogen (HK). The most pronounced in