Comment on: Patients with nonmetastatic embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma arising in the biliary tract should be treated on low‐risk clinical trials

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie M. Aye ◽  
Rajkumar Venkatramani
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 175346662110280
Author(s):  
Roberto Ariel Abeldaño Zuñiga ◽  
Ruth Ana María González-Villoria ◽  
María Vanesa Elizondo ◽  
Anel Yaneli Nicolás Osorio ◽  
David Gómez Martínez ◽  
...  

Aims: Given the variability of previously reported results, this systematic review aims to determine the clinical effectiveness of convalescent plasma employed in the treatment of hospitalized patients diagnosed with COVID-19. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of controlled clinical trials assessing treatment with convalescent plasma for hospitalized patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The outcomes were mortality, clinical improvement, and ventilation requirement. Results: A total of 51 studies were retrieved from the databases. Five articles were finally included in the data extraction and qualitative and quantitative synthesis of results. The overall risk of bias in the reviewed articles was established at low-risk only in two trials. The meta-analysis suggests that there is no benefit of convalescent plasma compared with standard care or placebo in reducing the overall mortality and the ventilation requirement. However, there could be a benefit for the clinical improvement in patients treated with plasma. Conclusion: Current results led to assume that the convalescent plasma transfusion cannot reduce the mortality or ventilation requirement in hospitalized patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection. More controlled clinical trials conducted with methodologies that ensure a low risk of bias are still needed. The reviews of this paper are available via the supplemental material section.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 88 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-191
Author(s):  
ROBERT A. SINKIN ◽  
CHRISTOPHER COX ◽  
DALE L. PHELPS

In Reply.— The above letter by Merritt et al gives us the opportunity to emphasize the goals of our report. Our model was not meant to be applied to individual neonates for prognostic reasons but only to select the most appropriate neonates for enrollment in clinical trials testing therapy for the prevention or treatment of "BPD." In this way, neonates with a low risk for BPD would be ineligible, enriching the frequency of BPD in the study population.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Fiona Turkes ◽  
Juliet Carmichael ◽  
David Cunningham ◽  
Naureen Starling

Biliary tract cancers (BTCs) are poor prognosis malignancies with limited treatment options. Capecitabine has recently emerged as an effective agent in the adjuvant setting; however, treatment of advanced disease is still limited to first-line cisplatin and gemcitabine chemotherapy. Recent global efforts in genomic profiling and molecular subtyping of BTCs have uncovered a wealth of genomic aberrations which may carry prognostic significance and/or predict response to treatment, and several targeted agents have shown promising results in clinical trials. As such, the uptake of comprehensive genomic profiling for patients with BTCs and the expansion of basket trials to include these patients are growing. This review describes the currently approved systemic therapies for BTCs and provides insight into the emerging targeted and immunotherapeutic agents, as well as conventional chemotherapeutic regimes, currently being investigated in clinical trials.


2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (10) ◽  
pp. 944-957
Author(s):  
Changqing Xie ◽  
Nicole A. McGrath ◽  
Cecilia Monge Bonilla ◽  
Jianyang Fu

Abstract Advanced biliary tract cancers (BTC) include a diverse collection of rare and heterogenous tumors with poor prognosis. The combination of gemcitabine and cisplatin is the established first-line therapy for advanced BTC. There are no accepted standard treatments in the second line setting, though there are several ongoing clinical trials that implement chemotherapy as a therapeutic strategy. The understanding of the molecular landscape of BTC has offered hope of targeted therapies to the identified actionable genomic aberrations, such as FGFR2 gene fusions, mutations of IDH1/2, HER2, BRAC1/2 and BRAF. Pembigatinib has become the first approved targeted therapy for BTC with FGFR2 fusion or other rearrangements. Recent immunotherapy has opened new therapy avenues in BTC with pembrolizumab approved for either microsatellite instability high (MSI-H) or DNA mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) advanced solid tumors, including BTC. The combination of immunotherapy with other modalities is currently being evaluated in different clinical trials, since single agent immunotherapy appears to provide modest benefits in advanced BTC. In this review, we summarize the current status of treatment options, including systemic chemotherapy, targeted therapy, immunotherapy, and various combinations in advanced BTC.


2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. T. Abed ◽  
M. J. Abbas

The supposed universality of the incidence and prevalence of schizophrenia has been seriously challenged. It is now widely accepted that the life-time prevalence and incidence of this disorder vary considerably in time and place. As a result, there has been renewed interest in environmental causation of schizophrenia. There are few extant formulations that have successfully integrated the available new evidence into a coherent theory for its causation. The outgroup intolerance hypothesis is an attempt to integrate this evidence. It proposes that schizophrenia is the result of a mismatch between the social brain as shaped by evolution and the new social conditions of the post-neolithic. The hypothesis can provide an explanation for (i) the higher risk to migrants, (ii) the ethnic density phenomenon, (iii) the increased risk to individuals who have grown up in cities and (iv) the putative low risk in hunter-gatherer societies. Evidence is presented from a range of disciplines and sources including epidemiology, psychopathology, social psychology and clinical trials in support of this hypothesis. A range of testable predictions follow from the hypothesis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Carolina de Figueiredo Costa ◽  
Thays Allane Cordeiro Maia ◽  
Paulo Goberlânio de Barros Silva ◽  
Lucas Guimarães Abreu ◽  
Delane Viana Gondim ◽  
...  

Abstract Objectives The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to assess the effects of low-level laser therapy (LLLT) on the orthodontic mini-implants (OMI) stability. Materials and methods An unrestricted electronic database search in PubMed, Science Direct, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, LILACS, Google Scholar, and ClinicalTrials.gov and a hand search were performed up to December 2020. Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) or non-randomized clinical trials (Non-RCTs) that assessed the effects of LLLT on the OMI stability were included. Data regarding the general information, LLLT characteristics, and outcomes were extracted. The authors performed risk of bias assessment with Cochrane Collaboration’s or ROBINS-I tool. Meta-analysis was also conducted. Results Five RCTs and one Non-RCT were included and 108 patients were evaluated. The LLLT characteristics presented different wavelength, power, energy density, irradiation time, and protocol duration. Five RCTs had a low risk of selection bias. Two RCTs had a low risk of performance and detection bias. All RCTs had a low risk of attrition bias, reporting bias and other bias. The Non-RCT presented a low risk of bias for all criteria, except for the bias in selection of participants. The meta-analysis revealed that LLLT significantly increased the OMI stability (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.67) and the highest clinical benefit was showed after 1 (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 0.75), 2 (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.21), and 3 (p < 0.001, Cohen’s d = 1.51) months of OMI placement. Conclusions LLLT shows positive effects on the OMI stability.


Blood ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 114 (22) ◽  
pp. 2767-2767
Author(s):  
Kate Burbury ◽  
Peter Gambell ◽  
Neil Came ◽  
Kevin Lynch ◽  
John F. Seymour ◽  
...  

Abstract Abstract 2767 Poster Board II-743 Introduction: The availability of effective disease-modifying therapies for patients with MDS, means standardised criteria for diagnosis, classification, prognostication and evaluation of treatment response are increasingly important. This has been achieved in part by the 2008 WHO classification. FC is now included as a co-criterion for diagnosis in the MDS consensus statement (Leuk Res 2007). Our aim was to explore the role of FC as a sensitive and objective tool for assessment of therapeutic efficacy. Patients and Methods: We prospectively and sequentially assessed the utility of FC during therapy, as part of two phase-II clinical trials incorporating 5-Azacytidine/Thalidomide and Lenalidomide/Stem-cell factor, respectively. Four-color FC analysis was performed on bone marrow samples using a defined antibody panel assessing blast and myelomonocytic populations. Antigen maturation patterns were evaluated by two independent assessors, comparing to healthy volunteers and normal patient controls (n=30), and assigned both a Wells FC score (wFCS) from 0–8 (Blood 2003) and Stachurski-FC score (sFCS) – denoted as positive, intermediate or negative for the presence of antigenic aberrancy and/or asynchrony (Leuk Res 2008). Results: 31 patients, 20 males, median age 66 (range: 43–89) were included in the analysis. Within this cohort, there have been 112 FC assessments (incorporating both scores for each). There was good correlation of scoring between the 2 independent assessors with concordance of both FCS in 67/112 (61%) of evaluations. With regards to wFCS there was a discrepancy of 1 point between assessors in 38/112 (34%) of evaluations and 2 points in 2 evaluations (1.7%). For sFCS, there was a discrepancy in only 8/112 (7%) assays. WHO categories comprised: RA (n=1), RCMD (7), RAEB-I/II (13), CMML-I/II (4), 5q- (3), MDS-U (1), AML (2). IPSS cytogenetic risk categories: good – 21, intermediate - 4, poor - 4 and 2 non-assessable. According to WHO-Prognostic Scoring System (WPSS), no patient was at very low risk, 8 were low risk, and the majority classified with at least intermediate (n=6), high (n=12) and very high risk (n=6) disease. 30/31 (97%) were transfusion requiring at enrolment (29 red cell, 1 platelet), with median hemoglobin 92g/L (range 61–118), neutrophil count 2.13 (range 0.23–42), platelet count 195 (range 7–606) and marrow blasts 6% (range 1–28). Pre-treatment median wFCS was 6 (range: 3–9); and by sFCS, 24 were positive, 6 intermediate and 1 negative. At trial entry, the WFCS correlated with the percentage of marrow blasts (r=0.483, p=0.006) and the WPSS (r=0.35, p=0.055). 30 patients (97%) have been re-evaluated on therapy; median time to best clinical response (IWG-2008 criteria) was 77 days (range: 27–511), consistent with previous observations (Fenaux et al, Lancet Oncol 2009). Twenty (65%) achieved at least a PR by conventional criteria. Of these, 15 (75%) showed a concordant improvement in FCS (defined as a reduction in points allocated) in either or both of the wFCS and sFCS. Of these 11/15 showed a reduction in the wFCS (median reduction in score 2, range 1–3); 4 showed a concordant improvement in the assigned sFCS (from positive to intermediate, n=2; or intermediate to negative, n=2). Of those who achieved a response by conventional criteria, 2 patients showed no change in either FCS's and 3 patients (CR=1; PR=2) showed an increase in both FCS's, suggestive of early progression, 2 of whom have subsequently progressed clinically by conventional criteria. Of the 20 that achieved a response 18 (90%) have had further assessments. 5/18 (28%) have since progressed, with 80% showing concordant FCS deterioration. Of those who maintained stable disease by conventional criteria (10/31), 7 showed improvement in the either or both of the FCS. Two have since progressed and both showed a concordant deterioration in FCS. Conclusions: These data indicate that FC may offer a more subtle and dynamic objective assessment for sequential disease monitoring, and may aid MDS treatment response evaluation. Further large prospective clinical trials utilising immunophenotyping as a co-criterion to measure response are required to validate these findings. Disclosures: Lynch: Celgene Pty Ltd: Employment, Equity Ownership. Seymour:Celgene: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau.


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