BACKGROUND: The serum tumor markers α-fetoprotein (AFP), β-human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) are often measured as part of surveillance protocols in patients with stage I seminoma. In this study, the authors evaluated the utility of routine measurement of these markers in the detection of disease relapse. METHODS: Data were gathered from a prospectively maintained database of patients who underwent surveillance for stage I testicular seminoma diagnosed between 1982 and 2005 at Princess Margaret Hospital. Patients were followed on a predefined schedule with physical examination (PE), serum tumor markers, abdominopelvic computed tomography, and chest x-rays. The records of patients who relapsed were examined for details of imaging and serum tumor markers throughout the period of follow-up until the time of relapse. RESULTS: Of the 527 patients who were managed by surveillance, 75 patients (14%) relapsed at a median follow-up of 72 months. Of these, 65 patients relapsed within the first 3 years and had routine serum tumor markers measured. In total, 11 patients had abnormal tumor markers at the time of relapse (AFP, 0 patients; HCG, 6 patients; LDH, 4 patients; and HCG and LDH, 1 patient). Only 1 patient had an elevated tumor marker (LDH) before relapse, as defined by an abnormal imaging study (n = 64) or physical examination (n = 1), for which the treatment and outcome were not affected. CONCLUSIONS: Serum tumor marker levels did not aid in the early diagnosis of disease relapse in patients with stage I seminoma who were managed with surveillance. The current results indicated that routine measurement of serum tumor markers can be discontinued safely in seminoma surveillance schedules. Cancer 2012. © 2012 American Cancer Society.

PURPOSE: Tumor hypoxia is an important determinant of outcome in many human malignancies and is associated with treatment resistance and metastases. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of hypoxia in patients with prostate cancer treated with radiotherapy.EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Tumor hypoxia was measured in 247 patients with clinically localized prostate cancer before radiotherapy, with or without hormonal therapy. The median pO(2) was 6.8 mm Hg and the median hypoxic percentage less than 10 mm Hg (HP(10)) was 63%. The median follow-up was 6.6 years.RESULTS: The 5-year biochemical relapse-free rate (bRFR) was 78%. Prostrate-specific antigen and Gleason score were both associated with biochemical relapse and formed a baseline clinical model. The effect of hypoxia was found to vary with the duration of patient follow-up. HP(10), when added to the clinical model, was an independent predictor of early bRFR (P = 0.019). The relationship between hypoxia and early bRFR was more pronounced when the analysis was restricted to 142 patients with bulk tumor at the site of the oxygen measurements (P = 0.004). Hypoxia was the only factor predictive of local recurrence in 70 patients who had biopsies conducted during follow-up (P = 0.043), again with the effect being greatest early after completing treatment.CONCLUSIONS: This is the largest clinical study of prostate cancer hypoxia with direct measurement of tumor oxygen levels. It shows that hypoxia is associated with early biochemical relapse after radiotherapy and also with local recurrence in the prostate gland. Clin Cancer Res; 18(7); 1-7. ©2012 AACR.

Community participation in local health decision-making has been envisioned as a key strategy to improve the design and delivery of health services in the USA. While much literature has sought to understand this participatory approach, considerably fewer studies have engaged the essential first-order question: How would we know who the appropriate community representatives are? An important first analytic step is to learn from community members themselves what characteristics they feel a 'good' representative should possess. Two primary research questions are addressed: 1) To what degree can low-income adults identify and articulate what they believe constitutes an effective community health representative and 2) What do low-income adults believe are the specific characteristics an effective community health representative should possess? In-depth, open-ended interviews were conducted with 14 African-American and Latino residents of four low-income communities on the Southside of Chicago, USA. A theoretical sampling strategy was used with residents varying by age, education, employment, and years of residence on the Southside. We found that respondents had difficulty articulating what a community health representative might do or generating the names of potential representatives, but were able to express clear preferences for what would constitute good representation when given meaningful choices. Three primary characteristics were identified: 1) outcomes 2) expertise, and 3) active communication. These characteristics did not operate in isolation but together communicated the trust and commitment that respondents found fundamental to representation. In exploring this essential yet often neglected question, we sought to build an empirical foundation to more fully examine the precursors to effective community health representation. These data provide important clues as to how to build an inclusive process that expands rather than constrains the pool of community-based representatives.

Previous studies in humans have shown that bilateral loss of vestibular function is associated with a significant bilateral atrophy of the hippocampus, which correlated with the patients' spatial memory deficits. More recently, patients who had recovered from unilateral vestibular neuritis have been reported to exhibit a significant atrophy of the left posterior hippocampus. Therefore, we investigated whether bilateral vestibular deafferentation (BVD) would result in a decrease in neuronal number or volume in the rat hippocampus, using stereological methods. At 16 months post-BVD, we found no significant differences in hippocampal neuronal number or volume compared to sham controls, despite the fact that these animals exhibited severe spatial memory deficits. By contrast, using bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) as a marker of cell proliferation, we found that the number of BrdU-labeled cells significantly increased in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus between 48 h and 1 week following BVD. Although a substantial proportion of these cells survived for up to 1 month, the survival rate was significantly lower in BVD animals when compared with that in sham animals. These results suggest a dissociation between the effects of BVD on spatial memory and hippocampal structure in rats and humans, which cannot be explained by an injury-induced increase in cell proliferation.

We report transverse momentum (p_{T}≤15  GeV/c) spectra of π^{±}, K^{±}, p, p[over ¯], K_{S}^{0}, and ρ^{0} at midrapidity in p+p and Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200  GeV. Perturbative QCD calculations are consistent with π^{±} spectra in p+p collisions but do not reproduce K and p(p[over ¯]) spectra. The observed decreasing antiparticle-to-particle ratios with increasing p_{T} provide experimental evidence for varying quark and gluon jet contributions to high-p_{T} hadron yields. The relative hadron abundances in Au+Au at p_{T}≳8  GeV/c are measured to be similar to the p+p results, despite the expected Casimir effect for parton energy loss.

We report new STAR measurements of midrapidity yields for the Λ, Λ[over ¯], K_{S}^{0}, Ξ^{-}, Ξ[over ¯]^{+}, Ω^{-}, Ω[over ¯]^{+} particles in Cu+Cu collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200  GeV, and midrapidity yields for the Λ, Λ[over ¯], K_{S}^{0} particles in Au+Au at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200  GeV. We show that, at a given number of participating nucleons, the production of strange hadrons is higher in Cu+Cu collisions than in Au+Au collisions at the same center-of-mass energy. We find that aspects of the enhancement factors for all particles can be described by a parametrization based on the fraction of participants that undergo multiple collisions.

INTRODUCTION: The supportive care needs of testicular cancer survivors have not been comprehensively studied. Likewise, there is limited research on their use of the Internet or social media applications-tools that are popular among young adults and which could be used to address their needs. METHODS: Two hundred and four testicular cancer patients receiving care at an urban cancer center completed a questionnaire assessing supportive care needs and the use and preferences for online support. We examined the associations between patient characteristics and met or unmet supportive care needs and the use of testicular cancer online communities. RESULTS: Respondents had more met (median 8.0, interquartile range (IQR) 10.0) than unmet (median 2.0, IQR 7.0) needs. The majority (62.5%) reported at least one unmet need, most commonly (25%) concerning financial support, body image, stress, being a cancer survivor, and fear of recurrence. Patients who were younger, had nonseminoma testicular cancer, or received treatment beyond surgery had more needs, and those who were unemployed had more unmet needs. The majority of respondents (71.5%) were social media users (e.g., Facebook), and 26% had used a testicular cancer online support community. Reasons for nonuse were lack of awareness (34.3%), interest (30.9%), trust (4.9%), and comfort using computers (2.5%). Users were more likely to speak English as a first language and have more needs. CONCLUSIONS: At least one in four testicular cancer survivors has unmet needs related to financial support, body image, stress, being a cancer survivor, and fear of recurrence. A web-based resource may be a useful strategy to consider given the high prevalence of social media use in this sample and their desire for online support. Efforts are needed to raise awareness about online peer support resources and to overcome barriers to their use.

PURPOSE Rational design of targeted radiotherapy (RT) in prostate cancer (Pca) hinges on a better understanding of spatial patterns of recurrence. We sought to identify pathological factors predictive for site of local recurrence (LR) after external beam RT. METHODS AND MATERIALS Prospective databases were reviewed to identify men with LR after RT from 1997 through 2009. Patients with biochemical failure and biopsy-confirmed Pca more than 2 years after RT were evaluated. Prediction for site of recurrence based on the following pretreatment factors was determined on independent and cluster-sextant basis: presence of malignancy, dominant vs. nondominant percentage core length (PCL) involvement, PCL ≥ or <40%, and Gleason score. Sites of dominant PCL were defined as sextants with peak PCL involvement minus 10%, and >5% for each patient. RESULTS Forty-one patients with low-intermediate risk Pca constituted the study cohort. Median time to biopsy after RT was 51 months (range, 24-145). Of 246 sextants, 74 were involved with tumor at baseline. When sextants are treated as independent observations the presence of malignancy (77% vs. 22%, p = 0.0001), dominant PCL (90% vs. 46%, p = 0.0001), and PCL ≥40%(89% vs. 68 %, p = 0.04) were found to be significant predictors for LR, although PCL ≥40% did not retain statistical significance if sextants were considered correlated. The vast majority of patients (95%) recurred at the original site of dominant PCL or PCL ≥40%, and 44% also recurred in regions of nondominant PCL <40%(n = 8) and/or benign sampling (n = 14) at baseline. CONCLUSIONS LR after RT predominantly occurs in regions bearing higher histological tumor burden but are not isolated to these sites. Our data highlights the value of spatially resolved baseline pathological sampling and may assist in the design of clinical trials tailoring RT dose prescriptions to subregions of the prostate gland.

Flow coefficients v_{n} for n=2, 3, 4, characterizing the anisotropic collective flow in Au+Au collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=200  GeV, are measured relative to event planes Ψ_{n}, determined at large rapidity. We report v_{n} as a function of transverse momentum and collision centrality, and study the correlations among the event planes of different order n. The v_{n} are well described by hydrodynamic models which employ a Glauber Monte Carlo initial state geometry with fluctuations, providing additional constraining power on the interplay between initial conditions and the effects of viscosity as the system evolves. This new constraint can serve to improve the precision of the extracted shear viscosity to entropy density ratio η/s.