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Patients with high-grade gliomas usually have heterogeneous response to surgery and chemoirradiation. The objectives of this study were (1) to evaluate serial changes in tumor volume and perfusion imaging parameters and (2) to determine the value of these data in predicting overall survival (OS). Twenty-nine patients with World Health Organization grades III and IV gliomas underwent magnetic resonance (MR) and computed tomography (CT) perfusion examinations before surgery, and 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12 months after radiotherapy. Serial measurements of tumor volumes and perfusion parameters were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic analysis, Cox proportional hazards regression, and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis to determine their values in predicting OS. Higher trends in blood flow (BF), blood volume (BV), and permeability-surface area product in the contrast-enhancing lesions (CEL) and the non-enhancing lesions (NEL) were found in patients with OS < 18 months compared to those with OS ≥ 18 months, and these values were significant at selected time points (P < 0.05). Only CT perfusion parameters yielded sensitivities and specificities of ≥ 70% in predicting 18 and 24 months OS. Pre-surgery BF in the NEL and BV in the CEL and NEL 3 months after radiotherapy had sensitivities and specificities >80% in predicting 24 months OS in patients with grade IV gliomas. Our study indicated that CT perfusion parameters were predictive of survival and could be useful in assessing early response and in selecting adjuvant treatment to prolong survival if verified in a larger cohort of patients.

To present new information on the semiology and short-term evolution of seizures associated with primary brain tumors (PBTs) in a prospective study.This study is a section of the PERNO study--Project of Emilia Romagna Region on Neuro-Oncology, the main aim of which is to collect prospectively all cases of PBTs occurring in the Emilia-Romagna region, northeast Italy (3,983,346 population) from January 2009 to December 2011, to allow epidemiologic, clinical, and biomolecular studies. The epilepsy section of the PERNO study included all the patients who experienced seizures, either as first symptom of the tumor or appearing during the course of the disease. Each patient was interviewed by the referring neurologist with a specific interest in epilepsy. The patients who entered the study were followed up with visits on a quarterly basis.We collected 100 cases with full clinical, neuroradiologic, and pathologic data. The majority (79\%) had high grade PBTs (glioblastoma in 50 cases), whereas the remaining patients had low-grade gliomas, mostly localized in the frontal (60\%), temporal (38\%), and parietal (28\%) lobes. Seizures were the first symptom of the tumor in 72 cases. Overall, the initial seizures were tonic-clonic (48\%) (without clear initial focal signs in more than half of the patients), focal motor (26\%), complex partial (10\%), and somatosensitive (8\%). The majority of cases (60\%) had isolated seizures or a low seizure frequency at the onset of the disease, whereas a high seizure frequency or status epilepticus was observed in 18\% and 12\% of cases, respectively. Ninety-two patients underwent surgical removal of the tumor, which was either radical (38\%) or partial (53\%). Seven patients underwent only cerebral biopsy. In the 72 patients in whom seizures were the first symptom, the mean time to the surgical treatment was 174 days, with a significant difference between high grade (95 days) and low grade (481 days) gliomas. At the time of our first observation, the majority of patients (69\%) had already undergone surgical removal, with a mean follow-up of 3 months after the procedure. Overall, 39 patients (56\%) were seizure free after tumor removal. The good outcome did not depend on presurgical seizure frequency or tumor type, although there was a trend for better results with low-grade PBTs.These data provide evidence that seizures are strictly linked to the tumoral lesion: They are the initial symptom of the tumor, reflect the tumor location and type, are usually resistant to antiepileptic treatment, and may disappear after the treatment of the lesion.

Factors influencing the progression of liver disease and the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are poorly understood. Inherited variations of drug-metabolizing enzyme (DME) activities may affect liver damage and cancer risk by modifying individual susceptibility to endogenous or exogenous toxic compounds. We investigated the association of liver disease severity with common alleles of microsomal epoxide hydrolase (mEH), an enzyme involved in the metabolism of highly reactive epoxide intermediates. Three polymorphisms (Tyr113His, His139Arg, and -613C/T) were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) in 394 patients at different stages of disease, including 92 asymptomatic carriers, 109 patients with chronic hepatitis, 100 patients with cirrhosis, and 93 patients with HCC. Reference allele frequencies were obtained from 99 healthy blood donors. Allele distributions between categories were compared using the chi(2) test; odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CI were calculated to express relative risks. Allele frequencies among 99 healthy controls were as follows: 15.1% for 113His/His, 4.0% for 139Arg/Arg, and 46.5% for -613C/T. mEH 113His/His homozygotes were overrepresented in advanced stages of disease, in particular among HCC patients (27.9%; P =.03; OR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.0-4.6). Differences were more pronounced among men and between extreme patient categories. When mEH genotypes were combined to express a metabolic phenotype, very slow metabolizers were highly prevalent among cirrhotic and HCC patients (18% vs. 3.3% in carriers; P.001). In conclusion, mEH gene polymorphisms were significantly associated with HCV-related liver disease severity and HCC risk. Men were at higher risk than women; this might be explained by hormonal regulation of gene expression or by differential exposure to environmental toxins.

We studied the expression of ten genes (encoding the receptors for glucocorticoid, mineralocorticoid, progesterone, androgen, estrogen, thyroid, retinoid acid, vitamin D) belonging to the steroid-thyroid hormone receptor superfamily (STRS) in 12 neuroepithelial tumors, 12 meningiomas and 2 human glioblastoma cell lines. Our method, based on the polymerase chain reaction, allowed the simultaneous amplification of cDNAs of the STRS genes. On average, 7 STRS genes were simultaneously expressed in each sample. Our study indicates that many STRS gene are commonly co-expressed in human CNS tumors. The importance of our results for the ongoing and proposed hormonal treatment trials is discussed.