Preparedness for practice was substantially higher following the New Zealand trainee intern year than has been reported with other pre-intern placements.”
“Objective:

Smoking is a significant health hazard that has been associated with poor reproductive outcome and reduced fertility in reproductive age women. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of nargile smoking on intra-cytoplasmic sperm MEK activity injection (ICSI) outcome.\n\nStudy design: A prospective analysis of the outcomes of 297 women who underwent ICSI treatment at the ART Unit at the American University of Beirut Medical Center between January 1, and December 31, 2006 was done. The patients were divided into 3 groups based on their smoking status: cigarette smokers (n = 42), nargile smokers (n = 51) and non-smokers (n = 204).\n\nResults: The mean age of nargile smokers was significantly lower than the other groups; however, the 3 groups were similar with respect to the cause of infertility, total dose of follicular stimulating hormone (FSH), number of oocytes and embryos obtained, and number and quality of embryos transferred. There was no significant difference in the clinical pregnancy rate between nargile Proteasome inhibitor smokers and non-smokers

(51.0% vs 43.6%). However, cigarette smokers had a significantly lower clinical pregnancy rate compared to non-smokers (23.8% vs 43.6%, p = 0.0238). On multiple logistic regression analysis, factors that decreased the clinical pregnancy rates were cigarette smoking and maternal age.\n\nConclusion: LXH254 mouse Although this study did not find a deleterious effect of nargile smoking on ICSI outcome, the results need to be confirmed in prospective studies that would include larger number of women

with more objective measures of nargile smoke exposure. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Infiltrating astrocytomas and oligoastrocytomas of low to anaplastic grade (WHO grades II and III), in spite of being associated with a wide range of clinical outcomes, can be difficult to subclassify and grade by the current histopathologic criteria. Unlike oligodendrogliomas and anaplastic oligodendrogliomas that can be identified by the 1p/19q codeletion and the more malignant glioblastomas (WHO grade IV astrocytomas) that can be diagnosed solely based on objective features on routine hematoxylin and eosin sections, no such objective criteria exist for the subclassification of grade II-III astrocytomas and oligoastrocytomas (A+OA II-III). In this study, we evaluated the prognostic and predictive value of the stem cell marker nestin in adult A+OA II-III (n = 50) using immunohistochemistry and computer-assisted analysis on tissue microarrays. In addition, the correlation between nestin mRNA level and total survival was analyzed in the NCI Rembrandt database. The results showed that high nestin expression is a strong adverse prognostic factor for total survival (p = 0.0004).