The history of specific therapy for hereditary tumors dates back to mid 1980s and involves a number of reports demonstrating regression of familial colon polyps upon administration of sulindac. Virtually no clinical studies on other hereditary cancer types were available until the year 2009, when Byrski et al. presented the data on unprecedented sensitivity of BRCA1-associated breast malignanci...

Although oral and injectable drug formulations still dominate the market, interest in pulmonary delivery has been rising steadily. Given patients' desire for an alternative to injections, and recent advances in aerosol science and pulmonary medicine, the potential for improved disease management outcomes by using aerosols for systemic drug delivery should lead the way for a shift to inhalables.

N Engl J Med 2005;352:476-87. Copyright © 2005 Massachusetts Medical Society. olorectal cancer is the third most common malignant disease and the second most frequent cause of cancer-related death in the United States, with 145,290 new cases and 56,290 deaths anticipated in 2005. 1 Worldwide, colorectal cancer is the fourth most commonly diagnosed malignant disease, with an estimated 1,023,000 ...

Patients with systemic mastocytosis (SM) can suffer from disabling symptoms related to mast cell mediator release or mast cell infiltration, requiring mast cell eradication. In the present absence of any curative therapy, a recent case report describing the efficacy of cladribine showed promising results. In a pilot study, the efficacy of cladribine (0.10-0.13 mg/kg in a 2-hour infusion, days 1...

Cushing's disease (CD) in a stricter sense derives from pathologic adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) secretion usually triggered by micro- or macroadenoma of the pituitary gland. It is, thus, a form of secondary hypercortisolism. In contrast, Cushing's syndrome (CS) describes the complexity of clinical consequences triggered by excessive cortisol blood levels over extended periods of time irre...

Background The concept of using antibiotics to treat Scleroderma stems from research done initially by Thomas M Brown, MD at the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins and the Rockefeller Institute. Brown used antibiotic therapy to treat a variety of autoimmune diseases based on the theory that arthritic diseases, including Scleroderma, are caused by mycoplasma or bacterial infections. My...