Mucoepidermoid cancer (MEC) of the bronchus is composed of an admixture of mucus secreting, intermediate and squamous cell types. 2 Although the clinical features of the bronchial MEC are identical to those in adults, such as recurrent pneumonia, cough and/or hemoptysis, the diagnosis is often unsuspected in children because of the rarity of the condition. Here, we report a 13-year-old boy with...

BACKGROUND Tracheobronchial mucoepidermoid carcinoma (MEC) is a rare airway tumor in adults for which surgery is considered a first-line treatment. However, some patients already lost the best opportunity of a surgical intervention when diagnoses are confirmed, and surgery causes considerable trauma resulting in partial loss of pulmonary function. Moreover, the tumor is resistant to radiotherap...

BACKGROUND Between January 1996 and April 2000, 355 patients with advanced Hodgkin's disease (HD) (stage II bulky disease, III and IV) were enrolled in a prospective, multicentre, randomised trial aimed at comparing the efficacy of two new promising regimens: Stanford V and MEC hybrid. ABVD was chosen as the control arm. Radiotherapy was planned at the end of induction therapy on residual masse...

The mecA gene that encodes methicillin resistance in Staphylococcus aureus may be regulated by the mecR1 and mecI genes, and this region has been referred to as the mec complex. An analysis of these regulatory genes in 35 epidemic methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) isolated in England and Australia has found that they contain three classes of mec complex. Firstly, the Class A mec complex wi...

BACKGROUND Methicillin-resistant coagulase-negative staphylococci (MR-CoNS) are opportunistic pathogens and serve as a large reservoir of staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec). Characterization of SCCmec in MR-CoNS can generate useful information on the mobilization and evolution of this element. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Non-repetitive MR-CoNS clinical isolates (n = 84; 39 S. ...

In this work we address the problem of monitoring the evolution of clusters, which became an important research issue in recent years due to our ability to collect and store data that evolves over time. The evolution is traced through the detection and categorization of transitions undergone by clusters’ structures computed at different points in time. We adopt two main strategies for cluster c...

It is not understood why, after onset of left bundle-branch block (LBBB), acute worsening of cardiac function is followed by a further gradual deterioration of function, whereas most adverse cardiac events lead to compensatory adaptations. We investigated whether mechano-electrical coupling (MEC) can explain long-term remodeling with LBBB and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). To this pur...

The elimination of identified cells is a powerful tool for investigating development and system function. Here we report on genetically mediated cell disruption effected by the toxic Caenorhabditis elegans mec-4(d) allele. We found that ectopic expression of mec-4(d) in the nematode causes dysfunction of a wide range of nerve, muscle, and hypodermal cells. mec-4(d)-mediated toxicity is dependen...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of realgar on the viability, proliferation and apoptosis in the human chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) cell line, MEC‑1. Potential mechanisms mediating the effect were also explored in the experiment. Cultured MEC‑1 cells were incubated with various concentrations of realgar for 24, 48 and 72 h. A WST‑8 assay was employed to evaluate ...

Full characterization of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) requires definition of not only the bacterial genetic background but also the structure of the complex and heterologous mec element these bacteria carry, which is associated with drug resistance determinant mecA. We report the development, validation, and application of a multiplex PCR strategy that allows quick presump...