BACKGROUND An understanding of depressive symptomatology from the perspective of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) could facilitate valid and interpretable comparisons across cultures. The objectives of the study were: (i) using the responses of a sample of Arab college students to the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) in CFA, to compare the "goodness of fit" indices of the original dimension...

We review the theoretical foundations and the most important physical applications of the Pinch Technique (PT). This general method allows the construction of off-shell Green’s functions in non-Abelian gauge theories that are independent of the gauge-fixing parameter and satisfy ghost-free Ward identities. We first present the diagrammatic formulation of the technique in QCD, deriving at one lo...

BACKGROUND: Circulating levels of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and lymphotoxin-alpha (LT-alpha) have been associated with outcome in solid and hematologic malignancies. Within the TNF gene and the LT-alpha gene, polymorphisms have been identified at nucleotide positions -308 and +252, respectively. The variant alleles for TNF are designated TNF1 and TNF2, the ones for LT-alpha LT-alpha (10.5 kb)...

Nachman et al in the year 1998 published results of Children's Cancer Group (CCG)-1882 study which they explored role augmented intensive postinduction therapy among children with high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).[1] Following this study, Berlin-Frankfurt-Munster (BFM) consolidation consists additional vincristine and asparaginase during periods myelosuppression standard IB phase be...

Near-tetraploidy (82-94 chromosomes) makes up fewer than 1% of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cases and has been reportedly associated with a possibly poorer prognosis compared with other ploidy groups. We analyzed 783 patients enrolled in the ALL-BFM-Austria 86, -90, -95, -99/2000 and Interfant-Austria 99 trials in order to assess its incidence, biological characteristics, and pr...

This study aimed at determining the prevalence of INK4 deletions and their impact on outcome in 125 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) at first relapse using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. Patients were enrolled into relapse trials ALL-REZ BFM (ALL-Relapse Berlin–Frankfurt–Münster) 90 and 96. The prevalence of p16INK4a and p15INK4b homozygous deletions was 35% (...

BACKGROUND There is solid evidence of the long term efficacy of deep brain stimulation of the globus pallidus pars interna in the treatment of generalised dystonia. However there are conflicting reports concerning whether certain subgroups gain more benefit from treatment than others. We analysed the results of a series of 60 cases to evaluate the effects of previously proposed prognostic facto...

Chemotherapy-induced leukopenia has been shown to be associated with the outcomes of several types of cancer, but the association with childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) remains unknown. To elucidate the association of chemotherapy-induced leukopenia with the clinical outcome of childhood ALL, retrospective analysis was performed on 19 child patients with ALL treated according to the ...