Interferon α (IFNα) is the most used adjuvant treatment in the clinical practice for melanoma (MEL) high-medium risk patients; however the use of IFNα has yielded conflicting data on Overall Survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS) rates. Starting from these considerations, we conducted an analysis on our MEL patients who received adjuvant IFNα therapy, in order to identify possible predic...

OBJECTIVE To examine the effect of travel distance and other sociodemographic factors on access to a diagnosing provider for patients with melanoma. DESIGN Analysis was performed of all incident cases of melanoma in 2000 from 42 North Carolina counties. SETTING Academic research. PARTICIPANTS Patients and providers from 42 North Carolina counties were geocoded to street address. MAIN OU...

In this paper, we propose a semiparametric shock model for two dependent failure times where the risk indicator of one failure time plays the role of a time-varying covariate for the other one. Following Hougaard (2000), the dependence between the two failure times is therefore of event-related type. To derive our results, we define a joint distribution for the pair of failure times by means of...

The Breslow catalytic cycle describing the benzoin condensation promoted by N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHC) as proposed in the late 1950s has since then been tried by generations of physical organic chemists. Emphasis has been laid on proofing the existence of an enaminol like structure (Breslow intermediate) that explains the observed umpolung of an otherwise electrophilic aldehyde. The present ...

BACKGROUND In addition to Breslow depth, the authors previously described how increasing mitotic rate and decreasing age predicted sentinel lymph node (SLN) metastases in patients with melanoma. The objectives of the current study were to verify those previous results and to create a prediction model for the better selection of which patients with melanoma should undergo SLN biopsy. METHODS T...

In the formose reaction, formaldehyde is converted to glycolaldehyde, its dimer, under credible prebiotic conditions. Breslow proposed a mechanism for the process in 1959, but recent studies by Benner showed that it was wrong in detail. Our present studies clarify the mechanism, which involves the original Breslow intermediates but some different connecting steps.

The incidence of cutaneous melanoma is increasing worldwide, especially for thin melanoma (Breslow ≤1 mm). Thin cutaneous melanoma has a favorable prognosis but there are few data about the prognosis of patients with ultra-thin cutaneous melanoma (Breslow ≤ 0.5 mm). Our aim was to investigate the disease-free survival among patients with invasive cutaneous melanoma with Breslow ≤ 0.5 mm after 1...

Recently, we showed there was a cumulative dose-dependent association between the use of estrogens and the incidence of cutaneous melanoma (CM). This association was shown for both oral contraceptives (OC) and hormonal replacement therapy (HRT). Some in-vitro studies, however, have suggested a direct inhibitory effect on melanoma tumor growth. Therefore, the use of different types of estrogens,...

Since the early 1970’s, Norman Breslow has made enormous contributions to statistical theory and its applications in epidemiology, and he was a founding member and principal statistician of the Wilms Tumor Study Group, which is credited with great improvements in the treatment and understanding of this disease. Applications of the biostatistical methods that Norm developed have been concentrate...