OBJECTIVE To examine clinical and laboratory variables to determine which, if any, predict improved semen parameters and pregnancy after varicocelectomy. METHODS Surgical logs were reviewed for men who underwent varicocele ligation for a fertility concern. Clinical, demographic, and laboratory data was obtained through medical chart review and paired with postoperative reproductive outcomes o...

AlphaIFN has recently been recognized as an adjuvant therapy to surgery in melanoma patients. A major issue is to select patients who will benefit from this therapy and to avoid toxicity in those who will not respond. The aim of this exploratory analysis was to identify the predictive factors of response to alphaIFN. The French cooperative group has recently shown that adjuvant therapy of melan...

BACKGROUND Canine cutaneous mast cell tumor (MCT) is a common neoplastic disease associated with a variable biologic behavior. Surgery remains the primary treatment for canine MCT; however, radiation therapy (RT) and chemotherapy are commonly used to treat aggressive MCT. The goals of this study were to evaluate the prognostic utility of histologic grade, c-KIT mutations, KIT staining patterns,...

Introduction: Our aim was to compare the nuclear DNA integrity of the spermatozoa from infertile men with abnormal semen parameters with that from normospermic fertile men, and to evaluate the relationship between the sperm DNA integrity and semen parameters. Materials and Methods: Thirty ejaculate samples with abnormal semen analysis and 30 ejaculates with normal semen parameters were randomly...

BACKGROUND Pulmonary metastasectomies are performed for a variety of cancers, though few reports have examined their merit for head and neck cancers. This study examined the relationship between clinical and pathological characteristics and survival after resection of lung metastases of these cancers. METHODS Between 1986 and 2013, 34 patients presenting with pulmonary metastases of primary h...

the genetic parameters and (co) variance components of body weight at birth (bw), weaning (ww) and six months of age (bw6) and average daily gain (adg) pre and post-weaning of afshari sheep were estimated using restricted maximum likelihood (reml) methodology and animal model implemented in dfreml software. the likelihood ratio test (lrt) was used to compare the models. year of birth, age of mo...

(Co) variance components and genetic parameters for growth traits in Arman sheep were estimated, using data collected during an 11-year period (1999-2010), by applying the restricted maximum likelihood (REML) procedure under univariate and bivariate animal models. The studied traits were body weight of lamb at birth (BW), body weight at 3 months of age as weaning weight (WW), body weight at 6 m...

Insulin-like growth factor 1 receptor (IGF-1R) is a main receptor of IGFs family which plays a critical role in the postnatal growth and skeletal growth in many species. However, there are few reports of IGF-1R gene structure and its effects on growth traits in sheep. The objectives of this study were detection of IGF-1R polymorphisms and assessment of their associations with ...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to use mathematical modeling to identify and quantify the main factors that affect daily feed intake (DFI) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) in grow-finishing (GF) pig units. We evaluated the production records of 93 GF farms between 2010 and 2013, linked to a company, working in a cooperative system, located in western Paraná State, Brazil. A total of 683 bat...