Dan Med Bull
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Colorectal cancer is with more than 4000 new cases every year the third most common cancer in Denmark. Metastases are most often found in the liver, and 20-25% of the patients have synchronous metastases to the liver at time of primary diagnosis. Other frequent sites for metastases are lungs and lymph nodes. ⋯ The immunological analyses indicated that the treatment resulted in favourable anticancer responses in the patients' immune system in terms of polarisation towards a Th1 dominated response potentially directed against tumor cells. Since no partial or complete responses were observed and since the number of patients was relatively low these results have to be interpreted with caution. Moreover, phase II study designs do not lead to final conclusions regarding clinical efficacy, which must be validated in larger prospective, randomised and controlled studies.
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The treatment of primary breast cancer usually consists of surgery often followed by adjuvant therapy (radiotherapy, chemotherapy, hormonal treatment, etc.) to reduce the risk of recurrence. The cancer diagnosis and the treatments may have significant impact on the patients' quality of life. This thesis deals with scientific aspects and clinical results of a study aimed at assessing the impact of breast cancer (and its treatment) on the patients' quality of life. ⋯ The study provided the most detailed description of HRQL during and after breast cancer adjuvant chemotherapy to date, and compared results of chemotherapy against ovarian ablation. It also provided controversial results concerning the prognostic value of HRQL data. The combination of a large empirical study and several methodological sub-studies thus proved useful and gave new results.
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Familial hemiplegic migraine (FHM) is a rare, dominantly inherited subtype of migraine with aura, where hemiplegia occurs during the aura phase. Mutation screening of families with FHM has revealed a range of different mutations. The mutated FHM genes code for ion transport proteins. ⋯ The aims of the present thesis were to test the hypothesis that FHM mutations might be associated with hypersensitivity to known migraine triggers and, thereby, share pathophysiological pathways with the common types of migraine, but our results disprove this hypothesis. Thus, FHM seems very different from MO and MA, both genetically and pathophysiologically. The fact that FHM genes regulate ion homeostasis cannot be extrapolated to the common types of migraine.