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Background: A majority of breast cancer tumors express estrogen receptor (ER) and/or progesterone receptor (PR); however, the percentage of cancer cells expressing these receptors can range from 0-100%. The prognostic and therapeutic impact of the percentage of cells expressing hormone receptors in breast cancer is not fully understood. Methods: A retrospective analysis of 411 breast cancer patients who were treated at the University of Nebraska Medical Center between 2010 and 2017 was performed. Patient tumors were evaluated for percentage of cells expressing ER and PR in conjunction with clinical outcomes. Results: Patient tumors demonstrated a highly bimodal pattern of ER and PR staining with a majority of tumors demonstrating either a high percentage (> 80% of cells) or lack of cells (0%) staining for ER or PR. An increase in the percentage of ER positivity correlated with decreased local recurrence and improved overall survival. An increase in the percentage of PR positivity demonstrated a trend towards decreased local recurrence and improved overall survival, but was not statistically significant. Conclusions: Results based on both continuous and categorical evaluation of ER expression revealed that increasing expression correlated with improved patient outcomes. Similar evaluation of PR expression demonstrated a trend towards improved patient outcomes though not statistically significant. These findings suggest that the degree of hormone receptor positivity and not a Boolean representation of positivity could provide additional prognostic value in the treatment and management of breast cancer. J Clin Med Res. 2021;13(1):9-19 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/jocmr4398

We investigate the feasibility of estimating the total energy expenditure (TEE) of a human for walking/running activities with micro-Doppler signatures. Doppler radar can capture micro-Doppler signatures produced from limb motions when a human moves. As the micro-Doppler signatures contain information regarding limb movement, TEE can be estimated by analyzing the Doppler spectrogram. To understand the relationship between the TEE and micro-Doppler signatures, basic arm and leg motions are measured by the Doppler radar, whereas a respiratory gas analyzer measures the volume of exchanged respiratory gas (O2 and CO2) to obtain a reference TEE. The area of micro-Doppler signatures in a spectrogram has been suggested to serve as key information to estimate TEE. For the verification of the suggested approach, TEE was measured for seven human subjects, who performed walking and running activities on a treadmill at five different speeds using both the Doppler radar and the respiratory gas analyzer. We confirm that strong correlations exist between the micro-Doppler area and the TEE. Finally, a regression model for walking and running activities is developed for a person. Then, the model calculates the TEE under two scenarios, and we find that the estimation errors are 13.2% and 12.3%.

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Mekdara NT, Goto JJ, Choudhury S, Mekdara PJ, Yingst N, Cao Y, Berg O, Muller UK. 2012. A novel lenticular arena to quantify locomotor competence in walking fruit flies. J. Exp. Zool. 317A:382–394], which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jez.1731. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.

Diagnostic ultrasound (DUS) pressures have the ability to induce inertial cavitation (IC) of systemically administered microbubbles; this bioeffect has many diagnostic and therapeutic implications in cardiovascular care. Diagnostically, commercially available lipid-encapsulated perfluorocarbons (LEP) can be utilized to improve endocardial and vascular border delineation as well as assess myocardial perfusion. Therapeutically, the liquid jets induced by IC can alter endothelial function and dissolve thrombi within the immediate vicinity of the cavitating microbubbles. The cavitating LEP can also result in the localized release of any bound therapeutic substance at the site of insonation. DUS-induced IC has been tested in pre-clinical studies to determine what effect it has on acute vascular and microvascular thrombosis as well as nitric oxide (NO) release. These pre-clinical studies have consistently shown that DUS-induced IC of LEP is effective in restoring coronary vascular and microvascular flow in acute ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), with microvascular flow improving even if upstream large vessel flow has not been achieved. The initial clinical trials examining the efficacy of short pulse duration DUS high mechanical index impulses in patients with STEMI are underway, and preliminary studies have suggested that earlier epicardial vessel recanalization can be achieved prior to arriving in the cardiac catheterization laboratory. DUS high mechanical index impulses have also been effective in pre-clinical studies for targeting DNA delivery that has restored islet cell function in type I diabetes and restored vascular flow in the extremities downstream from a peripheral vascular occlusion. Improvements in this technique will come from three dimensional arrays for therapeutic applications, more automated delivery techniques that can be applied in the field, and use of submicron-sized acoustically activated LEP droplets that may better permeate the clot prior to DUS activation and cavitation. This article will focus on these newer developments for DUS therapeutic applications. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40349-016-0062-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.