Search

It can be said that in the Liberal back bench there are 20 members, or 16.4 per cent of the total doing 36.8 per cent of the committee work. Similarly, 27.1 per cent of the members are doing 52.8 per cent of the committee work. One of the major complaints of government members is the extremely heavy work load which has been aggravated by the recent changes in the rules and procedures of the House. Indeed, if one is listening to the complaints of a member who is in this 27.1 per cent group, his complaints are justified and real. One must conclude that the remaining 53.2 per cent who are responsible for only 25.4 per cent of the committee work must be the victims of work from another source.

We present optical spectroscopy of candidate active galactic nuclei (AGN) pinpointed by a Swift follow-up campaign on unidentified transients in the XMM-Newton Slew Survey, increasing the completeness of the identifications of AGN in the Survey. Our Swift follow-up campaign identified 17 X-ray Telescope-detected candidate AGN, of which 9 were selected for optical follow-up and a further two were confirmed as AGN elsewhere. Using data obtained at the William Herschel Telescope, Very Large Telescope and New Technology Telescope, we find AGN features in seven of the candidates. We classify six as Seyfert types 1.0-1.5, with broad-line region velocities spanning 2000-12000 km s-1, and identify one as a possible type II AGN, consistent with the lack of a soft band X-ray detection in the Slew Survey. The virial black hole mass estimates for the sample lie between 1× 108 and 3× 109 M⊙, with one source likely emitting close to its Eddington rate, LBol/LEdd ~ 0.9. We find a wide redshift range 0.08 < z < 0.9 for the nine now confirmed AGN drawn from the unidentified Slew Survey sample. One source remaining unclassified shows outbursts rarely seen before in AGN. We conclude that AGN discovered in this way are consistent with the largely non-varying, Slew-selected, known AGN population. We also find parallels with XMM-Newton Bright Serendipitous Survey AGN selected from pointed observations, and postulate that shallow X-ray surveys select AGN drawn from the same populations that have been characterized in deeper X-ray-selected samples., RLCS was supported by a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship during the proposal and observation phases of this work; CW and KW acknowledge funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. SM acknowledges financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through grant AYA2016-76730-P, which is partly funded by the FEDER programme. BM acknowledges funding from the UK Space Agency.

et al., [Purpose]: To investigate the prognostic value of BRAF V600E mutation for the recurrence of papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). [Patients and Methods]: This was a retrospective multicenter study of the relationship between BRAF V600E mutation and recurrence of PTC in 2,099 patients (1,615 women and 484 men), with a median age of 45 years (interquartile range [IQR], 34 to 58 years) and a median follow-up time of 36 months (IQR, 14 to 75 months). [Results]: The overall BRAF V600E mutation prevalence was 48.5% (1,017 of 2,099). PTC recurrence occurred in 20.9% (213 of 1,017) of BRAF V600E mutation–positive and 11.6% (125 of 1,082) of BRAF V600E mutation–negative patients. Recurrence rates were 47.71 (95% CI, 41.72 to 54.57) versus 26.03 (95% CI, 21.85 to 31.02) per 1,000 person-years in BRAF mutation–positive versus –negative patients (P < .001), with a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.82 (95% CI, 1.46 to 2.28), which remained significant in a multivariable model adjusting for patient sex and age at diagnosis, medical center, and various conventional pathologic factors. Significant association between BRAF mutation and PTC recurrence was also found in patients with conventionally low-risk disease stage I or II and micro-PTC and within various subtypes of PTC. For example, in BRAF mutation–positive versus –negative follicular-variant PTC, recurrence occurred in 21.3% (19 of 89) and 7.0% (24 of 342) of patients, respectively, with recurrence rates of 53.84 (95% CI, 34.34 to 84.40) versus 19.47 (95% CI, 13.05 to 29.04) per 1,000 person-years (P < .001) and an HR of 3.20 (95% CI, 1.46 to 7.02) after adjustment for clinicopathologic factors. BRAF mutation was associated with poorer recurrence-free probability in Kaplan-Meier survival analyses in various clinicopathologic categories. [Conclusion]: This large multicenter study demonstrates an independent prognostic value of BRAF V600E mutation for PTC recurrence in various clinicopathologic categories., Supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) Grants No. R01CA134225 and RO1CA113507 (M.X.); by Grant No. UL1 RR 025005 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of NIH and NIH Roadmap for Medical Research (K.A.C.); and by the following funding to individual study centers: National Science Centre Poland Grants No. N N403 194340 (A.C.) and N N401 612440 (B.J.); grants from Griffith Health Institute (Australia; A.K.L.); Grants No. BFU2010-16025, RD06/0020/0060-RD12/0036/0030 FIS, ISCIII, and S2011/BMD-2328 TIRONET (Spain; P.S.); NIH Grant No. RO1-CA50706 and the Byrne Foundation (J.A.F.); Grant No. IG 9338 from the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia and Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (Italy) and the Beadle Family Foundation (San Antonio, TX; E.P.); Grant No. IGA MH CR NT 13901- 4 (Czech Republic; B.B., V.S.); grants from the New South Wales Cancer Institute (C.J.O.) and Cancer Council of New South Wales (Australia; R.C.- B.); Grant No. MIUR 20074zw8la from the Ministero della Istruzione Universitaria e Ricerca Scientifica and the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (Italy; G.T.); NIH/National Institute on Aging Grant No. 5R03AG042334-02 (L.Y.); grants from the Ministero della Istruzione Universitaria e Ricerca Scientifica, the Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro, the Istituto Toscano Tumori, and the Ministero della Salute (Italy; D.V., R.E.); and Grant No. CB-2011-03-02 from the Korean Foundation for Cancer Research (South Korea; Y.K.S., T.Y.K.).

PMID:23571588.-- et al., [Importance]: BRAF V600E is a prominent oncogene in papillary thyroid cancer (PTC), but its role in PTC-related patient mortality has not been established. [Objective]: To investigate the relationship between BRAF V600E mutation and PTC-related mortality. [Design, Setting, and Participants]: Retrospective study of 1849 patients (1411 women and 438 men) with amedian age of 46 years (interquartile range, 34-58 years) and an overall median follow-up time of 33 months (interquartile range, 13-67 months) after initial treatment at 13 centers in 7 countries between 1978 and 2011. [Main Outcomes and Measures]: Patient deaths specifically caused by PTC. [Results]: Overall, mortality was 5.3% (45/845; 95% CI, 3.9%-7.1%) vs 1.1% (11/1004; 95% CI, 0.5%-2.0%) ( P < .001) in BRAF V600E-positive vs mutationnegative patients. Deaths per 1000 person-years in the analysis of all PTC were 12.87 (95% CI, 9.61-17.24) vs 2.52 (95% CI, 1.40-4.55) in BRAF V600E-positive vs mutation-negative patients; the hazard ratio (HR) was 2.66 (95% CI, 1.30-5.43) after adjustment for age at diagnosis, sex, and medical center. Deaths per 1000 person-years in the analysis of the conventional variant of PTC were 11.80 (95% CI, 8.39-16.60) vs 2.25 (95% CI, 1.01-5.00) in BRAF V600E-positive vs mutation-negative patients; the adjusted HR was 3.53 (95% CI, 1.25-9.98). When lymph node metastasis, extrathyroidal invasion, and distant metastasis were also included in the model, the association of BRAF V600E with mortality for all PTC was no longer significant (HR, 1.21; 95% CI, 0.53-2.76). A higher BRAF V600E-associated patient mortality was also observed in several clinicopathological subcategories, but statistical significance was lost with adjustment for patient age, sex, and medical center. For example, in patients with lymph node metastasis, the deaths per 1000 person-years were 26.26 (95% CI, 19.18-35.94) vs 5.93 (95% CI, 2.96-11.86) in BRAF V600E-positive vs mutation-negative patients (unadjusted HR, 4.43 [95% CI, 2.06-9.51]; adjusted HR, 1.46 [95% CI, 0.62-3.47]). In patients with distant tumor metastasis, deaths per 1000 person-years were 87.72 (95% CI, 62.68-122.77) vs 32.28 (95% CI, 16.14-64.55) in BRAF V600E-positive vs mutation-negative patients (unadjusted HR, 2.63 [95% CI, 1.21-5.72]; adjusted HR, 0.84 [95% CI, 0.27-2.62]). Conclusions and Relevance: In this retrospective multicenter study, the presence of the BRAF V600E mutation was significantly associated with increased cancer-related mortality among patients with PTC. Because overall mortality in PTC is low and the association was not independent of tumor features, how to use BRAF V600E to manage mortality risk in patients with PTC is unclear. These findings support further investigation of the prognostic and therapeutic implications of BRAF V600E status in PTC. ©2013 American Medical Association. All rights reserved., Funding/Support: This project was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants R01CA134225 and R01CA113507 to Dr Xing. The statistical effort of Ms Carson for this project was supported by grant UL1RR025005 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. In addition, the studies at individual centers were supported as follows: the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Research grants N N403 194340 and N N401 612440 to Drs Czarniecka and Jarzab, respectively(Poland); grant NIDCR/NCI SPORE P50DE019032 to Dr Sindransky (United States); grants BFU2010–16025, RD06/0020/0060-RD12/0036/0030 FIS, ISCIII, and S2011/BMD-2328TIRONET to Dr Santisteban (Spain); grant NIH-R01-CA50706 and Byrne Foundation funding to Dr Fagin (United States); grants from Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia and Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (IG 9338) (Italy) and the Beadle Family Foundation (San Antonio, Texas) to Dr Puxeddu; grant IGA MHCRNT13901–4 to Drs Sykorova and Bendlova (Czech Republic); and grants from the New South Wales Cancer Institute to Dr O’Neill and from the Cancer Council of New South Wales to Dr Clifton-Bligh (Australia).