Results There was no statistically significant difference in tumor size, axillary lymph node involvement, and histological subtypes. On the contrary, grading lymphovascular invasion and receptor negativity showed statistically significant differences. Unadjusted hazard ratio are 2.11 (1.32-3.39) (OAS) and 1.92 (1.35-2.73) (RFS). Multi-adjusted hazard ratio are 2.97 (1.70-5.18) (OAS) and 2.11

(1.42-3.13) (RFS).

Conclusions In conclusion, young breast cancer patients still have a poor prognosis. Even after Selleck Compound Library adjustment of the data, OAS and RFS showed a worse prognosis. Normal prognostic factors like tumor size, axillary lymph node involvement, and grading can therefore be not the explanation for the more aggressive disease progress within early onset breast cancer patients.”
“Background and aims: Waist circumference (WC), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) and waist-to-stature ratio (WSR), being common proxy measures of abdominal obesity, are useful tools in epidemiologic studies, but little is known about their validity when the indices are derived from self-reported measurements. We determine and compare the validity of self-reported WC, WHR and WSR in order to identify the optimal index

for use in epidemiologic surveys.

Methods and Results: Technician-and self-reported measurements of height, waist and hip circumference were obtained from 613 Thai adults (mean age 35 years). Regarding technician-reported measurements as reference, diagnostic test properties were derived and performances of the indices compared using receiver-operator-characteristic curves and the area-under-the-curve (AUC) analyses. There was good agreement between technician-and self-reported Selleckchem Kinase Inhibitor Library KU 55933 measurements for WC and WSR (concordance correlation coefficients ranged from

0.84 to 0.90) but not for WHR (0.50 in men, 0.45 in women). The sensitivity and specificity of self-reported WC and self-reported WSR as measures of abdominal obesity were superior to those of self-reported WHR in both sexes. AUCs for WC and WSR were comparable (0.93 and 0.92, respectively, in men; 0.88 and 0.87 in women) and significantly higher than for WHR(0.80 in men; 0.76 in women; p < 0.0001).

Conclusion: WC and WSR derived from self-reported waist and height measurements are valid methods for determining abdominal obesity. Self-reported measurements should not be used to derive the WHR. In Asian populations, WSR may be the optimal index of abdominal obesity when measurements are derived from self-reports in epidemiologic surveys. (C) 2010 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.”
“Vortex penetration and flux relaxation phenomena carry information about the pinning ability, and consequently current-carrying ability, of a type-II superconductor. However, the theoretical descriptions of these phenomena are currently limited to the cases with special initial conditions. A generalization to the recently developed infinite series models is presented here.