Aim: Essential thrombocythemia (ET) patients exhibit higher mean platelet volume (MPV) values compared to the healthy individuals. However, the association of degree of bone marrow fibrosis with either MPV or platecrit (PCT) has not been evaluated previously. The aim of this study was to investigate MPV and PCT values as predictive markers for evaluating bone marrow fibrosis (BMF) in ET patients. Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study to analyze the data of ET patients, who were followed in outpatient clinic of our hematology department, between January 2015 and December 2016. Patients older than 18 years, who had bone marrow biopsy, CBC, biochemistry tests and an abdominal sonography performed at the time of diagnosis, JAK2 test ordered and were BCR-ABL negative were included in the study. The patients were divided into two groups according to the presence of BMF as "the BMF group" and "the non-BMF group". The cutoff value for MPV and PCT was determined according to the median value. Fisher's exact test and χ 2 were used for comparative statistical analysis. Results: There were 22 males and 26 females with a median age of 56 years (range, 28-81). The BMF group included 35 (73%) patients while the non-BMF group included 13 (27%) patients. The median MPV was 8.8 fL (6.6-11.5) and median PCT was 0.69% (0.42-2.26), which was considered as the cutoff values for these parameters. There was no significant difference between the groups in patients with MPV ≤8.8 fL and MPV >8.8 fL (p=0.104) and also in patients with PCT ≤0.69% and PCT >0.69% (p=0.616). Conclusion: There is no association between the BMF and MPV and PCT in ET patients. However this is the first study investigating the role of both MPV and PCT in BMF in ET patients.

We offer a reformulation of Pollak's model of domestic violence by incorporating a feedback relationship between the prevalence of wife abuse in a society and men's proclivity to violence at home and the impact of higher education. College educated women are significantly less likely to experience domestic violence and more likely to leave abusive partners. Moreover, husbands might become less hesitant to act violently if physical aggression were an accepted and pervasive part of family life in a society. Therefore, there might be a two-way relationship between the level of violence in the community and the level of violence at home.

I study an auction in which bidders can bribe the auctioneer before they bid and before they know the identity of the winner, with the auctioneer lowering the winner's bid if the winner was the one who paid the bribe. In equilibrium, only bidders with valuations higher than some critical value pay the bribe. Corruption has no effect on either efficiency or the bidders' expected payoffs when the bidders are symmetric, but may improve efficiency when bidders are symmetric and the required bribe is sufficiently high. Ex ante bribery might be more profitable for the auctioneer than ex post bribery, in which a bribe is solicited from the winner after bids are submitted.

We investigated the cases with Aeromonas bacteremia in terms of clinical and microbiological characteristics, underlying disease and mortality rates. Patients with positive blood cultures were included in this research. Aeromonas bacteremia was diagnosed as at least one positive blood culture for Aeromonas species. The bacteremia was defined as community origin if the onset was in the community or within 72 hours of hospital admission. The others were considered as nosocomial. All bacteria were defined as Aeromonas with conventional method. Species identification was verified by VITEK system. Antibiotic susceptibility tests were analyzed with the disc diffusion, E-test method or VITEK system. Thirty-three patients were diagnosed with bacteremia due to Aeromonas spp. Hematologic and solid tumors were the leading underlying conditions, followed by cirrhosis. Two patients (6%) had community-acquired infections. Aeromonas hydrophila was the most common isolated bacterium. The crude mortality rate was 36%. 12 patients died and 6 deaths and 4 deaths were detected in patients with bacteremia caused by A. hydrophila and Aeromonas sobria respectively. All strains were resistant to ampicillin and more than 90% of the strains were susceptible to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, fluoroquinolone, third generation cephalosporins, and carbapenems. Aeromonas sp. is not a frequent cause of bacteremia however, it may lead to high mortality rates, especially in the immunocompromised hosts and patients with liver cirrhosis. Nosocomial Aeromonas bacteremia is not uncommon in these populations. Broad-spectrum cephalosporins, piperacillin-tazobactam, fluoroquinolones, and carbapenems remain as effective antimicrobial agents for therapy of Aeromonas bacteremia.

Introduction: Positron-emission tomography (PET)/computerized tomography (CT) with 18F-fludeoxyglucose (FDG) has been come into use for risk assessment of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) patients in recent years. The aim of our study is to evaluate the reliability of interim PET results according to Deauville score (DS), and also to compared PET findings with tumor reduction on CT. Methods: Forty-two HL patients (median 39, range 19-75 y, 27 M, 15 F) were retrospectively evaluated with pre, interim and post-treatment PET/CT imaging. PET/CT imaging was obtained 60 min after the intravenous administration of 3.7-5.2 MBq/kg 18F-FDG. Results: The negative predictive value of the interim PET was 89%. Four (10.5%) of the 38 interim PET-negative patients became post-treatment PET-positive. According to CT, 15 patients were in complete remission (CR), 27 (64.6%) patients were in partial remission (PR) or stable disease (SD). Conclusion: The negative predictive value of interim PET was not satisfactory considering the treatment rate of over 80% of HL. Additionally, high rate of interim PET-negative patients’ conversion to PET-positive post-treatment state was considered as unexpected.