Antiepileptic medications (ASMs) are withdrawn at the epilepsy monitoring unit to facilitate seizure recordings. The effect of rapid tapering of ASMs on the length of hospital stay has not been well documented. We compared the mean length of hospital stay between patients who underwent acute ASM withdrawal and slow dose tapering during long-term video electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring. We retrospectively investigated 57 consecutive patients admitted to the epilepsy monitoring unit regarding the mean length of hospital stay in the acute ASM withdrawal group (n = 30) and slow-taper group (n = 27). In the acute-withdrawal group, all ASMs were discontinued once the patients were admitted. In the slow-taper group, the doses of ASMs were gradually reduced by 15–30% daily. We also evaluated the safety of the acute-withdrawal and slow-taper protocols. The mean lengths of hospital stay were 3.8 ± 1.92 and 5.2 ± 0.69 days in the acute-withdrawal and slow-taper groups, respectively (p < 0.005). No severe adverse events, including status epilepticus, were observed. Acute ASM withdrawal has the advantage of significantly reducing the length of hospital stay over slow tapering, without any severe adverse effects.
11071 Background: Soft tissue sarcoma (STS) is well-known rare cancer with few therapeutic options. Although recent genomic analyses of sarcoma revealed few somatic mutations, massive copy number variations (CNV) and chromoplexy which correlate with worse clinical outcomes, their molecular and genomic mechanisms remain to be understood. Methods: We recruited 116 patients (102 female and 14 male, mean age 50, 80 LMS, 14 LPS, 3 AS and others) and performed whole exome sequencing with the methods as reported in ASCO2018. In addition to somatic mutations, we evaluated germline and CNV contributions in tumor to find LOH mutations by Strelka and Virmid analysis softwares. Results: Of the total of 135-4717 (mean 1129) mutations in tumors, 3-111 (mean 32) mutations were found in 595 COSMIC genes including both somatic and LOH mutations. Less than 33% LOH in the total of somatic and LOH mutations significantly correlated with improved 5-year survival rate as compared with patients with more LOH (81% vs 52%, P=0.01). Among the 224 genes reported in somatic mutations of sarcoma, damaging mutations in ARHGAPs, Rho GTPase signal inactivating genes, were most frequently detected in 59% of total (n=116) and 63% of leiomyosarcoma (n=80) patients as in somatic and/or LOH mutations. Patients with ARHGAP mutations were significantly reduced 5-year survival rates as compared with patients without mutation (51% vs 76%, P=0.007). Among the 163 genes involved in autophagy, a key silencing process for active RhoGTPase, one or more damaging mutations as in somatic and/or LOH mutations were found in 87% in total and 96% in leimyosarcoma patients. Conclusions: Our results, for the first time, suggest an important role of mutations in genes involved in Rho GTPase and autophagy signaling, both well known regulator of chromosomal stability, invasion and metastasis of tumor cells, and thus implicate a potential therapeutic target in STS.
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