Keloids, fibroproliferative dermal tumors with effusive accumulation of extracellular matrix (ECM) components, particularly collagen, result from excessive expression of growth factors and cytokines. The etiology of keloids is unknown but they occur after dermal injury in genetically susceptible individuals, and they cause both physical and psychological distress for the affected individuals. Several treatment methods for keloids exist, including the combination therapy of surgical incision followed by intralesional steroid therapy, however, they have high recurrence rate regardless of the current treatment method. Improved understanding of the pathomechanisms leading to keloid formation will hopefully identify pathways that serve as specific targets to improve therapy for this devastating, currently intractable, disorder.

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Animal models are crucial for the study of fibrosis. Keloids represent a unique type of fibrotic scarring that occurs only in humans, thus presenting a challenge for those studying the pathogenesis of this disease and its therapeutic options. Here, several animal models of fibrosis currently in use are described, emphasizing recent progress and highlighting encouraging challenges.

This article is concerned primarily with questions as to how and why case notes were produced and utilized, and how they may (or may not) be used by historians. More specifically, it discusses how the Glasgow Royal Asylum's case notes may be deployed to access patients' experiences of madness and confinement. The deficiencies and biases of the case record are also explored. So too is the relationship of case notes with other asylum based records, including reception order questionnaires, with a separate section on patient writings as part of the case history corpus. This leads into an analysis of how the Asylum's case notes became case histories and for what purposes. These subjects are related to changes and continuities in medical ideologies about insanity, social attitudes to the insane and the nature of medical practice in asylums. Some fundamental shifts in emphasis in the use of the case note and case history occurred in this period. These shifts were associated with an increased emphasis on organic interpretations of mental disease and on clinical approaches to insanity; with the medicalization of asylum records and the wider discourse on insanity, and with declining deference to the public at large in the presentation of cases. The survey concludes by analysing the changing place of patient testimony within the case record.