No abstract

At this stage of follow-up, six courses of CMF are not superior to three courses with respect to recurrence-free survival.

Although eosinophilic granulocytes are frequently observed in lymphatic tissue of Hodgkin's patients, no substantial data reveal the prognostic role, if any, of tissue eosinophilia. Thus, eosinophilia was analyzed histologically in 1511 diagnostic biopsy specimens of patients treated under protocol therapy of the German Hodgkin's Lymphoma Study Group between 1988 and 1994. Prominent eosinophilia was seen in 38% of cases, which differed among the histologic types of Hodgkin's disease (HD): none in lymphocyte predominant, 14% in lymphocyte rich classical, 40% in nodular sclerosis grade 1 (NS-1), 55% in nodular sclerosis grade 2, 43% in mixed cellularity (MC), and 54% in lymphocyte depleted. In a multivariate analysis, tissue eosinophilia proved to be the strongest prognostic factor for freedom from treatment failure (P < .001) and overall survival (P < .001) in a stage-stratified model. Among NS-1 patients, the effect was highly significant. In MC, no significant effect of eosinophilia on survival could be demonstrated. Eosinophils secrete CD30 ligand that is capable of binding to CD30 positive HD cells. The activation of TRAF2, followed by NF-kappaB, which occurs on CD30L/CD30 binding, may explain the neoplastic proliferation and apoptosis protection of HD cells. TRAF2 is also activated by EBV-LMP expression, which is detectable in the majority of MC but not NS cases. In addition to the possibility that eosinophils are only passive indicators for other unknown prognostic determinants, it may be concluded that the positive clinical outcome of eosinophilia-negative NS cases could be due to lower NF-kappaB activity.

Until now there exists no calculation of the phonon density of states of amorphous SiO, and related materials, which could interpret the experimentally detected splittings between longitudinal and transverse modes in their optical phonon spectra. This problem is solved by taking into account the influence of the vibrationally induced polarization on the motion of atoms. A simple model for the description of this polarization in non-crystalline SiO, is developed and used for the calculation of t h e density of states of LO and TO phonons in the framework of a coherent potential approximation for structurally disordered systems. This new method leads also to the determination of the I R response function and to simple analytical expressions for the microscopic parameters of the model, i.e. the bond angle at the oxygen atom and transverse dynamic effective charges. The values of these parameters are determined from I R transmission spectra of thin SiO, layers prepared with the help of different methods. The calculated density of states and I R response function are in good agreement with corresponding experimental results.