See editorial on page 14. See Covering the Cover synopsis on 1.BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Topical steroid treatments for eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) include swallowed fluticasone from a multi-dose inhaler (MDI) or oral viscous budesonide (OVB) slurry, but the 2 have never been compared. We assessed whether OVB was more effective than MDI for initial treatment of patients with EoE. METHODS: In a double-blind, doubledummy trial, patients with a new diagnosis of EoE were randomly assigned to groups given 8 weeks of either OVB (1 mg/4 mL) twice daily plus a placebo inhaler (n ¼ 56) or fluticasone MDI (880 mg) twice daily plus a placebo slurry (n ¼ 55). Primary outcomes were post-treatment maximum eosinophil counts per high-power field (eos/hpf) and a validated dysphagia score (dysphagia symptom questionnaire [DSQ]) at week 8. Secondary outcomes included endoscopic severity (validated EoE endoscopic reference score), histologic response (<15 eos/ hpf), and safety. RESULTS: In a modified intention-to-treat analysis, the subjects had baseline peak eosinophil counts of 73 and 77 eos/hpf in the OVB and MDI groups, respectively, and DSQ scores of 11 and 8. Post-treatment eosinophil counts were 15 and 21 in the OVB and MDI groups, respectively (P ¼ .31), with 71% and 64% achieving histologic response (P ¼ .38). DSQ scores were 5 and 4 in the OVB and MDI groups (P ¼ .70). Similar trends were noted for post-treatment total EoE endoscopic reference scores (2 vs 3; P ¼ .06). Esophageal candidiasis developed in 12% of patients receiving OVB and 16% receiving MDI; oral thrush was observed in 3% and 2%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In a randomized clinical trial, initial treatment of EoE with either OVB or fluticasone MDI produced a significant decrease in esophageal eosinophil counts and improved dysphagia and endoscopic features. However, OVB was not superior to MDI, so either is an acceptable treatment for EoE. ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT02019758.Abbreviations used in this paper: DSQ, dysphagia symptom questionnaire; EoE, eosinophilic esophagitis; eos/hpf, eosinophil counts per high-power field; EREFS, EoE Endoscopic Reference Score; MDI, multi-dose inhaler; OVB, oral viscous budesonide; PPI, proton pump inhibitor. Most current article

Background Timeliness of care may contribute to racial disparities in breast cancer mortality. African American women experience greater treatment delay than White women in most, but not all studies. Understanding these disparities is challenging since many studies lack patient-reported data and use administrative data sources that collect limited types of information. We used interview and medical record data from the Carolina Breast Cancer Study (CBCS) to identify determinants of delay and assess whether disparities exist between White and African American women (n=601). Methods The CBCS is a population-based study of North Carolina women. We investigated the association of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, healthcare access, clinical factors, and measures of emotional and functional well-being with treatment delay. The association of race and selected characteristics with delays of >30 days were assessed using logistic regression. Results Household size, losing a job due to one’s diagnosis, and immediate reconstruction were associated with delay in the overall population and among White women. Immediate reconstruction and treatment type were associated with delay among African American women. Racial disparities in treatment delay were not evident in the overall population. In the adjusted models, African American women experienced greater delay than White women for younger age groups: odds ratio (OR), 3.34; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.07–10.38 for ages 20–39, and OR, 3.40; 95% CI, 1.76–6.54 for ages 40–49. Conclusions Determinants of treatment delay vary by race. Racial disparities in treatment delay exist among women <50 years old. Impact Specific populations need to be targeted when identifying and addressing determinants of treatment delay.

Microcalcifications are a feature of diagnostic significance on a mammogram and a target for stereotactic breast needle biopsy. Here, we report development of a Raman spectroscopy technique to simultaneously identify microcalcification status and diagnose the underlying breast lesion, in real-time, during stereotactic core needle biopsy procedures. Raman spectra were obtained ex vivo from 146 tissue sites from fresh stereotactic breast needle biopsy tissue cores from 33 patients, including 50 normal tissue sites, 77 lesions with microcalcifications, and 19 lesions without microcalcifications, using a compact clinical system. The Raman spectra were modeled based on the breast tissue components and a support vector machine framework was used to develop a single-step diagnostic algorithm to distinguish normal tissue, fibrocystic change (FCC), fibroadenoma (FA) and breast cancer, in the absence and presence of microcalcifications. This algorithm was subjected to leave-one-site-out cross-validation, yielding a positive predictive value, negative predictive value, sensitivity and specificity of 100%, 95.6%, 62.5% and 100% for diagnosis of breast cancer (with or without microcalcifications) and an overall accuracy of 82.2% for classification into specific categories of normal tissue, FCC, FA or breast cancer (with and without microcalcifications). Notably, the majority of breast cancers diagnosed are ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), the most common lesion associated with microcalcifications, which could not be diagnosed using previous Raman algorithm(s). Our study demonstrates the potential of Raman spectroscopy to concomitantly detect microcalcifications and diagnose associated lesions, including DCIS, and thus provide real-time feedback to radiologists during such biopsy procedures, reducing non-diagnostic and false negative biopsies.