Steroid-induced psychosis is a well-documented phenomenon. It usually occurs with oral systemic steroid treatment and is more common at higher doses, although there are case reports of occurrence with local steroid injections. We report a case of a 35-year-old man with no previous history of psychosis who was seen for follow-up after a brief psychotic episode following an injection of 5 mg of dexamethasone into his scrotum the previous day. The injection was given to treat chronic pain from a combat injury.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cells bind to lymphocytes via L-selectin in a shear-dependent manner. This interaction takes place exclusively under low-shear stress conditions, such as those found within the lymph node parenchyma. This represents a novel functional role for L-selectin-selectin ligand interactions. Our previous work has characterized as-of-yet unidentified L-selectin ligands expressed by HNSCC cells that are specifically active under conditions of low shear stress consistent with lymph flow. Using an affinity purification approach, we now show that nucleolin expressed on the surface of HNSCC cells is an active ligand for L-selectin. Parallel plate chamber flow-based experiments and atomic force microscopy (AFM) experiments show that nucleolin is the main functional ligand under these low-force conditions. Furthermore, AFM shows a clear relationship between work of deadhesion and physiological loading rates. Our results reveal nucleolin as the first major ligand reported for L-selectin that operates under low-shear stress conditions.

Eukaryotic initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) binds to the 5' m(7)G cap of mRNAs and is a focal point of regulation of initiation of mRNA translation. High levels of expression of eIF4E in many epithelial cancers, including breast, head and neck, colon, and bladder, correlate with increased tissue invasion and metastasis. To further examine the role of eIF4E in the biology of cancer cells, variants of eIF4E with impaired 5' cap binding function were expressed in MDA-MB-435 carcinoma cells. Cell lines overexpressing variants of eIF4E had impaired growth properties and exhibited a different morphology compared to cells expressing similar amounts of exogenous wild-type eIF4E or control cells. Cells expressing variant eIF4E did not form foci in culture and produced smaller colonies in soft agar compared to cells expressing wild-type eIF4E. In addition, analysis of polyribosomes for vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) mRNA demonstrated a shift from translationally active to inactive fractions in variant eIF4E cells, while GAPDH mRNA did not. The long G-C rich 5' untranslated region of VEGF mRNA is a feature of other mRNAs encoding growth regulating proteins that are predicted to have their translation enhanced by increases in eIF4E; whereas mRNA with shorter and less structured 5' UTRs, like that of GAPDH, are predicted to be largely unaffected. These data suggest that targeting the 5' cap-binding domain of eIF4E may be a viable option to slow cancer cell growth and alter the malignant phenotype.

The CPT results obtained in this study showed that the PAPS patients studied have endothelial dysfunction.