This study demonstrates for the first time the presence of NGF in canine synovial fluid and its increased concentrations in dogs with chronic lameness compared to healthy dogs and dogs with acute lameness. The association between chronic lameness and raised synovial concentrations may suggest an involvement of NGF in OA inflammation and chronic pain.

The general availability of cerebral computed tomographic and magnetic resonance imaging scans makes the observation of symptomatic intracranial meningiomas in very elderly patients (aged 80 yr or more) relatively frequent. A few authors have reported on patients who have undergone surgery for intracranial meningiomas in their 9th decade of life, without providing indications regarding the surgical criteria and the prognostic factors. We report on a series of 17 patients who have received surgery for intracranial meningiomas in their 9th decade of life, with the goal of determining some surgical criteria for general physicians and neurosurgeons. Patients with severe systemic disease and definite functional limitations (American Society of Anesthesiology Class III) had a major postoperative morbidity (P = 0.020) and mortality (P = 0.005), especially if they scored low (< 70) on the preoperative Karnofsky Rating Scale (P = 0.010). The risk of postoperative morbidity was higher when the maximum diameter of the tumor was > 5 cm (P = 0.031).

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a skin cancer of neuroendocrine origin that occurs most often in sun-exposed areas. In the general population, it is a disease of older adults, with only 5% of cases occurring below the age of 50 years. Immunosuppression is the significant risk factor for the development of MCC and recently it was suggested that individuals with HIV have a relative risk of 13.4 to developed MCC in comparison with the general population. We report a case of MCC in an HIV-infected patient and we review nine patients with HIV with MCC. Our patient was a 54-year-old man who came to our attention without a known HIV diagnosis. He was apparently in good health and had no risk factor for HIV, but by the atypical site of the lesion and by the relative young age of the patient we suspected a case of immunosuppression and for this reason we did HIV test that had a positive result. The patient was treated with surgery and chemotherapy but died as a result of liver metastases 25 months after his tumor was diagnosed.

Physiologically relevant in vitro models of stretchable biological tissues, such as muscle, lung, cardiac and gastro-intestinal tissues, should mimic the mechanical cues which cells are exposed to in their dynamic microenvironment in vivo. In particular, in order to mimic the mechanical stimulation of tissues in a physiologically relevant manner, cell stretching is often desirable on surfaces with dynamically controllable curvature. Here, we present a device that can deform cell culture membranes without the current need for external pneumatic/fluidic or electrical motors, which typically make the systems bulky and difficult to operate. We describe a modular device that uses elastomeric membranes, which can intrinsically be deformed by electrical means, producing a dynamically tuneable curvature. This approach leads to compact, selfcontained, lightweight and versatile bioreactors, not requiring any additional mechanical equipment. This was obtained via a special type of dielectric elastomer actuator. The structure, operation and performance of early prototypes are described, showing preliminary evidence on their ability to induce changes on the spatial arrangement of the cytoskeleton of fibroblasts dynamically stretched for 8 h.