Longitudinal Evaluation of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor-Induced Fatigue Syndrome by Rest, Stress, and Speckle-Tracking Strain Echocardiography.

Background: Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) anti-tumor therapy is commonly associated with reports of significant fatigue. Whether ICI-induced fatigue is linked to subclinical cardiac toxicity is not well understood.

Methods: We performed a prospective observational study to monitor cardiac function following initiation of ICI in cancer patients.

Interrater reproducibility of the 2016 American society of echocardiography left ventricular diastolic function guidelines.

Background: Little data exist regarding interreader variability of diastolic measurements and their application by the 2016 American Society of Echocardiography left ventricular (LV) diastolic function guidelines.

Methods: Volunteers (n = 49) were recruited from an outpatient cardiology practice. The presence and grade of diastology dysfunction (DD) was determined by the 2016 LV diastology guideline algorithm.

Multimodality Imaging of the Right Ventricle.

Right ventricular (RV) structure and function is clinically important in a wide range of conditions. While conventional echocardiography (echo) methods are widely used, its limitations in RV assessment due its complex geometry are well recognized. New applications of traditional echo methods as well as emerging echo techniques including 3-dimensional (3D) echo and speckle tracking strain have the potential to overcome limitations of conventional echo, though widespread clinical use remains to be seen.

Regional hippocampal damage in heart failure.

Aims: Heart failure (HF) patients show cognitive and mood impairments, including short-term memory loss and depression, that have an adverse impacting on quality of life and self-care management. Brain regions, including the hippocampus, a structure significantly involved in memory and mood, show injury in HF, but the integrity of specific hippocampal subregions is unclear.

Methods And Results: To assess regional hippocampal volume loss, we evaluated 17 HF patients (mean age ± SD, 54.

TACE-dependent TGFα shedding drives triple-negative breast cancer cell invasion.

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is frequently expressed in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and is a marker of poor prognosis in this patient population. Because activating mutations in this kinase are very rare events in breast cancer, we screened breast tumor gene expression profiles to examine the distribution of EGFR ligand expression. Of the six known EGFR ligands, transforming growth factor alpha (TGFα) was expressed more highly in triple-negative breast tumors than in tumors of other subtypes.