Effective combined therapy for pulmonary epithelioid hemangioendothelioma: A case report

BACKGROUND Pulmonary epithelioid hemangioendothelioma(P-EHE)is a rare disease.Thus far,consensus on a standard treatment for P-EHE has not been established given its low incidence worldwide.Apatinib combined with chemotherapy with doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide has been used as an effective combination treatment for human malignancies.However,the efficacy of this combination has not been reported in P-EHE cases.CASE SUMMARY We present the case of a 64-year-old woman with chest tightness,cough,and chest pain.Computed tomography showed multiple unresectable pulmonary nodules.She had been misdiagnosed with lung carcinoma and underwent gefitinib treatment at a hospital.Subsequently,the patient underwent a cardiothoracic surgery for further disease investigation.CD31,CD34,and Vimentin expression were detected in the resected nodule specimens by immunohistochemical analyses,and pathological analyses confirmed the diagnosis of P-EHE.Following this,four cycles of apatinib combined with chemotherapy with doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide were initiated.The patient demonstrated stabilization of multiple bilateral nodules and showed a dramatic improvement in the clinical presentation after combination treatment.The patient could not tolerate the side effects of chemotherapy.Therefore,she then continued apatinib monotherapy,which is ongoing to date.The patient was stable at the last follow-up after 24 mo.CONCLUSION Apatinib combined with chemotherapy with doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide may be an effective therapeutic option for P-EHE treatment.

Modeling and analyzing dynamics of malaria transmission with host immunity

In this paper,we investigate a compart mental model for malaria transmission,where the host individuals are distributed according to their immune status.The acquired immu nity of malaria is usually booted upon each exposure and gradually declines between the consecutive bouts of the disease.It is assumed that the recovered host individuals may be reinfected due to the immunity waning over time.The existence and stability of equilibria in the system,and the effect of the immunity status on dynamics of the system,are investigated,respectively.The phenomena of multiple endemic equilibria in our model are also observed.Our obtained results show that malaria may keep recurring under the first lower prevalence,however,when malaria is spreading in a population,it may remain at a different endemic level under suitable control strategies.

Dynamics of a dengue epidemic model with class-age structure

We introduce the class-age-dependent rates of the infected and vaccinated class in the compartmental model of dengue transmission. An age-structured host-vector interac- tion model incorporating vaccination effects is formulated and analyzed for the spread of dengue. Moreover, the basic reproduction number is derived, which serves as a thresh- old value determining the stability of the equilibrium points. By constructing suitable Lyapunov functional, the global asymptotic stability of the equilibria of the model is established in terms of the basic reproduction number. In particular, the disease-free equilibrium of the model is globally asymptotically stable if the basic reproduction num- ber is less than one, while the disease persists and the unique endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if the basic reproduction number is greater than one. The analysis of our model indicates that our model is realistic to give a hint to control the transmission of dengue. Furthermore, it follows from the formulation of the infection-free equilibrium of susceptible humans So and the basic reproduction number R0 that both of them are decreasing with respect to the vaccination parameter ~bh, which indicates that appropriate vaccinating program may contribute to prevent the transmission of Dengue disease.