“
“Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) was measured in adipose tissue intraoperatively collected from 387 subjects over 16 years old undergoing surgery in two hospitals in Granada (Southern Spain). HCB was quantified

in 90.7% of subjects. The concentrations and frequencies of HCB were similar to those reported in adipose tissue samples in other recent European studies. Exposure patterns differed between females and males: higher HCB concentrations were found in females than in males (geometric mean 18.3 vs. 6.8 ng/g, p < 0.001). The relationship between HCB concentrations and exposure risk factors was assessed by multivariate analysis stratifying by gender. In men, HCB concentrations were predicted (r(2)=0.45) by age, body mass index (BMI), place of residence, smoking, consumption of fish, chicken and cheese, occupation related to agriculture, and family involvement Selleck SCH727965 in Selleck Buparlisib construction activities. In women, HCB concentrations were predicted (r(2)=0.50) by age, BMI, consumption of milk and cheese. and occupation related to industry. The finding that women had three-fold

higher levels of HCB than the men deserves further investigation. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“The term “”segmental instability”" of the lumbar spine is not clearly defined, especially as it relates to degenerative spondylolisthesis (DS) and rotational translation (RT). We investigated whether facet joint effusion on conventional supine MRI indicated increased abnormal motion in DS and RT.

160 patients (119 female, 41 male, mean age 68.8 years, range 38.8-89.3 years) who had undergone decompression only or decompression with instrumented fusion for degenerative spondylolisthesis FK506 with different degrees of narrowing of the spinal canal were identified retrospectively from our spine surgery database.

All had preoperative upright X-rays in AP and lateral views as well as supine MRI. The imaging studies were assessed for the following parameters: percent of slippage, absolute value of facet joint effusion, facet angles, degree of facet degeneration and spinal canal central narrowing, disc height, presence of facet cysts and the presence of rotational translation in the AP X-ray.

40/160 patients showed no facet joint effusion, and in these the difference in the values for the % slip on upright X-ray and % slip on supine MRI was a parts per thousand currency sign3%. A further 12 patients also showed a difference a parts per thousand currency sign3%, but had some fluid in the joints (0.44 +/- A 0.38 mm). In 108 patients, the difference in the % slip measured on X-ray and on MRI was > 3% (mean 10.6%, range 4-29%) and was associated with a mean facet effusion size of 2.15 +/- A 0.85 mm. The extent of effusion correlated significantly with the relative slippage difference between standing and supine positions (r = 0.64, p < 0.