Zurbano-Azqueta L, Antón-Casas E, Duque-Gómez S, Jiménez-Gómez I, Fernández-Pellón L, et al.
Revista clinica espanola •
Alpha-gal syndrome is a potentially severe food allergy caused by the presence of alpha-gal-specific IgE. The aim of this study is to describe our series of 13 patients. This work is a retrospective study of patients diagnosed in 2016 and 2017. Skin tests were performed with commercial extract and gelaspan as well as specific IgE determination for alpha-gal and different types of meat. Thirteen patients diagnosed with alpha-gal syndrome were analyzed; 9 of them had anaphylaxis, 6 of whom had been diagnosed with idiopathic anaphylaxis. All had a positive skin test with gelaspan, though this was not true with the commercial extracts, whose results were less conclusive. We believe that a diagnosis of idiopathic anaphylaxis may prevent the identification of patients with alpha-gal syndrome. The gelaspan skin test is more useful than commercial extracts.
Sastre J, Aranda E, Grávalos C, Massutí B, Varella-Garcia M, et al.
Critical reviews in oncology/hematology •
to evaluate the efficacy and safety of first-line single-agent cetuximab in fit elderly patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, as well as potential molecular predictive factors for efficacy. patients aged 70 or older with metastatic CRC without criteria for frailty and no prior treatment for advanced disease were treated with single-agent cetuximab 400mg/m(2) followed by weekly 250mg/m(2) until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. forty-one patients were included. Two patients achieved a complete response and 4 patients had a partial response for an overall response rate of 14.6%. Fifteen patients (36.6%) remained stable. Median time to progression was 2.9 months and median overall survival 11.1 months despite two-third of patients received chemotherapy at progression. Forty-five percent of EGFR gene copy number positive patients by FISH were progression-free at 12 weeks, in contrast with 12% of FISH negative patients (p=0.04). Grade 3 skin toxicity was reported in 5 patients (12.2%). Hypersensitivity infusion reactions were not reported and there were no toxic deaths. cetuximab is a safe monoclonal antibody with moderate activity in first-line metastatic colorectal cancer, but the present study does not support the use of cetuximab as single-agent in first-line fit elderly patients with metastatic CRC.