Patients with substantial carotid artery narrowing are at increased risk for major stroke,^1-6 but the pathogenic mechanisms linking carotid atherosclerosis and ischemic brain injury still need to be fully clarified.Clinical trials designed to evaluate the beneficial effects of endarterectomy in symptomatic and asymptomatic patients have focused on carotid stenosis severity and plaque ulceration as risk factors for cerebrovascular events. The results of the European Carotid Surgery Trial^2,3 and the North American Symptomatic Carotid Endarterectomy Trial(NASCET)^4,5 suggest that surgery is indicated for stroke prevention when stenosis is more than 70%. TheNASCET study showed that among symptomatic patients with high-grade carotid stenosis (>70%) not treated by surgery, the 2-year rate of any ipsilateral stroke was 26.0% for major stroke and 13.1% for fatal stroke.⁵ The Asymptomatic Carotid Atherosclerosis Study⁷ suggested that indications for carotid endarterectomy could be broadened to include asymptomatic patients with carotid stenosis of more than 60% and that the aggregate risk over 5 years for ipsilateral stroke and any perioperative stroke was estimated at 11.0% for asymptomatic patients treated medically.

The Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) microanalysis is a technique of elemental analysis associated to electron microscopy based on the generation of characteristic Xrays that reveals the presence of elements present in the specimens. The EDX microanalysis is used in different biomedical fields by many researchers and clinicians. Nevertheless, most of the scientific community is not fully aware of its possible applications. The spectrum of EDX microanalysis contains both semi-qualitative and semi-quantitative information. EDX technique is made useful in the study of drugs, such as in the study of drugs delivery in which the EDX is an important tool to detect nanoparticles (generally, used to improve the therapeutic performance of some chemotherapeutic agents). EDX is also used in the study of environmental pollution and in the characterization of mineral bioaccumulated in the tissues. In conclusion, the EDX can be considered as a useful tool in all works that require element determination, endogenous or exogenous, in the tissue, cell or any other sample.

Inflammation plays a major role in all phases of atherosclerosis. Stable plaques are characterized by a chronic inflammatory infiltrate, whereas vulnerable and ruptured plaques are characterized by an “active” inflammation involved in the thinning of the fibrous cap, predisposing the plaque to rupture. Although a single vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque rupture may cause the event, there are many other types of plaques, several of which are vulnerable. The existence of multiple types of vulnerable plaques suggests that atherosclerosis is a diffuse inflammatory process. A current challenge is to identify morphologic and molecular markers able to discriminate stable plaques from vulnerable ones, allowing the stratification of patients at high risk for acute cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events before clinical syndromes develop. With that aim in mind, this article summarizes the natural history of atherosclerotic plaques, focusing on molecular mechanisms affecting plaque progression and serum markers correlated with plaque inflammation.

MiR-221 and miR-222 are two highly homologous microRNAs whose upregulation has been recently described in several types of human tumors, for some of which their oncogenic role was explained by the discovery of their target p27, a key cell cycle regulator. We previously showed this regulatory relationship in prostate carcinoma cell lines in vitro, underlying the role of miR-221/222 as inducers of proliferation and tumorigenicity. Here we describe a number of in vivo approaches confirming our previous data. The ectopic overexpression of miR-221 is able, per se, to confer a high growth advantage to LNCaP-derived tumors in SCID mice. Consistently, the anti-miR-221/222 antagomir treatment of established subcutaneous tumors derived from the highly aggressive PC3 cell line, naturally expressing high levels of miR-221/222, reduces tumor growth by increasing intratumoral p27 amount; this effect is long lasting, as it is detectable as long as 25 days after the treatment. Furthermore, we provide evidence in favour of a clinical relevance of the role of miR-221/222 in prostate carcinoma, by showing their general upregulation in patient-derived primary cell lines, where we find a significant inverse correlation with p27 expression. These findings suggest that modulating miR-221/222 levels may have a therapeutic potential in prostate carcinoma.