[Statins represent the most important drug among antilipidemic therapy modalities playing dominant roles against atherosclerotic burden. Statin’s outstanding importance is due partly to cholesterol lowering capacity, however their anti-inflammatoric, antiproliferative, antioxidant and vasodilatative efficacies as a pleiotropic potential indicates much more impact on prompt retardation of atherosclerotic progression. The results concerning statin pleiotropic influence are reviewed which are in association with their new indication in ACS management. The second part of this review delineates suspected side effects of statin use. Only one concern brings safety information: it is a fact that patients being treated with statins may have a small increased risk of increased blood sugar levels and of being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus, but the cardiovascular and mortality benefits of statin therapy exceed the diabetes hazard.]

[Chimeric antigen receptor modified (CAR) T cells are hailed as a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of oncology. CAR T cells were first applied, with outstanding success, in the treatment of various leukaemias, yielding unprecedented antitumor activity and long periods of disease free survival. Following the success of CAR T cell therapy in leukaemias, solid tumors should now be targeted. These are more complex targets, therefore CAR T cell therapy needs to be further optimized for this purpose. Also, some unfortunate side effects, including the potentially deadly global inflammation called cytokine storm have to be minimized and possibly even eradicated. The next decade will be an exciting time to define whether this therapy which is yet exclusively used for cancer patients is also successful in the treatment of other diseases. In a recent study, T cells reengineered with CAR derived chimeric autoantibody receptors (CAAR) efficiently prevented disease progression in pre-clinical animal models simulating the serious autoimmune disorder, pemphigus vulgaris. Therapy was based on CAAR constructs which have the unique ability to selectively recognize and eliminate the B-cell clones secreting autoantibodies against a self-protein, thus playing a key role in disease pathogenesis and progression. In this review, we would like to give an overview about the history of the CAR T-cell concept, summarize briefly the currently running clinical trials, and discuss the challenges and future prospects of CAR T-cell therapy.]

[From a genomic point of view asthma is a multifactorial disease. It means that the susceptibility to the disease results from interaction of several (possibly several hundred) genes; in addition, the development of the disease requires environmental factors, as well. In the last years the hypothesis-free methods became widespread in the field of genomics investigating the genomic background of diseases. These methods do not need previous knowledge about the pathomechanism of the diseases and make it possible to discover new metabolic pathways. In this review all of the new asthma genes will be presented detected in the last few years by two such methods, by positional cloning and genome wide association study. The careful design of the studies, the large populations, the robust genomic and bioinformatic methods make it likely that these genes are really asthma genes playing important roles in the pathomechanism of the disease and are potential new therapeutic targets.]

[A horseshoe kidney is diagnosed usually after the onset of its complication or the symptoms caused by an arising tumor from it. A tumour was diagnosed in the right half of the horseshoe kidney in a 68 year old female patient by excretory urography, ultrasound examination and renovasography. The tumour was removed by radical nephrectomy. The kidney was exposed through a horizontal abdominal approach. Special attention was given to the separate renal arteries supplying the right half of the horseshoe kidney and to the resection of the isthmus and also regional lymphadenectomy. In the diagnosis of a horseshoe kidney excretion urography had exclusively been used earlier but nowadays ultrasound is playing an increasingly important role. Reno vasography is usually needed only before resection or nephrectomy. The appropriate treatment of a horseshoe kidney tumour - in case of a well functioning contralateral kidney - is radical ablastic tumour nephrectomy including regional lymphadenectomy. ]