Mid-aortic syndrome (MAS) is a rare clinical entity that is characterized by coarctation involving the distal thoracic and/or abdominal aorta and its major branches accounting for 0.5–2% of all cases of coarctation of the aorta (1). Renovascular hypertension can be a significant sequelae - it is the main symptomatic presentation of this disease among children and adolescents. We describe a 9-year-old girl who presents with recurrent abdominal pain and symptomatic hypertension. Due to significant left ventricular systolic dysfunction and uncontrolled hypertension, percutaneous balloon angioplasty was performed to treat the coarctation. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of MAS in Malaysia. This case report highlights the clinical presentation, the role of computed tomography angiogram (CTA) in the diagnosis and current options in the management of MAS.
Abdominal Pain

Background: Ribosomal proteins are traditionally associated with protein biosynthesis until recent studies that implicated their extraribosomal functions in human diseases and cancers. Our previous studies using GeneFishingTM DEG method and microarray revealed underexpression of three ribosomal protein genes, RPS26, RPS27, and RPL32 in cancer of the nasopharynx. Herein, we investigated the expression pattern and nucleotide sequence integrity of these genes in nasopharyngeal carcinoma to further delineate their involvement in tumourigenesis. The relationship of expression level with clinicopathologic factors was also statistically studied. Methods: Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction was performed on nasopharyngeal carcinoma and their paired normal tissues. Expression and sequence of these three genes were analysed. Results: All three ribosomal protein genes showed no significant difference in transcript expressions and no association could be established with clinicopathologic factors studied. No nucleotide aberrancy was detected in the coding regions of these genes. Conclusion: There is no early evidence to substantiate possible involvement of RPS26, RPS27, and RPL32 genes in NPC tumourigenesis.