Objective To study the clinical and imaging features of patients with bone metastases from breast cancer and identify the factors related to the incidence of bone metastases. Methods Three hundred and thirty-four patients with breast cancer were recruited into this study. Whole-body 99Tcm-methylene disphosphonate (MDP) bone scan, clinical staging, pathological, immunohistochemical and serological test results were analyzed retrospectively. χ2 test was used for statistical analysis. Results The incidence rate of bone metastases for patients with and without lymph node metastases was 71% (152/214) and 22. 5% (27/120), respectively (χ2 =72.80, P =0.000). The incidence rate of bone metastases from infiltrated non-specified and specified breast cancer was 69% (203/294) and 41.7% (5/12), respectively (χ2 =3. 97, P=0.046). Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) was elevated in 28.5% (51/179) and 14.9%(11/74) of patients with and without bone metastases, respectively (χ2 = 5. 25, P = 0.022 ). Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), carbohydrate antigen (CA) 15-3, CA125, CA19-9 increased in 68.7% ( 123/179) and 27.0% (20/74) of patients with and without bone metastases, respectively (χ2 = 37. 03, P =0. 000). Conclusions The incidence of bone metastases from breast cancer is correlated to pathological types of primary tumor and lymph node metastases. Bone metastases occurs more frequently in patients with infiltrated, non-specified, primary cancer and with lymph node metastases. Serum ALP, CEA, CA15-3,CA125, CA19-9 might be the tumor makers for early diagnosis of bone metastases from breast cancer.

Objective To investigate the process of electrical activities when human brain deals with the facial sexual information. Methods Forty healthy college students in March 2005 were selected from Southern Medical University. All subjects participating in the experiment vohmtarily were right-handed with normal or corrected sight and never suffered from family history of mental disorder. 360 pictures of real human face (balf females and half males) strange to all participants, were used as the stimulus presented once one by one in randomized order on the screen with a stimulus duration of 800 ms and a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 1200 ms. Half subjects were asked to press the left button of a game-pad immediately after female face presentation and the right for male, the other half reversed. Event-related electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded by 19 channels of international 10-20 system with linked earlobes as reference. EEG epochs from 100 ms before to 800 ms after stimulus were amplified by means of an ERPs system developed in our lab, digitized with sampling frequency of 1000 Hz, bandwidth of [0.1, 30] Hz and a notch of 50 Hz. Electrode impedance was less than 5 kΩ. Trial contaminated with ocular, muscular or any other type of artifacts were inspected visually and rejected. Each 60 stimuli of the same gender faces worked as an overlaying unit (the real overlay number was about 45-50 with bad epochs rejected). Three female and 3 male subjects were excluded owing to the bad ERP record quality and thus 34x6 epochs came from the rest ones. Results (1) The possible difference trend (but P>0.05) between male and female facial stimuli appeared at the frontal area in 40-100 ms after stimuli; (2) The significant difference between male and female appeared at the occipital in 140-160 ms after stimuli (P<0.05); (3) The significant difference between male and female appeared at the large frontal and occipital area in 200-260 ms after stimuli (P<0.05); (4) The significant difference between male and female appeared at the large central parietal in 280-300 ms after stimuli (P<0.05); (5) The significant difference or trend between male and female appeared at several areas in different time after 360 ms. Conclusion In different stage, different brain areas are activated for the facial sexual feature processing. Thus, our brain works as a network.