Thirty two patients with malignant lymphoma - mainly Hodgkin's disease - were randomized for simultaneous treatment by high doses of metenolone during MOPP chemotherapy, to reduce its hematological toxicity. The results have shown surprisingly an increased hemato-toxicity in patients receiving androgens, with significantly more marked anemia and thrombocytopenia, reducing the total doses of anti-cancer drugs. This side effect could be explained by a cycling of the hematopoietic stem-cells and call to some caution when androgens are used during cancer chemotherapy.

The prognosis of surgery for carcinoma of the breast is directly and closely related with the number of homolateral axillary lymph nodes involved. When node involvement is present, recurrences are numerous and early, this tendency being increased in accordance with the number involved. When 4 or more nodes are involved, 35 to 52% of recurrences are seen during the first 18 months, according to the differend statistics available. Such recurrences are distant in 85% of cases. This is due to the fact that carcinoma of the breast, even in its early stages, is most often a generalised disease with disseminated lesions in the form of distant micrometastases. In these cases with a poor prognosis, some form of treatment to complement surgery is necessary. Radiotherapy has proved a failure, useless and often harmful as a result of prolonged reduction in cellular immune defences. Prolonged polychemotherapy, by contrast, has shown its great, not to say astonishing, effectiveness. Continued study is thus essential.

In previous researches, it has been observed that the human amniotic fluid presents in vitro an antineoplasic action. 75% of the examined amniotic fluids contain an anti HCG principle. In order to evaluate if the effect of amniotic fluid is due to this principle, cultures of tumoral tissue have been performed, with the Wolff and Wolff's method, using media containing either positive amniotic fluid or negative amniotic fluid. Results obtained with positive amniotic fluid have confirmed the previous observations. A complete degeneration of both tumoral tissue and mesonephros was observed when the culture medium was enriched with negative amniotic fluid.

Deep visceral fungus infections, induced by occasional pathogens, have caused a new class of diseases, and occupy a more and more important place among the complications due to immunosuppressive agents. The experience of the Mycology Unit of the Pasteur Institute, where recent techniques of mycological and immunological diagnosis of these fungus infections are used, is reported here. 24 patients submitted to corticosteroids and other immunosuppressive treatments, including 6 renal transplants and one liver transplant, developed deep visceral infection with septicemia due to Candida, in a series of 106 cases of deep candidiasis due to massive antibiotic treatment diagnosed over the last few years. The mycological, immunological and therapeutic data obtained after treatment with amphotericin B and 5-fluorocytosine are reported here. 8 cases of meningeal, pulmonary and bony and cutaneous cryptococcosis, occurring after corticotherapy (6 cases), radiotherapy (1 case) and renal transplantation (one case), are presented together with the favourable results (6 cures out of 8) obtained with amphotericin B and 5-fluorocytosine, eight alone or in association. The authors also report 2 cases of aspergillosis, one in the lung, occurring in a case of renal transplantation who was given, at an early stage, amphotericin B and 5-fluorocytosine, thanks to rapid laboratory diagnosis, and another case in a heart transplant with pulmonary and cerebral localisations from which the patient died. The literature on these fungus infections, together with the mucormycoses, nocardioses and other fungus and antinomycosal complications are reported, together with parasitic infections the severity of which is emphasized in renal transplants, in particular P. carinii pneumonia, toxoplasmosis, strongyloidiasis and other parasitic diseases.

Bacterial infections are the most common cause of death in patients with malignant blood diseases. After recalling the main bacteria responsible and the factors which predispose patients to infection, the authors consider various forms of treatment, including antibiotic therapy, transfusions of white blood cells, gammaglobulins, etc., and prophlyactic measures, such as antibiotics by mouth, isolation in a sterile ward, etc., which have been proposed for some years. During renal grafts, infective complications are also very frequenct. Their prevention is essential for on this, to a large extent, depends the success of the transplantation.

During acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children, bacterial infections occur during initial treatment, whereas virus infections are observed during remission. Mycoses and pneumocystis carinii infections are the commonest late complications. During agranulocytosis, any prolonged fever should be considered as due to infection and probably septicemia. The bacteria are usually of digestive origin. Antibiotic therapy is only very inconstantly efficacious, and the course follows closely the number of granular cells, thus justifying the use of white cell transfusions.

Chemotherapy has procured results which are still modest surely valid in the treatment of inoperable primary bronchial cancer: - prolongation of the mean survival time from 3 1/2 months for the nontreated cases to 8 1/2 months for those patients treated with complex combinations; - more than 15% of very good results with return to normal professional activity for 6 to 18 months; - approximately 30% of considerable subjective improvement with a definite sense of "well being"; - considerable reduction in the use of pain-killers. These results amply justify the pursuit of research. 2) The results for the combination hormone-chemotherapy, in the case of thoracic metastases of breast cancer, are definitely better. After leukemia in children, and Hodgking and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, metastases from breast cancer constitute a third group of chemosensitive tumors: - for 64 cases, the percentage of complete or partial remission is 84.3%; - there were 34 complete remissions: mean survival 27 months, at present 11 patients still remain alive: 1 to 16, 1 to 17, 2 to 19, 1 to 23, 31, 35, 38, 43, 68 and 70 months; - 20 partial remissions, mean survival 10 1/2 months, one patient still alive; - 10 failures, mean survival 6 months; - mean duration of complete remission 18 months; - mean duration of partial remission 6 months.

The effects of six chemotherapeutic drugs currently used in human gliomas treatment were tested with an in vitro cytotoxicity test. Out of six, VM 26 proved to be the most potent against tumor cells along with a moderate cytotoxicity against normal brain or embryonnic human cells. This specificity did not seem to be related to differences in cellular growth rates.

The results obtained by chemo+radiotherapy in 100 patients with Hodgkin's disease at stage I or II as defined by clinical and radiological staging are analysed. All patients were treated by chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy; 74 received a complement chemotherapy after the radiotherapy. Statistical analysis emphasizes the usefulness of associating two cycles of chemotherapy with the classical radiotherapy. With this treatment which gives a constant remission rate of about 90% a long-term chemotherapy is no longer necessary and the interest of exploratory laparotomy becomes negligible.