Anticancer research
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Anticancer research · Nov 2012
Prognostic value of preoperative metabolic tumor volumes on PET-CT in predicting disease-free survival of patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer.
This study aimed to determine the relationship between the pre-operative metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and the disease-free survival (DFS) of patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) using F-18 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG) positron-emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) scanning. ⋯ For patients with stage I NSCLC treated with surgery, preoperative MTV parameters have a limited prognostic value for predicting DFS.
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Anticancer research · Nov 2012
Clinical TrialTalc pleurodesis as surgical palliation of patients with malignant pleural effusion. Analysis of factors affecting survival.
Malignant pleural effusion (MPE) is common in most patients with advanced cancer, especially in those with lung cancer, metastatic breast carcinoma and lymphoma. This complication usually leads patients to suffer from significant dyspnea, which may impair their mobility and reduce their quality of life. In patients with MPE, several interventions have been shown to be useful for palliation of the symptoms, including talc pleurodesis. ⋯ We did not find any relationship between survival and gender (log-rank test, p=0.53) or underlying malignancy associated with MPE (p=0.89, 0.48 and 0.36 for secondary cancer, lung cancer and mesothelioma, respectively). Similarly, no correlation was found between survival and age of the patients (Cox's regression, p=0.44) or quantity of pleural effusion (p=0.88). Our results show that the prognosis of patients after talc pleurodesis is independent of age, gender, type of malignancy and amount of pleural effusion, thus, suggesting the utility of treating all patients with symptomatic MPE early.
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Anticancer research · Nov 2012
Prognostic significance of ERCC1, RRM1 and BRCA1 in surgically-treated patients with non-small cell lung cancer.
Chemotherapy is an important modality of treatment for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Recent studies have shown that assessment of predictive molecular markers could be helpful for estimation of the response rate to chemotherapy. The aim of our study was to assess the relation of mRNA levels of DNA repair genes excision repair cross-complementary group 1 (ERCC1), ribonucleotide reductase subunit M1 (RRM1) and breast cancer 1 (BRCA1), in surgically-resected tumor tissues from patients who underwent adjuvant chemotherapy, to the disease-free interval (DFI) and overall survival (OS). We investigated if potential residual tumor cells after resection reflect properties of the primary tumor and response to chemotherapy according to the level of predictive markers with respect to current knowledge. ⋯ Patients who had been treated with adjuvant chemotherapy and had shown lower expression of repair genes had adverse prognosis. We observed that the assessment of DNA repair gene level in primary tumors treated by surgical resection had prognostic significance and did not predict response to adjuvant chemotherapy.
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Trastuzumab is used for the adjuvant (postoperative) treatment of (HER2)-positive early breast cancer. The duration of treatment is set at one year. The goal of our study was to examine the effective duration of trastuzumab treatment in routine clinical practice. ⋯ Half of the patients completed the 52-week treatment of trastuzumab after surgery for early breast cancer. Trastuzumab was well-tolerated and the rate of discontinuation due to cardiotoxicity was low, compared to published results.
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Anticancer research · Sep 2012
Group IIa sPLA2 inhibition attenuates NF-κB activity and promotes apoptosis of lung cancer cells.
Group IIa secretory phospholipase A2 (sPLA2 IIa) has been implicated in the regulation of metastasis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and the present study investigates its contribution to lung cancer growth and progression. PLA2s initiate signaling in several pathways that mediate cell survival including phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-AKT (PI3K-AKT), p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK), extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB). ⋯ sPLA2 IIa attenuates growth and promotes apoptosis predominantly via its effects on NF-κB activity.