Journal of Korean medical science
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J. Korean Med. Sci. · Sep 2012
Prostaglandin E(2) and interleukin-1β reduce E-cadherin expression by enhancing snail expression in gastric cancer cells.
Inflammation is closely related to the progression of cancer as well as tumorigenesis. Here, we investigated the effect of prostaglandin E(2) (PGE(2)) and interleukin-1β (IL-1β) on E-cadherin expression in SNU719 gastric cancer cells. E-cadherin expression decreased as the dose or exposure time of PGE(2) and IL-1β increased, whereas Snail expression increased with dose or time of PGE(2) and IL-1β. ⋯ However, there was no synergic effect of IL-1β and PGE(2) on the expression pattern of E-cadherin and Snail. In conclusion, inflammatory mediators reduced E-cadherin expression by enhancing Snail expression in gastric cancer cells. Inflammation-induced transcriptional regulation of E-cadherin in gastric cancer has implications for targeted chemoprevention and therapy.
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J. Korean Med. Sci. · Sep 2012
Case ReportsEffectiveness of [(124)I]-PET/CT and [(18)F]-FDG-PET/CT for localizing recurrence in patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma.
Although the prognosis of patients with differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) is generally encouraging, a diagnostic dilemma is posed when an increasing level of serum thyroglobulin (Tg) is noted, without detection of a recurrent tumor using conventional imaging tools such as the iodine-131 whole-body scanning (the [(131)I] scan) or neck ultrasonography (US). The objective of the present study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of [(124)I]-PET/CT and [(18)F]-FDG-PET/CT in terms of accurate detection of both iodine- and non-iodine-avid recurrence, compared with that of conventional imaging such as the [(131)I] scan or neck ultrasonography (US). Between July 2009 and June 2010, we prospectively studied 19 DTC patients with elevated thyroglobulin levels but who do not show pathological lesions when conventional imaging modalities are used. ⋯ Among such patients, disease management was modified in six (66.7%) and disease was restaged in seven (77.8%). In particular, the use of the described imaging combination optimized planning of surgical resection to deal with locoregional recurrence in 21.1% (4/19) of patients, who were shown to be disease-free during follow-up after surgery. Our results indicate that combination of [(18)F]-FDG-PET/CT and [(124)I]-PET/CT affords a valuable diagnostic method that can be used to make therapeutic decisions in patients with DTC who are tumor-free on conventional imaging studies but who have high Tg levels.
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J. Korean Med. Sci. · Sep 2012
Assessing the quality of randomized controlled trials published in the Journal of Korean Medical Science from 1986 to 2011.
Low quality clinical trials have a possibility to have errors in the process of deriving the results and therefore distort the study. Quality assessment of clinical trial is necessary in order to prevent any clinical application erroneous results is important. Randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a design for evaluate the effectiveness of medical procedure. ⋯ To compare the quality of articles of JKMS, quality analysis of the RCTs published in Yonsei Medical Journal (YMJ) and Korean Journal of Internal Medicine was also conducted. In the JKMS, YMJ and Korean Journal of Internal Medicine, the quantitative increase of RCT presented over time was observed but no qualitative improvement of RCT was observed over time. From the results of this study, it is required for the researchers to plan for and perform higher quality studies.
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J. Korean Med. Sci. · Sep 2012
Usefulness of glycated hemoglobin as diagnostic criteria for metabolic syndrome.
The metabolic syndrome (MetS) is the clustering of cardiovascular risk factors and known as a powerful predictor of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) is used as one of the diagnostic criteria for diabetes and category of increased risk for diabetes. We examined the usefulness of HbA1c as a diagnostic tool for MetS and to determine the cut-off value of HbA1c as a criterion for MetS, in non-diabetic Korean subjects. ⋯ The prevalence of MetS was 8.5% according to the IDF guideline and 10.9% according to HbA1c value of 5.7%, showing 69.5% agreement rate. The detection rate of MetS increased to 25.7% using the HbA1c criterion of 5.7% instead of fasting hyperglycemia. This study suggests that HbA1c might be used as a diagnostic criterion for MetS and the appropriate cut-off value of HbA1c may be 5.65% in this Korean population.