ABSTRACT
Objective To investigate the value of small airway function and sputum eosinophils number monitoring in children with cough variant asthma at remission period.Methods Pulmonary function parameters and induced sputum samples from 52 children with cough variant asthma at remission period were collected.The indicators of small airway function included forced expiratory flow after 25％,50％ and 75％ (MEF25,MEF50 and MEF75) were recorded.Sputum eosinophils number was measured.Sixteen healthy children were taken as control group.Results Small airway function was impaired in different degrees in the children with cough variant asthma at remission period.The MEF50 of the cough variant asthma patients were much lower than that of control group (P ＜ 0.01).Compared with control group,the sputum eosinophils numbers in children with cough variant asthma at remission period were much higher (P ＜0.01).The damages of small airway function were significant in recurrent frequency ≥3 times/year than that of those ＜ 3 times/year.Children associated both with MEF50 less than 80％ and sputum eosinophils numbers ≥4％ were more easy to relapse.Conclusion Monitoring both of small airway function and sputum eosinophils number is important in children with cough variant asthma at remission period.
ABSTRACT
This study was purposed to investigate the incidence of mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) gene rearrangement and partner gene types as well as the clinical features and prognosis of acute leukemia (AL) with this rearrangement through detection in adult AL using combination of 3 techniques, and to evaluate the clinical value of this combination detection. The MLL gene rearrangement in 183 cases of adult AL was detected by combination of conventional cytogenetics, split signal FISH and multiplex nested PCR. The results showed that the incidence of MLL rearrangements in adult patients with AL was low (8.2%), and MLL-AF4 fusion gene was most common and predominant in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), while the MLL-AF6 and MLL-AF9 were most frequent in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Extramedullary involvements were found in 40% of MLL-rearranged AL patients, and 33.3% of patients with MLL-rearranged AL reached to complete remission within 30 days during induction chemotherapy. In addition, in this cohort of MLL-rearranged adult AL patients, the 3-month relapse rate and 6-month overall survival rate were 50.0% and 50.0% respectively. It is concluded that the rate of missed diagnosis of CC technique for patients with MLL-rearranged AL reached to 60% in this study, while the combination of CC, FISH and multiplex nested PCR has been confirmed to have important significance for evaluating prognosis and conducting clinical therapy of patients with MLL-rearranged AL.