Prognostic significance of telomerase activity in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma [NPC] is one of the very few cancers in which care can be anticipated even in patients with advancer disease. Telomerase enzyme is a specialized multisubunit functioning as a reverse transcriptase that can synthesize the telomeric ends at each cell division. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical significance of telomerase activity, particularly in terms of prognostic impact, in nasopharyngeal carcinoma [NPC]. The studs evaluated 25 NPC specimens using polymerase chain reaction based or telomeric repeat amplification protocol assay. Telomerase activity was detected in 20 [80%] of 25 NPC specimens but in non of the adjacent normal tissue specimens. Factors such as the mean age, sex and size of the tumor did not correlate significantly with telomerase activity. On the other hand, significant positive telomerase activity were observed in the patient with advanced disease, in patients with modal metastases and in patient with poorly differentiated tumour. In conclusion, telomerase activity can be utilized as one of the important prognostic factors in patient with nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Relation of serum prolactin level to systemic lupus erythematosus disease activity: the effect of immunosuppressive medications

The relationship between serum prolactin level and disease activity state and the effect of conventional immunosuppressive medications is still unclear with contradictory results. To study the correlation of prolactin levels with SLE disease activity at the beginning of the study and after 9 months of conventional treatment, this may clear the role of prolactin in the pathogenesis of SLE. Forty five active SLE patients were enrolled in this study, all were females and they were fulfilling the ACR criteria for SLE classification. Patients under medical treatment with drugs that may affect prolactin level as [bromocriptine, chlroquine, cimetidine, metoclopramide ..etc] were excluded. No patient known to have either heart failure, liver failure or kidney failure was allowed in this study. The patient was divided into 2 groups: Group I: Twenty three patients with minor organ affection [cutaneous and joint affection], Group II: Twenty two patients with major organ affection [glomerulonephritis], Group III: Thirty control apparently healthy persons. Serum prolactin was determined with double antibody liquid phase radioimmunoassay at entry and after 9 months of conventional treatment and SLE patients serum prolactin levels were correlated with SLE disease activity index score [SLEDAI]. Our results showed that 31 patients had mild hyperprolactinemia [68.8%], 13 patients in group I and 18 patients at group II. Comparing the serum prolactin levels between SLE patients in both groups I and group II versus control showed a significant increase. After treatment of SLE patients for 9 months, the serum prolactin level showed a significant decrease from a mean [25.6 +/- 5.2 ng/ml] at the beginning to a mean [14.9 +/- 10.2 ng/ml] [p<0.001]. Comparison of SLEDAI scores at the beginning of the study and after 9 months of treatment showed a significant decrease from a mean [15.9 +/- 4.8 ng/ml] to [2.3 +/- 1.7 ng/ml] p<0.001. There was a significant correlation between serum prolactin levels and SLEDAI score at beginning [r = 0.4785], p = 0.0006 and after treatment r = 0.8975, p< 0.001. There is a significant correlation between SLE disease activity and serum prolactin which could be decreased equally by the conventional immunosuppressive treatment. This support that there is a role of prolactin in the pathogenesis of SLE

Diagnostic role of ELISA detected antibodies to citrullinated antigens in rheumatoid arthritis patients: a comparative study

To investigate rheumatoid arthritis [RA] for the diagnostic role of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody [anti-CCP] and antifilaggrin antibody [AFA] in comparison with RF and matrix metalloproteinase-3 [MMP-3]. A total of 60 RA patients and 50 other rheumatic disease patients were included in the study. We used a second generation enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay [ELISA] kit for the detection of anti-CCP. We constructed recombinant human filaggrin, which was citrullinated in vitro with human peptidylarginine deaminase, and subsequently used it as the coating antigen for AFA-ELISA. The specificities of anti-CCP [87.3%] and AFA [93.5%] were superior to those of RF [80.4%] and MMP-3 [50.1%]. The sensitivity of anti-CCP [86.3%] was superior to all others. However, the sensitivity of AFA [66.9%] was inferior to those of RF [68.5%] and MMP-3 [72.6%]. ELISA detection of antibodies to citrullinated antigens, especially a second generation anti-CCP, showed higher discriminative ability than other assays, including RF, and would be useful to aid in the diagnosis of RA in clinical practice