Color Doppler US pulmonary artery vessel signal: a sign for predicting the benign lesions.

The lung cancer blood supply originates from the bronchial artery. If vessel signals within pulmonary lesions can be confirmed to be those of the pulmonary artery, color Doppler ultrasound (US) should be able to predict and differentiate benign lesions from lung cancers. Two hundred sixty-four patients with abutting thoracic lesions (including 125 lung cancers and 139 benign lesions) underwent color Doppler US examinations. A pulsatile flow, with the vessel signal length on sonographic appearance > or =1 cm demonstrated by color Doppler US, was arbitrarily defined as a pulmonary artery vessel signal. Of the 264 thoracic lesions, 73 (58%) lung cancers and 107 (77%) benign lesions had detectable color Doppler US pulsatile flow vessel signals. Analyzing the pulsatile flow vessel signals, the color Doppler US pulmonary artery vessel signal was present in 74 (53%) benign lesions, but was found in only two (2%) lung cancers of a specific alveolar cell carcinoma with lobar consolidation. Using the pulmonary artery vessel signal, color Doppler US can be valuable in predicting and differentiating benign lesions from lung cancers (p < 0.0001, sensitivity = 0.53, specificity = 0.98 and positive likelihood ratio 26.5). In conclusion, color Doppler US pulmonary artery vessel signal sign is useful in predicting and differentiating benign lesions from lung cancers.

Clinicopathologic correlation of up-regulated genes identified using cDNA microarray and real-time reverse transcription-PCR in human colorectal cancer.

PURPOSE: We hypothesize that changes in the transcription of up-regulated genes are biologically meaningful and may be linked to variations in tumor behavior and clinical features. This study aimed to find individual up-regulated genes responsible for clinicopathologic variations in human colorectal cancer. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Genes up-regulated concurrently in four microarray experiments were taken as candidate genes; 20 candidate genes were verified using real-time reverse transcription-PCR in these four experiments, along with 27 new samples. The presence or absence of up-regulation of these genes was correlated with 10 clinicopathologic variables from 31 patients. The mRNA transcript levels of these 20 candidate genes in the 31 paired samples were also correlated with each other to disclose any expression relationship. RESULTS: Forty percent (8/20) of the candidate genes were verified by real-time reverse transcription-PCR to have a tumor/normal expression ratio > 2. Up-regulation of THY1 and PHLAD1 was associated with the presence of anemia in colon cancer patients (P = 0.036 and 0.009, respectively). Up-regulation of HNRPA1 was more significant in cancer growing in the right-sided colon than the left side (P = 0.027). Up-regulated GPX2 was related to a higher degree of tumor differentiation (P = 0.019). c-MYC was significantly over-expressed in specimens from male compared with female colon cancer patients (P = 0.012). GRO1 was significantly up-regulated in patients younger than 65 years old (P = 0.010) and was found to be frequently over-expressed when cancers were less invasive. In addition, we found that normalized transcript levels of HNRPA1 were tightly associated with that of c-MYC (r = 0.948). CONCLUSIONS: Validation of microarray data using another independent laboratory approach is mandatory and statistical correlation between gene expression status and the patient's clinical features may reveal individual genes relevant to tumor behavior and clinicopathologic variations in human colorectal cancer.