ABSTRACT
We infected HeLa cells with low (10(-9) units), medium (10(-6) units), and high (10(-2) units) influenza B titers and compared the resulting human papilloma virus (HPV), retinoic acid receptor alpha subunit (RARalpha) and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) mRNA content of surviving infected hosts with that of their uninfected precursors by semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase/polymerase chain reaction amplification (RT/PCR). This comparison revealed a moderate and drastic dependence of HPV and RARalpha mRNA content, respectively, but a complete independence of GAPDH mRNA expression on viral titer. A mechanism of adoptive replacement of tolerable cellular with viral gene expression was proposed to explain these findings. We conclude that the reported ability of influenza B viruses to specifically target and eliminate the cervical adenocarcinoma HeLa cell line studied may find practical applications in biological cancer management.
Subject(s)
Adenocarcinoma/virology , Influenza B virus/pathogenicity , Oncolytic Virotherapy , Oncolytic Viruses/pathogenicity , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/virology , Adenocarcinoma/genetics , Adenocarcinoma/metabolism , Adenocarcinoma/therapy , Antigens, Viral/metabolism , Apoptosis , Cell Survival , Female , Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic , Gene Expression Regulation, Viral , Glyceraldehyde-3-Phosphate Dehydrogenases/genetics , Glyceraldehyde-3-Phosphate Dehydrogenases/metabolism , HeLa Cells , Human papillomavirus 18/genetics , Human papillomavirus 18/metabolism , Humans , Influenza B virus/genetics , Influenza B virus/immunology , Oncolytic Viruses/genetics , Oncolytic Viruses/immunology , Phenotype , RNA, Messenger/metabolism , Receptors, Retinoic Acid/genetics , Receptors, Retinoic Acid/metabolism , Retinoic Acid Receptor alpha , Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/genetics , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/metabolism , Uterine Cervical Neoplasms/therapyABSTRACT
We report on three cases with rapidly increasing thyroid masses who were referred with the provisional diagnosis of thyroid carcinoma. In the two cases, the diagnosis of tuberculosis was established after thyroidectomy, but in the third case diagnosis was made pre-operatively with acid fast bacilli (AFB) staining and culture from fine needle aspiration (FNA) material. Although rare, tuberculosis of the thyroid gland should be included in the differential diagnosis of thyroid masses. FNA, AFB staining and culture of the aspirate are important diagnostic tools in these cases.
