Large-scale proteomics analysis of human ovarian cancer for biomarkers.

Ovarian cancer is usually found at a late stage when the prognosis is often bad. Relative survival rates decrease with tumor stage or grade, and the 5-year survival rate for women with carcinoma is only 38%. Thus, there is a great need to find biomarkers that can be used to carry out routine screening, especially in high-risk patient groups. Here, we present a large-scale study of 64 tissue samples taken from patients at all stages and show that we can identify statistically valid markers using nonsupervised methods that distinguish between normal, benign, borderline, and malignant tissue. We have identified 217 of the significantly changing protein spots. We are expressing and raising antibodies to 35 of these. Currently, we have validated 5 of these antibodies for use in immunohistochemical analysis using tissue microarrays of healthy and diseased ovarian, as well as other, human tissues.

Differences in human papillomavirus type may influence clinical outcome in early stage cervical cancer.

BACKGROUND: The presence of human papillomavirus (HPV), the HPV type and viral load in early stage cervical carcinoma were investigated in order to elucidate whether any of these factors were important for clinical outcome. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Twelve patients who were disease-free 5 years after diagnosis were matched and compared with 12 patients who died within 2 years. The presence of HPV, HPV type and viral load in their tumours was examined by PCR. RESULTS: The distribution and load of HPV was similar in the 2 patient groups. HPV-16 was, however, significantly more common in tumours of the surviving patients than in those of patients who died (88.9% and 18.2%, respectively, p = 0.0152). CONCLUSION: HPV-16 was significantly more common in early stage carcinomas of patients surviving more than 5 years in comparison to early stage carcinomas of patients with a poor prognosis.

Adenocarcinoma of the uterine cervix: the presence of human papillomavirus and the method of detection.

BACKGROUND: Effective screening programs have contributed to a decrease in the incidence of cervical squamous cell carcinomas but have had a limited sensitivity in the detection of adenocarcinoma precursor lesions. The aim of our study was to analyze cervical adenocarcinoma in greater detail: symptoms preceding the detection, the method of detection and the prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV) with respect to age at diagnosis. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Clinical data were abstracted from the medical records of 82 women with pure invasive cervical adenocarcinomas. As diagnostic tools we used polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and/or direct DNA sequencing for HPV detection. RESULTS: Age at diagnosis predicting factors were HPV status, positive lymph nodes, histology and stage. HPV-negativity, lymph node metastases, advanced stage and poor differentiation were all associated with a high diagnostic age. In the multivariate analysis only HPV status was shown to have an independent impact on age at diagnosis, while stage showed only borderline significance. Twenty-three percent of the cancers were detected by screening and the remaining were due to different symptoms. Among the women considered, 93% had a normal Papanicolaou (Pap) smear 3 years before diagnosis and 60% within 1 year. There was no significant correlation between smoking, oral contraceptives and HPV-positivity. CONCLUSIONS: The absence of HPV was significantly associated with a high age at diagnosis. Pap screening had a limited effect in detecting adenocarcinoma at an early stage.

Decreasing incidence of malignant tumors of the paranasal sinuses in Sweden. An analysis of 141 consecutive cases at Karolinska Hospital from 1960 to 1980.

We reviewed 141 cases of paranasal sinus tumors treated at Karolinska Hospital from 1960 to 1980. Of these tumors, 100 were located in the maxillary sinus, 32 in the ethmoidal sinuses, 8 in both the ethmoidal and maxillary regions, and 1 in the sphenoidal sinus. The male-to-female ratio was 2.1 to 1. Squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma were the most frequent types of tumors (55% and 13%, respectively). Treatment included surgery, irradiation, or both. The 5-year survival rate was 34% for squamous cell carcinomas and 64% for adenocarcinomas. When compared to a previous material of patients treated at the same hospital from 1940 to 1950, the proportion of poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinomas had increased significantly. The age-adjusted incidence rate decreased from 1.2 to 0.4 for male patients and from 0.7 to 0.3 for female patients between 1960 and 1980. We conclude that the incidence of malignant paranasal sinus tumors has decreased, and that squamous cell tumors now seem to be generally less differentiated than they were 50 years ago.