Researchers warm up to hypothermia use after cardiac and brain trauma.

matched for age and sex, and 30 healthy volunteers. Hypermethylated RASSF1A sequences were found in the serum of 93% of patients with HCC, 58% of HBV carriers, and none of the healthy individuals. The median RASSF1A levels for the patients with HCC and the HBV carriers were 770 copies/mL and 118 copies/mL, respectively, a finding consistent with previous studies showing that RASSF1A hypermethylation is an early event in HCC pathogenesis and can be found in premalignant liver tissues. Using a cut-off of 300 copies/mL, this marker identified 82% of HCC cases that were negative for -fetoprotein, a known HCC marker. “If the 2 markers are elevated, it’s very likely that a patient has liver cancer,” said lead author K. C. Allen Chan. “It is possible that the 2 markers may be used synergistically to achieve better diagnostic accuracy,” he added.