BACKGROUND The first-line treatment for resectable pancreatic cancer (RPC) is surgical resection. However, our patients have often experienced early recurrence after curative resection for RPC, with desperately poor prognosis. Some reports indicated that minimally distant metastasis not detected at operation might cause early recurrence. The present study aimed to identify preoperative clinicop...

INTRODUCTION Lack of diagnostic makers results in loss of operation opportunity in that most patients are diagnosed at the late stage. Pancreatic cancer (PC) has been regarded as a fatal disease with a 5-year survival rate below 10%. Therefore, the development of diagnostic biomarkers for PC is in urgent need to control the mortality of the disease. MATERIALS AND METHODS This is a case-contro...

BACKGROUND Current staging methods for pancreatic cancer (PC) are inadequate, and biomarkers to aid clinical decision making are lacking. Despite the availability of the serum marker carbohydrate antigen 19.9 (CA19.9) for over two decades, its precise role in the management of PC is yet to be defined, and as a consequence, it is not widely used. METHODS We assessed the relationship between pe...

BACKGROUNDS/AIMS To find independent predictors that affect the survival in patients with hepatic metastasis of colorectal cancer after surgery and to devise a risk scoring system. METHODS Among 150 patients who underwent hepatic resection after diagnosis of colorectal cancer with hepatic metastasis between March 1994 and February 2009, we analyzed clinical, pathologic and outcome data retros...

AIMS To evaluate the clinical significance of multiple serum tumor markers (TMs) in the diagnosis of gastric cancer (GC) and establish an accurate discriminant equation to identify the presence of GC. RESULTS The serum levels of CEA, CA19-9 and CA72-4 were higher in the GC group than in the control group (P < 0.005). The sensitivity of CEA, CA19-9 and CA72-4 in the diagnosis of GC was 20.1-27...

Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) is an exclusive human pathogen, which has evolved a number of unique mechanisms to survive within the human environment. An important part of this is the ability of the organism to take up and incorporate sialic acid into its surface structures. This protects the organism against host adaptive and innate immune factor as well as serving as a mechanism f...

It has recently been reported that human adult beta-cells proliferate during culture on an extracellular matrix prepared from rat 804G cells and in the presence of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF). The present study compares the mitogenic effect of this condition on human beta-cells and on neighboring non-endocrine duct cells. Islet cell-enriched fractions were prepared from adult human organ don...

BACKGROUND To investigate the predictive values of preoperative and postoperative serum CA19-9 levels on survival and other prognostic factors including early recurrence in patients with resectable hilar cholangiocarcinoma. RESULTS In univariate analysis, increased preoperative and postoperative CA19-9 levels in the light of different cut-off points (37, 100, 150, 200, 400, 1000 U/ml) were si...

BACKGROUND To examine the predictive value of tumor markers for evaluating tumor resectability in patients with hilar cholangiocarcinoma and to explore the prognostic effect of various preoperative factors on resectability in patients with potentially resectable tumors. Patients with potentially resectable tumors judged by radiologic examination were included. The receiver operating characteris...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal malignancies affecting mankind. At the time of diagnosis, only 20% of patients are considered eligible for surgery and approximately one half of these patients undergo successful resection. For patients with locally advanced or metastatic disease, the median survival time is less than 1 year.1-4 Thus, it is crucial to diagnose or detect the recurrence...