Necrosis of tumor cells can activate both innate and adaptive antitumor immunity. However, there is little information on the effects of necrosis-inducing cancer treatments on tumor-specific T cell immune responses in humans. We studied the effects of a necrosis-inducing treatment (embolization) on anti-alpha-fetoprotein (AFP)-specific CD4(+) T cell responses in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) p...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness of biochemical screening of individual pregnancies for Down's syndrome risk. DESIGN Retrospective determination of risk. SETTING Obstetric and cytogenetic services in Tayside, Scotland. SUBJECTS 3436 pregnant women who had screening for neural tube defects in the second trimester during November 1988 to March 1990 and whose pregnancies were dated by...

Liver disease, in the form of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounts for > 700,000 deaths worldwide. A major reason for this is late diagnosis of HCC. The currently used biomarker, serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is elevated in 40-60% of those with HCC and other markers that can either compliment or replace AFP are desired. Our previous work has identified a number of proteins that contain alter...

During hepatocarcinogenesis, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) synthesis may be dramatically increased while albumin synthesis is frequently decreased. Therefore, a reciprocal modulation between both gene expressions has been hypothesized. In this work, we combined in situ hybridization and immunoperoxidase on parallel liver tissue sections in order to analyze at the cellular level, AFP gene expression a...

In this study I investigated the analytical and clinical performance of the measurement of the free beta-subunit of choriogonadotropin (hCG) in normal pregnancies and in pregnancies affected by Down's syndrome. Free beta-hCG in maternal serum has been shown to be increased in Down's syndrome-affected pregnancies and is proportionally increased in more cases than is total hCG. This study confirm...

BACKGROUND Ethanol injection is the best-known image-guided percutaneous ablation for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and a well-tolerated, inexpensive procedure with few adverse effects. However, there have been few reports on its long-term results. AIMS We report a 20-year consecutive case series at a tertiary referral centre. METHODS We performed 2147 ethanol injection treatments on 685 p...

We studied the in vitro effect of dipyrone on the determination of free triiodothyronine (free T3), cortisol, progesterone, estradiol, carcinoembryonic antigen, human chorionic gonadotropin and alpha-fetoprotein measured with an immunoenzyme assay based on enhanced luminescence that uses peroxidase as label. We found significant interference from dipyrone (p < 0.01) in the determination of all ...

We evaluated changes in levels by comparing serum proteins in senescence-accelerated mouse-prone 8 (SAMP8) mice at 2, 6, 12, and 15 months of age (SAMP8-2 m, -6 m, -12 m, -15 m) to age-matched SAM-resistant 1 (SAMR1) mice. Mice were sacrificed, and blood was analyzed by 2-dimensional electrophoresis combined with mass spectrometry. Five protein spots were present in all SAMP8 serum samples, but...

AIM To assess the efficacy of Percutaneous Ethanol Injection Therapy (PEIT) for the treatment of hepatocarcinoma in a series of Romanian patients, and to compare it with previous studies. MATERIAL AND METHOD We retrospectively evaluated 88 patients with liver cirrhosis (LC) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treated by PEIT. Multiple sessions of PEIT were performed to treat a single nodule of...

OBJECTIVES To search for a new clinical application of melittin (Mel): treating hepatocellular carcinoma with Mel gene. METHODS Recombinant adenoviruses carrying the Mel gene and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) promoter (Ad-rAFP-Mel) were constructed through a bacterial homologous recombinant system. The efficiency of adenovirus-mediated gene transfer and the inhibitory effect of Ad-rAFP-Mel on the p...