Consumption of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in Serbia: a comparison with Croatia and Denmark during 2005–2008

Purpose  

To analyze the amount and pattern of use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) in Serbia and to compare these parameters with those in Croatia and Denmark. The prescribing pattern of NSAIDs in Serbia as a direct indicator of physicians’ knowledge of these agents was also assessed.     

Bilateral thalamic astrocytoma

We present a 68-year-old woman who presented with symptoms of frontotemporal dementia. Brain MRI revealed tumor mass in both thalami and according to WHO classification, the tumor corresponded to diffuse fibrillary astrocytoma grade II. This case points to the role of neuroimaging in patients presenting with classical symptoms of dementia.     

Detection of cancer-specific epigenomic changes in biofluids: Powerful tools in biomarker discovery and application

The genetic and epigenetic material originating from tumour that can be found in body fluids of individuals with cancer harbours tumour-specific alterations and represents an attractive target for biomarker discovery. Epigenetic changes (DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs) are present ubiquitously in virtually all types of human malignancies and may appear in early cancer development, and thus they provide particularly attractive markers with broad applications in diagnostics. In addition, because changes in the epigenome may constitute a signature of specific exposure to certain risk factors, they have the potential to serve as highly specific biomarkers for risk assessment. While reliable detection of cancer-specific epigenetic changes has proven to be technically challenging, a substantial progress has been made in developing the methodologies that allow an efficient and sensitive detection of epigenomic changes using the material originating from body fluids. In this review we discuss the application of epigenomics as a tool for biomarker research, with the focus on the analysis of DNA methylation in biofluids.     

Transposable hypomethylation is associated with metastatic capacity of primary melanomas

Despite the strong progress has been made in the field of melanoma epigenetics, the importance of genome-wide demethylation or hypomethylation remains underestimated. However, this phenomenon might also reflect important epigenetic alterations due to its ability to cause genetic instability. Furthermore, no methylation-based distinction has been drawn among the diverse primary melanoma subtypes. To assess global methylation we measured the methylation level on the 6 CpG sites of LINE1 sequences in 46 primary melanomas in association with patients’ survivals and the clinicopathological characteristics of specimens. We demonstrate that LINE1 hypomethylation is accompanied by the shortened relapse-free survival of melanoma patients; however, Cox regression analysis shows a direct relationship between the overall loss of 5-methylcytosine and metastatic potential of primary melanomas, which is confirmed by Kruskal-Wallis tests with Dunn’s Multiple Comparison Post-test showing that not only the presence but the number of metastases during the 5-year follow-up period is associated with the transposon demethylation. In this study, we demonstrate the strong influence of global DNA demethylation in the metastatic formation of primary melanomas during the follow-up period.