Neurolysis of celiac plexus and splanchnic nerve under ultrasonographic guidance

Key words  intractable pain - celiac plexus neurolysis - ultrasonography     

Transient induction of single GST-P positive hepatocytes by DEN

The single cells positive for placental glutathione S-transferase(GST-P), detectable in livers of rats soon after treatment withhepatocarcinogens, are possible ‘initiated cells’,the hypothesis tested in the present series of experiments.No low dose threshold was observed in male Sprague-Dawley ratsat different single doses of diethylnitrosamine (DEM) althougha plateau was reached between 160 and 200 mg/kg body weight.At the latter single dose 12 400 positive cells/cm³ were observedimmunohistochemically in rat livers after one week, the numbersthen decreasing to week 8 and thereafter rising again. In thenumbers then decreasing to week 8 and thereafter rising again.In the early stages single cells predominated but with timea gradual increase in mini-foci and larger lesions became evident.Application of selection pressure (feeding of diet containing0.02% 2-AAF plus partial hepatectomy) to rats 2–24 weeksafter single DEN-treatment resulted in the formation of largefoci positive for GST-P, especially in the early stages, thegrowth response being less pronounced with time. The numberof foci, on the other hand. was correlated with the number offoci, on the other hand, was correlated with the number ofsingle cells/mini-foci detected inhepatectomy tissue of thesame individuals. These results suggest that the early GST-Ppositive populations could be the precursor for preneoplasticfoci and nodules.     

Diazepam reduces both arterial blood pressure and muscle sympathetic nerve activity in human

It is known that benzodiazepines have a hypotensive effect, but the mechanism has not been well elucidated yet. To clarify whether this effect is due to central or peripheral mechanism, we administered 5 mg of diazepam or saline intravenously to healthy volunteers and assessed the change in blood pressure, heart rate, muscle sympathetic nerve activity and heart rate variability. After diazepam administration, systolic and mean blood pressure decreased significantly. Muscle sympathetic nerve activity was also significantly reduced but heart rate did not change, whereas the variables of spectral analysis of heart rate variability did not show significant change. We concluded that the hypotensive effect of diazepam in human is mainly due to the central mechanism.     

Molecular-based diagnosis of thyroid carcinoma: germ-cell carcinogenesis and aspiration biopsy nucleic acid diagnosis(ABND)

Recent data have shown the existence of specific changes in mRNAs in thyroid carcinomas. It has not been clarified, however, why these changes clearly distinguish benign tissues from carcinomas, while genomic alternation such as mutations in the RAS or P53 genes do not. Further, the widely believed hypothesis, multi-step carcinogenesis, does not explain some clinical and experimental evidence of thyroid carcinomas. Considering these facts, we propose a new idea for thyroid carcinogenesis called "germ-cell carcinogenesis", in which cancer cells are derived from the remnant of fetal thyroid germ cells(thyroblasts) instead of normal thyroid follicular cells. Utilizing such mRNAs, we have established a new method for preoperative molecular-based diagnosis of thyroid carcinomas, Aspiration Biopsy Nucleic Acid Diagnosis(ABND). ABND allows us to perform preoperative nucleic acid analyses of the tumors by extracting RNAs or DNAs from tumor cells obtained by fine needle aspiration biopsies(FNABs). Pathological diagnosis of thyroid follicular carcinoma is quite difficult, and the establishment of preoperative molecular-based diagnosis of follicular carcinoma has been long expected. We found that quantification of the trefoil factor 3(TFF3)/galectin-3 mRNA ratio in thyroid tumor cells is a useful tool for distinction between follicular adenomas and carcinomas. Because ABND can be performed without any severe invasion to the patients, in the near future, when more reliable systems of quantitative RNA analysis have been developed, ABND will probably become one of the standard tests for preoperative diagnosis of thyroid carcinoma.     

Presence of natural killer-cell clones with variable proliferative capacity in chronic active Epstein-Barr virus infection

Chronic active Epstein-Barr virus infection (CAEBV) is a syndrome that takes diverse clinical courses and is often associated with lymphoproliferative disorders of T/natural killer (NK)-cell lineage. We describe a patient with CAEBV associated with persistent pharyngeal ulcer, and with subsequent nasal T/NK-cell lymphoma in her neck lymph nodes and nasopharynx. Immunophenotyping of lymphoid cells showed that the lineage of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-positive cells in the patient was of NK-cell origin. By means of high-dose recombinant interleukin-2, we established an EBV-positive cell line of NK-cell lineage from her peripheral blood. Southern blot analysis for the number of terminal repeat sequences of EBV detected three NK-cell clones in the patient's lymph node. One of these clones was identical to the established cell line but was not observed in the pharyngeal ulcer, while the other two clones were present in the pharyngeal ulcer. These results suggest that the patient had expansion of the three NK-cell clones, one of which had proliferative capacity in vitro and was involved in the formation of the lymphoma. Moreover, the results suggest that the proliferative capacity of EBV-positive cells can be variable even in a single patient, and this variability may explain the clinical diversity in CAEBV.     

Relationship between production of epidermal growth factor receptors, gene amplification, and chromosome 7 translocation in variant A431 cells

Synthesis of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor has been analyzed in a series of variant A431 human epidermoid carcinoma cell clones reported to contain different amounts of EGF binding sites. The amount of EGF receptor protein, quantitated by immunoaffinity chromatography, and EGF receptor mRNA, quantitated by cDNA hybridization, were closely correlated to the extent of EGF receptor gene amplification. This correlation existed in variants selected for reduced EGF receptors and in revertants from those variants with increased EGF receptors. There was also a correlation between the frequency of translocation of chromosome 7, containing the EGF receptor gene, and EGF receptor protein. These results support gene amplification as the mechanism enhancing A431 cell EGF receptor protein and determining growth responses.     

T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia with add(1)(p36) and del(12)(p11) following acute myelocytic leukemia with partial deletion of 9p

We describe the case of a 40-year-old man whose disease was initially diagnosed as acute myelocytic leukemia. The patient achieved remission with chemotherapy, but relapsed shortly afterwards with an acute T-cell lymphoblastic leukemia. He died of intracranial bleeding. Karyotyping analysis showed a del(9p?) as a common abnormality in the leukemic cells at onset and relapse. Fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis demonstrated allelic loss of the CDKN2A gene in cells from both stages of the disease. At relapse the leukemia cells had additional abnormalities such as add(1)(p36) and del(12)(p11). We postulate that the loss of CDKN2A is involved in leukemogenesis but does not determine the lineage of the leukemic cells. Instead, abnormalities of genes at 1p36, 12p11, or both may be involved in driving a lymphoid phenotype.     

Statistical and integrative approach for constructing biological network maps

A goal of systems biology is to build a concrete biochemical network map, which provides an important instruction to trace the pathways of interest or to understand the mechanism of a biological system. In the postgenomic era, not only the concrete biochemical maps, but also postgenomic maps (mRNA coexpression and protein-protein interaction networks) have been extensively produced. In the biochemical map, the individual reactions are reliable, but the number of the reactions is limited, because molecular biology requires extensive experiments to verify them. By contrast, postgenomic data provide much information regarding interactions, but are coarse-grained. To expand the biochemical network, an intuitional approach, which superposes postgenomic data on the map one by one, has been carried out, but it is not effective when a large amount of the coarse-grained data is handled. In order to effectively integrate such postgenomic interactions into a biochemical map, a statistical approach would be suitable rather than intuition. In this article, we proposed a novel statistical approach that integrates postgenomic interaction networks into the biochemical network, predicting novel pathways. A statistical correlation for such different types of networks identifies functional modules; subsequently the superposition of the different networks on the functional modules predicts inter-modular relations, which are the key pathways to construct a large-scale biochemical network.