Cancer treatment decisions rely on genetics, large data screens and clinical pharmacology. Here we point out that genetic analysis and treatment decisions may overlook critical elements in cancer development, progression and drug resistance. Two critical structural elements are missing in genetics-based decision-making: the mechanisms of oncogenic mutations and the cellular network which is rew...

Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the main diagnostic tool when it comes to prostate cancer but it possesses serious limitations. Therefore, there is an urgent need for more sensitive and specific biomarkers for prostate cancer prognosis and patient follow-up. Recent advances led to the discovery of many novel diagnostic/prognostic techniques and provided us with many worthwhile candidates. Th...

Autophagy is an important catabolic process in which cells digest and recycle their own cytoplasmic contents for maintaining cellular homeostasis. Interestingly, autophagy could play both pro-death and pro-survival roles in influencing the development of cancer via various signal pathways. As radiotherapy is one of the main treatment modalities for cancer, we reviewed the effect of autophagy mo...

BACKGROUND The mechanism by which vitrectomy improves macular edema in patients with branch retinal vein occlusion remains unclear, although intraocular levels of vascular endothelial growth factor have been suggested to influence the visual prognosis and macular edema. METHODS A series of 54 consecutive patients (54 eyes) with branch retinal vein occlusion was studied prospectively. All pati...

The p53 wild-type protein plays an important role in cells as is shown by its fine regulation at different levels. Since its discovery, numerous mutations have been described. In breast cancers, p53 is mutated in almost 30% of cases, with a higher frequency in some tumor subtypes. TP53 mutation is reported to be a factor for good prognosis in some studies, while in others it is a factor for poo...

conclusions prognosis of this type of tumor, apart from its size and differentiation level, depends on infiltration in tumor-surrounding tissue, perineural and perivascular spread. therefore, it is always necessary to analyze the removed skin especially on margins. introduction squamous cell carcinoma is the most common type of lip and oral cavity cancers. in majority of cases it follows quite ...

background urinary tract infection (uti) is common in children. uti with or without vesico-ureteral reflux (vur) may result in renal scarring. severe renal scarring impairs renal function and may result in hypertension, renal insufficiency, and end stage renal disease requiring dialyses or transplantation. beta 2 micro-globulin (ß2mg) is a low molecular weight protein freely filtered by the glo...

objectives: to describe the characteristics and prognostic factors of 28 patients with fournier’s gangrene (fg) referred to our medical center at southeastern iran. methods: this was a cross-sectional study including 28 cases of fg that were operated in surgery department of zahedan university of medical sciences during a 10-year period from april 2002 to march 2012. the study analyzed 9 parame...

results the median level of pbmcs htert mrna in survivors increased with treatment time and was significantly higher than the corresponding level in non-survivors after 14 days of treatment (p < 0.001). subgroup analyses showed that the levels of pbmcs htert mrna were remarkably higher in patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure than in those with chronic liver failure (p < 0.05). in patien...

background: gastric and colorectal adenocarcinoma are the second and the fifth most common cancers in iran, respectively. expression of cytokeratin 7 (ck7) is established in most malignancies including gastric and colorectal adenocarcinoma. demonstration of ck7 could be related to prognostic factors and help to the better management of the patients. the objective of our study was to evaluate th...