Antibiotic use and risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma: a population-based case-control study

Antibiotic use in 759 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) patients and 589 controls was compared. Neither total antibiotic use ( odds ratio 0.7, 95% confidence interval = 0.5-1.2), nor antibiotic use by site, was associated with total NHL, or NHL subtypes. There were no trends with frequency or age at first use (P trend = 0.23 and 0.26, respectively).

Clinical Utility of Microarray-Based Gene Expression Profiling in the Diagnosis and Subclassification of Leukemia: Report From the International Microarray Innovations in Leukemia Study Group

The Microarray Innovations in Leukemia study assessed the clinical utility of gene expression profiling as a single test to subtype leukemias into conventional categories of myeloid and lymphoid malignancies. METHODS: The investigation was performed in 11 laboratories across three continents and included 3,334 patients. An exploratory retrospective stage I study was designed for biomarker discovery and generated whole-genome expression profiles from 2,143 patients with leukemias and myelodysplastic syndromes. The gene expression profiling-based diagnostic accuracy was further validated in a prospective second study stage of an independent cohort of 1,191 patients. RESULTS: On the basis of 2,096 samples, the stage I study achieved 92.2% classification accuracy for all 18 distinct classes investigated (median specificity of 99.7%). In a second cohort of 1,152 prospectively collected patients, a classification scheme reached 95.6% median sensitivity and 99.8% median specificity for 14 standard subtypes of acute leukemia (eight acute lymphoblastic leukemia and six acute myeloid leukemia classes, n = 693). In 29 (57%) of 51 discrepant cases, the microarray results had outperformed routine diagnostic methods. CONCLUSION: Gene expression profiling is a robust technology for the diagnosis of hematologic malignancies with high accuracy. It may complement current diagnostic algorithms and could offer a reliable platform for patients who lack access to today's state-of-the-art diagnostic work-up. Our comprehensive gene expression data set will be submitted to the public domain to foster research focusing on the molecular understanding of leukemias

Risk of Malignant Progression in Barrett’s Esophagus Patients: Results from a Large Population-Based Study

Background: Barrett's esophagus (BE) is a premalignant lesion that predisposes to esophageal adenocarcinoma. However, the reported incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma in patients with BE varies widely. We examined the risk of malignant progression in patients with BE using data from the Northern Ireland Barrett's esophagus Register (NIBR), one of the largest population-based registries of BE worldwide, which includes every adult diagnosed with BE in Northern Ireland between 1993 and 2005.

Subjects and Methods: We followed 8522 patients with BE, defined as columnar lined epithelium of the esophagus with or without specialized intestinal metaplasia (SIM), until the end of 2008. Patients with incident adenocarcinomas of the esophagus or gastric cardia or with high-grade dysplasia of the esophagus were identified by matching the NIBR with the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, and deaths were identified by matching with records from the Registrar General's Office. Incidence of cancer outcomes or high-grade dysplasia was calculated as events per 100 person-years (% per year) of follow-up, and Cox proportional hazard models were used to determine incidence by age, sex, length of BE segment, presence of SIM, macroscopic BE, or low-grade dysplasia. All P values were from two-sided tests.

Results: After a mean of 7.0 years of follow-up, 79 patients were diagnosed with esophageal cancer, 16 with cancer of the gastric cardia, and 36 with high-grade dysplasia. In the entire cohort, incidence of esophageal or gastric cardia cancer or high-grade dysplasia combined was 0.22% per year (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.19% to 0.26%). SIM was found in 46.0% of patients. In patients with SIM, the combined incidence was 0.38% per year (95% CI = 0.31 to 0.46%). The risk of cancer was statistically significantly elevated in patients with vs without SIM at index biopsy (0.38% per year vs 0.07% per year; hazard ratio [HR] = 3.54, 95% CI = 2.09 to 6.00, P <. 001), in men compared with women (0.28% per year vs 0.13% per year; HR = 2.11, 95% CI = 1.41 to 3.16, P <. 001), and in patients with low-grade dysplasia compared with no dysplasia (1.40% per year vs 0.17% per year; HR = 5.67, 95% CI = 3.77 to 8.53, P <. 001).

Conclusion: We found the risk of malignant progression among patients with BE to be lower than previously reported, suggesting that currently recommended surveillance strategies may not be cost-effective. © The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Increasing incidence of Barrett's oesophagus: a population-based study

Oesophageal adenocarcinoma, a highly fatal cancer, has risen in incidence in Western societies, but it is unclear whether this is due to increasing incidence of its pre-cursor condition, Barrett's oesophagus (BO) or whether the proportion of BO patients undergoing malignant progression has increased in the face of unchanged BO incidence. Data from population-based studies of BO incidence is limited, with equivocal results to date difficult to distinguish from changes in endoscopic practices. The aim of this study was to assess population trends in Barrett's oesophagus (BO) diagnoses in relation to endoscopy and biopsy rates over a 13 year period. The Northern Ireland Barrett's oesophagus Register (NIBR) is a population-based register of all 9,329 adults diagnosed with columnar epithelium of the oesophagus in Northern Ireland between 1993 and 2005, of whom 58.3% were male. European age-standardised annual BO incidence rates were calculated per 100,000 of the population, per 100 endoscopies and per 100 endoscopies including an oesophageal biopsy. Average annual BO incidence rates rose by 159% during the study period, increasing from 23.9/100,000 during 1993-1997 to 62.0/100,000 during 2002-2005. This elevation far exceeded corresponding increases in rates of endoscopies and oesophageal biopsies being conducted. BO incidence increased most markedly in individuals aged <60 years, and most notably amongst males aged <40 years. This study points towards a true increase in the incidence of BO which would appear to be most marked in young males. These findings have significant implications for future rates of oesophageal adenocarcinoma and surveillance programmes. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

An understanding of chemoselective hydrogenation on crotonaldehyde over Pt(111) in the free energy landscape: The microkinetics study based on first-principles calculations

Microkinetic model is developed in the free energy landscape based on density functional theory (DFT) to quantitatively investigate the reaction mechanism of chemoselective partial hydrogenation of crotonaldehyde to crotyl alcohol over Pt(1 1 1) at the temperature of 353 K. Three different methods (mobile, immobile and collision theory models) were carried out to obtain free energy barrier of adsorption/desorption processes. The results from mobile and collision theory models are similar. The calculated TOFs from both models are close to the experiment value. However, for the immobile model, in which the free energy barrier of desorption approaches the energy barrier, the calculated TOF is 2 orders of magnitude lower than the other models. The difficulty of adsorption/ desorption may be overestimated in the immobile model. In addition, detailed analyses show that for the surface hydrogenation elementary steps, the entropy and internal energy effects are small under the reaction condition, while the zero-point-energy (ZPE) correction is significant, especially for the multi-step hydrogenation reaction. The total energy with the ZPE correction approaches to the full free energy calculation for the surface reaction under the reaction condition. (c) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A comparative study of qualitative immunochemical screening assays for the combined measurement of T-2/HT-2 in cereals and cereal-based products

Many different immunochemical platforms exist for the screening of naturally occurring contaminants in food from the low cost enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) to the expensive instruments such as optical biosensors based on the phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The primary aim of this study was to evaluate and compare a number of these platforms to assess their accuracy and precision when applied to naturally contaminated samples containing HT-2/T-2 mycotoxins. Other important factors considered were the speed of analysis, ease of use (sample preparation techniques and use of the equipment) and ultimately the cost implications. The three screening procedures compared included an SPR biosensor assay, a commercially available ELISA and an enzyme-linked immunomagnetic electrochemical array (ELIME array). The qualitative data for all methods demonstrated very good overall agreements with each other, however on comparison with mass spectrometry confirmatory results, the ELISA and SPR assay performed slightly better than the ELIME array, exhibiting an overall agreement of 95.8% compared to 91.7%. Currently, SPR is more costly than the other two platforms and can only be used in the laboratory whereas in theory both the ELISA and ELIME array are portable and can be used in the field, but ultimately this is dependent on the sample preparation techniques employed. Sample preparative techniques varied for all methods evaluated, the ELISA was the most simple to perform followed by that of the SPR method. The ELIME array involved an additional clean-up step thereby increasing both the time and cost of analysis. Therefore in the current format, field use would not be an option for the ELIME array. In relation to speed of analysis, the ELISA outperformed the other methods.