Sexuell samvaro vid hjärtsjukdom

Varje år är det cirka 38 000 personer som vårdas för hjärtsjukdom. Personer som genomgått en hjärtinfarkt kan få problem med sina sexuella relationer som en följd av sjukdomen, medicinering eller på grund av ångest. Syfte: att beskriva vanligt förekommande känslor inför sexuellt samliv hos personer med hjärtsjukdom samt beskriva hur sexualrådgivning kan erhållas av vårdpersonalen. Studien genomfördes som en litteraturöversikt. Artiklar söktes i databasen Cinahl samt genom sökmotorn Elin. Sjutton vetenskapliga artiklar, både kvantitativa och kvalitativa granskades. Resultat: personer med hjärtsjukdom känner ofta rädsla och oro inför sexuell aktivitet. Rädsla över att utlösa en hjärtinfarkt, eller till och med att dö. Även partnern till den hjärtsjuke kan känna oro och rädsla över sin maka eller make. Rådgivningen är ofta otillräcklig och bristfällig. Även där är den bristfällig till den hjärtsjukes partner. Diskussion: vården behöver bli bättre på att ta upp detta ämne till diskussion. Problemet behöver synliggöras så att personer med hjärtsjukdom och deras partner kan känna sig trygga med att återuppta sitt sexuella samliv. Slutsatsen är att sexualrådgivning till personer med hjärtsjukdom är ett eftersatt område inom sjukvården. För att förbättra vården och livskvaliteten hos personer med hjärtsjukdom behövs mer utbildning av vårdpersonalen samt utformning av riktlinjer för sexuell rådgivning.

Role of CIP2A in carcinogenesis

Worldwide and notably in the developed countries, cancer is an increasing cause of morbidity and mortality, being the second most common cause of death after ischemic heart disease. Now and in the future new cancer cases need to be diagnosed earlier. Prognostic factors may be helpful in recognizing and handling those patients who need more aggressive therapy, and it is also desirable to predict treatment response accurately. Cancerous inhibitor of protein phosphatase 2A (CIP2A) is an oncoprotein predominantly expressed in malignant tissues and inhibiting protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) activity; it is a promising target for cancer therapy. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate the prognostic role of CIP2A in solid cancers, and for this purpose to explore expression of CIP2A, and investigating regulation of CIP2A in order to gain insight into signalling pathways leading to alteration in prognosis. Patients diagnosed with gastric, serous ovarian, tongue, or colorectal cancer at Helsinki University Central Hospital were included. Tumour tissue microarrays assembled from specimens from these patients were prepared and stained immunohistochemically for CIP2A protein expression. Associations with clinicopathologic parameters and other biomarkers were explored, and survival analyses were done according to the Kaplan-Meier method. Study of the role of CIP2A in intracellular signalling in vitro involved gastric, ovarian, and tongue cancer cell lines. We found CIP2A to be highly expressed in gastric, ovarian, tongue, and colorectal cancer specimens. CIP2A was associated with clinicopathologic parameters characterizing an aggressive disease, namely advanced stage, high grade, p53 immunopositivity, and high proliferation index. CIP2A led to recognition of gastric, ovarian, and tongue cancer patients with poor prognosis, however, with a cancer type-specific cut-off level for prognostic significance. In tongue cancer, it served as an independent prognostic marker. In contrast, in colorectal cancer, CIP2A provided no prognostic value. In cancer cell lines, CIP2A was highly expressed at both protein and mRNA levels, and promoted cell proliferation and anchorage-independent growth. In gastric cancer, we demonstrated with a MYCER construct in mouse embryo fibroblasts that activation of MYC led to increased CIP2A mRNA expression, and hence we suggested that a positive feedback mechanism between CIP2A and MYC may potentiate and prolong the oncogenic activity of these proteins. We demonstrated in ovarian cancer an association between CIP2A and EGFR protein overexpression and EGFR gene amplification. In ovarian and tongue cancer cells we showed that depletion of EGFR downregulates CIP2A expression. In conclusion, high CIP2A expression occurred frequently among patients with aggressive disease. CIP2A may serve as a prognostic marker in gastric, ovarian, and tongue cancer and thus may help in tailoring therapy for cancer patients. The positive feedback mechanism between CIP2A and MYC, as well as the positive regulation of CIP2A by EGFR, are a few signalling pathways regulating and regulated by CIP2A. These and other mechanisms need to be studied further, however. CIP2A is a potential target for therapy, and its potential role as predictive marker and as a tumour marker in serum requires exploration.