BACKGROUND: The rapidly growing knowledge regarding factors controlling tumour growth, with the new modalities of therapy acting on the biological activity of the tumours draw the attention of most cancer researches nowadays and represent a major focus for clinical oncology practice. For the detection of HER2/neu protein overexpression and gene amplification, immunohistochemistry (IHC) and in-situ hybridisation (ISH) is the recommended techniques, respectively, with high concordance between the two techniques. The current United Kingdom recommendations for HER2/neu testing are either for a two-tier system using IHC with reflex ISH testing in equivocal positive cases, or a one-tier ISH strategy. AIM: To compare the results of HER2/neu gene status in patients with breast carcinoma obtained by chromogenic in situ hybridisation with those obtained by immunohistochemistry, and to compare these results with hormonal receptors expression by immunohistochemistry and with age of patients.METHODS: Immunohistochemistry technique was used for evaluation of status of estrogen receptors (ER) and progesterone receptors (PR) and HER2/neu protein expression in 448 Iraqi patients with invasive breast carcinoma with different grades and histological types and then chromogenic in situ hybridization (CISH) technique was applied for all scores of HER2/neu to detect the gene status and compare the results in all negative, equivocal and positive cases by immunohistochemistry (IHC). The cases were referred from different centres, and IHC and CISH techniques were done in central public health laboratory in Baghdad over 28 months, from July 2013 to November 2015. A comparison of the results was made to find the relationship between HER2/neu and hormone receptors status and other clinical parameters like patients age. RESULTS: The mean age of the study cases was 49.08 years, ranging from 24 to 83 years. Of the 448 cases of breast carcinoma, 44 (9.8%) cases were of score 0 by IHC, none of them (0%) showed HER2/neu gene amplification by CISH. 71(15.8%) cases were of score 1 by IHC, 15 (21.12%) of them showed HER2/neu gene amplification by CISH, all were of low amplification. There were 306 (68.3%) cases of score 2 by IHC, of which 102 (33.33%) cases showed HER2/neu gene amplification by CISH, with 79 (25.81%) of them with low amplification and 23 (7.51%) cases with high amplification, while only one case (0.32%) remained in equivocal category. In score 3, all the 27 (6.0%) cases showed gene amplification with 12 (44.44%) cases with low amplification and 15 (55.55) cases with high amplification with overall percentage of gene amplification in score 3 of 100%. There was a significant inverse relationship between hormone receptors (ER and PR) status and HER2/neu gene amplification. No significant relationship was found between the patient’s age and HER2/neu gene amplification.CONCLUSION: Although immunohistochemistry is a widely used, less expensive and reliable test, we strongly advice performance of chromogenic in situ hybridization in assessment of HER2/neu gene status in all cases diagnosed with breast carcinoma as significant number of cases that were reported as negative by immunohistochemistry showed positive amplification by chromogenic in situ hybridization and can get benefit from anti-HER2 targeted treatments.
Background: Soft Laser has been advantageous in medical applications and is widely used in clinical practice. It is applied because it doesn’t cause the significant thermal effects or tissue hurt when irradiated. The blood response to low power laser radiation provides information about processes of laser radiation interaction with live creatures. Objective: The aim of the current work was to evaluate the laser-induced changes of in vitro erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), mean corpuscular volume (MCV), and mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC) in patients with breast cancer by irradiating a human blood sample using a green laser and comparing its effects before and after irradiation with the same power density (100mW/c
... Show MoreBackground: Chronic periodontitis (CP) is greatly prevalent condition of inflammatory behavior. Salivary biomarker total antioxidants capacity (T-AOC) status, may be related to both periodontal condition and oral hygiene. Aims of the study: To assess the level of salivary T-AOC of patients with chronic periodontitis in comparison to healthy control and to correlate between the level of this marker with the clinical periodontal parameters (plaque index (PLI), gingival index (GI), bleeding on probing (BOP), probing pocket depth (PPD), and clinical attachment level (CAL)). Materials and Methods: Ninety subjects of males and females with an age ranged between (35-55) years were participated in this study. Participants were divided into two grou
... Show MoreBackground: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a chronic disease of childhood. Increased prevalence of periodontal disease and dental caries in juvenile idiopathic arthritis is due to difficulties in executing good oral hygiene. This study was conducted to assess oral health status in patients with Juvenile idiopathic arthritis according to age and duration of illness. Materials and methods: A research was conducted among Juvenile idiopathic arthritis patients attending Baghdad Teaching Hospital with different age and both gender, underwent a clinical evaluation of their dental and oral condition. Diagnosis of dental caries was done according to the criteria of WHO (1997). Dental plaque, gingival condition, calculus were assessed by PI/
... Show MoreAbstract Background:Breast cancer is the most common female cancer worldwide. Although mastectomy is considered the treatment of choice for the majority of cases of breast cancer; a noticeable percentage of breast cancer survivors claim they were never advised about reconstruction. It has been proven that breast reconstruction helps breast cancer survivors to overcome the trauma of their diagnosis and improve their psychological well-being.Objectives: To assess the level of awareness and expectations regarding breast reconstruction surgery among female with breast cancer survivors in Baghdad, and to find if there is association between sociodemographic data and expectations of breast reconstruction.Methodology: This is a cross sectional stu
... Show MoreThis study evaluated the knowledge and practice of breast self-examination (BSE), among a sample of educated Iraqi women. The study sample comprised 858 women aged 18–62 years affiliated to 6 major Iraqi universities, categorized according to occupation as teaching staff (11.5%), administrative staff (18.0%) and students (70.5%). Data were collected by a self-completed questionnaire. In all, 93.9% of the women had heard about BSE, the main source of information was television (39.9%), doctors (18.4%) and the awareness campaign of the Iraqi National Breast Cancer Research Programme (11.6%). Only 53.9% of the women practised BSE; the most common excuses by those that did not were lack of knowledge of the significance of BSE (42.0%) and lack
... Show MoreRenal function tests are commonly used in clinical practice to look for renal disease, the most common includes the serum urea, uric acid and creatinine. Heart failure patients have a higher incidence of renal function test abnormalities than individuals who do not have heart failure disease. Fifty subjects of adults (male) were divided in to two groups, 25 subjects (healthy) as control (group1) and 25 subjects with heart failure (group 2). Our results indicate that serum uric acid, urea, and creatinine values were significantly elevated (P≤0.05) in patients group (2) compared with healthy group (1). The results also showed, the effect of age categories on uric acid blood urea nitrogen and creatinine values (P≤0.05) and there were no si
... Show MoreThis study was established to investigate the correlation between the expression of matrix metalloproteinases (MMP-1) and the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis (OA). Blood samples were collected from 55 female patients with inflammatory OA and controls for estimation of serum (MMP-1) levels. In the current study, there is significant increase (p<0.001) in the mean of serum MMP-1 levels in osteoarthritis females (4027.73 ± 1345.28 pg/ml) than that in control females (798.76 ± 136.79 pg/ml). It was concluded that MMP-1 may be associated with the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis.
To determine the seroprevalence of hepatitis B markers in chronic hepatitis B patients, 75 patients with chronic hepatitis B virus of ages (8-70) years have been investigated and compared with 50 apparently healthy individuals. All the studied groups were carried out to measure (HBsAg), (HBsAb), (HBeAg), (HBeAb), and (Total HBcAb) by Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique. The percentage distribution of HBsAg was (86.67%) and HBsAb was (1.33%) in sera of CHB patients and there were a highly significant differences (P<0.01) when compared between studied groups, while, the percentage distribution of HBeAg was (22.67%) in sera of CHB patients and the significant represent the difference in distribution of HBeAg as infection but no
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