• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제17권1호
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• pp.139-145
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• 2016

Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) is a major public health problem for all ages. Despite the high prevalence of smoking among the Saudi population, there is limited information about levels of urinary cotinine in Saudi children exposed to SHS. The aim of the study was to assess the exposure of schoolchildren to ETS, and measure their urinary cotinine levels. Multistage cluster sampling was carried out, where schoolchildren from 4 schools were randomly chosen from primary schools in Taif city. A questionnaire including questions on SHS exposure and smoking rules in the residence were sent to students parents/guardians. Urine samples were taken and analyzed for total cotinine using chemiluminescent immunoassay. Of the studied children, 38.4% had a smoking father, 61.8%, 41.2% and 49.3% of them were exposed to ETS indoors, outdoors and both indoors and outdoors respectively. The mean urinary cotinine was significantly higher among children exposed to ETS compared to unexposed children. Urinary cotinine levels in children with both indoor and outdoor exposure was significantly higher compared with its level in children with single exposure. A significant positive correlation was found between urinary cotinine concentrations and the number of cigarette packs smoked by parents, and the number of smokers in the residence. The mean urinary cotinine level was significantly higher in children who reported no smoking rules at the residence.. The study revealed a high exposure of Saudi children to ETS. An antismoking media awareness campaign on the harmful effects of ETS should be carried out, in addition to family counseling programs targeted to parents to protect their children from ETS.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제16권12호
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• pp.5059-5062
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• 2015

Background: ALL is an irredeemable disease due to the resistance to treatment. There are several influences which are involved in such resistance to chemotherapy, including oxidative stress as a result of the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and presence of hypodiploid cells. Cluster of differentiation 26 (CD26), also known as dipeptidyl peptidase-4, is a 110 kDa, multifunctional, membrane-bound glycoprotein. Aim and objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical significance of serum CD26 in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia patients in the post remission induction phase, as well as the relationship between CD26 activity and the oxidative stress status. Materials and Methods: CD26, total antioxidant status (TAS), total oxidant status (TOS), and oxidative stress index (OSI), in addition to activity of related enzymes myeloperoxidase, glutathione-s-transferase and xanthine oxidase, were analysed in sixty children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in the post remission induction phase. Results: The study showed significant elevation in CD26, TOS and OSI levels in patients with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in the post remission induction phase in comparison to healthy control samples. In contrast, myeloperoxidase, glutathione-s-transferase and xanthine oxidase activities were decreased significantly. A significant correlation between CD26 concentration and some oxidative stress parameters was evident in ALL patients. Conclusions: Serum levels of CD26 appear to be useful as a new biomarker of oxidative stress in children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in the post remission induction phase, and levels of antioxidants must be regularly estimated during the treatment of children with ALL.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.757-762
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• 2014

Smoking is recognized as a health problem worldwide and there is an established tobacco epidemic in Saudi Arabia as in many other countries, with tobacco users at increased risk of developing many diseases. This cross sectional study was conducted to assess the prevalence of oral mucosal, potentially malignant or malignant, lesions associated with tobacco use among a stratified cluster sample of adults in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A sample size of 599 was collected and each participant underwent clinical conventional oral examination and filled a questionnaire providing information on demographics, tobacco use and other relevant habits. The most common form of tobacco used was cigarette smoking (65.6 %) followed by Shisha or Moasel (38.1%), while chewing tobacco, betel nuts and gat accounted for 21-2%, 7.7%, and 5% respectively. A high prevalence (88.8%) of soft tissue lesions was found among the tobacco users examined, and a wide range of lesions were detected, about 50% having hairy tongue, 36% smoker's melanosis, 28.9% stomatitis nicotina, 27% frictional keratosis, 26.7% fissured tongue, 26% gingival or periodontal inflammation and finally 20% leukodema. Suspicious potentially malignant lesions affected 10.5% of the subjects, most prevalent being keratosis (6.3%), leukoplakia (2.3%), erythroplakia (0.7%), oral submucous fibrosis (0.5%) and lichenoid lesions (0.4%), these being associated with male gender, lower level of education, presence of diabetes and a chewing tobacco habit. It is concluded that smoking was associated with a wide range of oral mucosal lesions, those suspicious for malignancy being linked with chewable forms, indicating serious effects.

• The Korean Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology
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• 제18권2호
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• pp.109-120
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• 2014

The epothilones are a class of microtubule inhibitors that exhibit a strong antitumor activity. UTD2 is a novel epothilone analog generated by genetic manipulation of the polyketide biosynthetic gene cluster. This study investigated the effects of UTD2 on the actin cytoskeleton and its critical regulators, and the signaling pathways which are essential for cell motility, growth and survival in MCF-7 breast cancer cells. Results showed that UTD2 inhibited the cellular functions of actin cytoskeleton, such as wound-closure, migration and invasion, as well as adhesion. Our study further demonstrated that UTD2 suppressed Rac1 GTPase activation and reduced the activity of PAK1, which is a downstream effector of Rac1, while the activity of Cdc42 was not affected. Additionally, the phosphorylation of p38 and ERK were significantly inhibited, but the phosphorylation of JNK remained the same after UTD2 treatment. Moreover, UTD2 inhibited the activity and mRNA expression of MMP-2, which plays a key role in cell motility. UTD2 also reduced the phosphorylation of Akt, which is an important signaling kinase regulating the cell survival through Rac1. Furthermore, UTD2 interrupted the synergy between Rac1 and Raf in focus formation assays. Taken together, these results indicated that UTD2 exerted multiple effects on the actin cytoskeleton and signaling pathways associated with Rac1. This study provided novel insights into the molecular mechanism of the antineoplastic and antimetastatic activities of epothilones. Our findings also suggest that the signaling pathways regulated by Rac1 may be evaluated as biomarkers for the response to therapy in clinical trials of epothilones.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• 제8권4호
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• pp.167-176
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• 2020

Recommendation Systems is the top requirements for many people and researchers for the need required by them with the proper suggestion with their personal indeed, sorting and suggesting doctor to the patient. Most of the rating prediction in recommendation systems are based on patient's feedback with their information regarding their treatment. Patient's preferences will be based on the historical behaviour of similar patients. The similarity between the patients is generally measured by the patient's feedback with the information about the doctor with the treatment methods with their success rate. This paper presents a new method of predicting Top Ranked Doctor's in recommendation systems. The proposed Recommendation system starts by identifying the similar doctor based on the patients' health requirements and cluster them using K-Means Efficient Clustering. Our proposed K-Means Clustering with Content Based Doctor Recommendation for Cancer (KMC-CBD) helps users to find an optimal solution. The core component of KMC-CBD Recommended system suggests patients with top recommended doctors similar to the other patients who already treated with that doctor and supports the choice of the doctor and the hospital for the patient requirements and their health condition. The recommendation System first computes K-Means Clustering is an unsupervised learning among Doctors according to their profile and list the Doctors according to their Medical profile. Then the Content based doctor recommendation System generates a Top rated list of doctors for the given patient profile by exploiting health data shared by the crowd internet community. Patients can find the most similar patients, so that they can analyze how they are treated for the similar diseases, and they can send and receive suggestions to solve their health issues. In order to the improve Recommendation system efficiency, the patient can express their health information by a natural-language sentence. The Recommendation system analyze and identifies the most relevant medical area for that specific case and uses this information for the recommendation task. Provided by users as well as the recommended system to suggest the right doctors for a specific health problem. Our proposed system is implemented in Python with necessary functions and dataset.

• 대한산업공학회지
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• 제42권2호
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• pp.129-137
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• 2016

A colonoscopy is important because it detects the presence of polyps in the colon that can lead to colon cancer. How often one needs to repeat a colonoscopy may depend on various factors. The main purpose of this study is to determine personalized surveillance interval of colonoscopy based on characteristics of patients including their clinical information. The clustering analysis using a partitioning around medoids algorithm was conducted on 625 patients who had a medical examination at Korea University Anam Hospital and found several subgroups of patients. For each cluster, we then performed survival analysis that provides the probability of having polyps according to the number of days until next visit. The results of survival analysis indicated that different survival distributions exist among different patients' groups. We believe that the procedure proposed in this study can provide the patients with personalized medical information about how often they need to repeat a colonoscopy.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제2권3호
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• pp.153-160
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• 1992

The doxorubicin resistance locus from Streptomyces peucetius subsp. caesius (the doxorubicin producer, ATCC 27952) has been cloned. The sequence data over 4.4 kb regions reveals the presence of four possible open reading frames (ORFs). ORF2 and ORF3 would encode proteins containing 329 and 283 amino acids, respectively. The protein encoded by ORF2 has two almost identical ATP binding domains with p-glycoprotein, the product of a multidrug resistance gene from tumor cells, and that encoded by ORF3 has several hydrophobic domains suggesting that it is located in the bacterial membrane. These two remarkable similarities of the gene product to p-glycoprotein of mammalian tumor cells suggest that the two proteins may enable bacteria to extrude a variety of toxic agents, including daunorubicin and doxorubicin, by an ATP dependent efflux mechanism analogous to the multidurg resistance protein of cancer cells.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권2호
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• pp.707-714
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• 2024

Different degrees of natural radioactivity found in quartz can have negative consequences on health. Quartz vein along the investigated Abu Ramad area, Egypt, had its natural radioactivity assessed. The HPGe spectrometer was used to determine the role played by the radionuclides ²³⁸U, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K in the gamma radiation that was emitted, and the results showed that these concentrations are 484.64 ± 288.4, 36.8 ± 13.1 and 772.2 ± 134.6 Bq kg^-1 were higher than the corresponding reported global limits of 33, 45, and 412 Bq kg^-1 for each radionuclide (²³⁸U, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K). Among the radiological hazard parameters, the excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR) is estimated and it's mean value of ELCR (1.2) is higher than the permissible limit of 0.00029. The relationship between the radionuclides and the associated radiological hazard characteristics was investigated based on multivariate statistical methods including Pearson correlation, principal component analysis (PCA), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA). According to statistical research, the radioactive risk of quartz is primarily caused by the ²³⁸U, ²³²Thand ⁴⁰K. Finally, applying quartz to building materials would pose a significant risk to the public.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제56권6호
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• pp.2239-2246
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• 2024

The present study aimed to assess the radioactive hazards associated with the application of granitoid rocks in building materials. An HPGe spectrometer was used to detect the levels of the radioactive elements uranium-238, thorium-232, and potassium-40 in the granitoid rocks. The results showed that the levels of these elements were lower (38.32 < 33 Bq kg^-1), comparable (47.19-45 Bq kg^-1) and higher (992.26 ≫> 412 Bq kg^-1) than the worldwide limits for ²³⁸U, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K concentration, respectively. The exposure to gamma radiation of granitoid rocks was studied by various radiological hazard variables like the absorbed dose rate (D_air), the outdoor and indoor annual effective dose (AED_out and AED_in), and excess lifetime cancer risk (ELCR). A variety of statistical methods, including Pearson correlation, principal component analysis (PCA), and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) was used, to study the relationship between the radioactive elements and the radiological hazards. According to statistical analysis, the main radioactive risk of granitoid rocks is contributed to by the elements uranium-238, thorium-232, and potassium-40. Granitoid rocks can be applied in building materials, but under control to prevent risk to the public.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• 제63권1호
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• pp.31-41
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• 2007

연구배경: 폐암의 병인에 기여하거나 예후를 결정하는 인자에 대해서는 매우 다양한 인자와 다양한 상호 관계로 인하여 특히 유전자의 역할에 대해서는 결정적으로 알려진 것이 없어 앞으로 더 많은 연구가 필요한 실정이다. 이에 따라 본 연구에서는 COX-2, MMP-9, p53가 비소세포폐암에서 어떻게 발현되는지 세포면역학적으로 알아보고 임상 특성과 예후와 상관관계를 알아보고자 하였다. 대상 및 방법: 91명의 비소세포폐암을 대상으로 하여 후향적으로 임상특성을 고찰하고 COX-2, MMP-9, p53의 유전자 표현을 세포면역학적 방법을 통하여 검사하였다. 임상특성과 유전자 표현 패턴의 상관관계와 생존에 대한 예후인자로서의 역할에 대하여 조사하였다. 결 과: 1) 편평상피세포암에서는 흡연자과 남자가 우세한 비율을 차지하였으며 남자에서 흡연의 비율이 유의하게 높았다. 2) 전체 대상 환자에서 생존에 영향을 미치는 결정적인 인자는 근치적 절제술의 시행여부와 병기로 나타났다. 3) COX-2의 발현은 편평상피세포암 보다 선암에서 더 유의하게 높게 발현되었다. 4) COX-2, MMP-9, p53의 발현이 모두 되지 않는 비율은 선암에 비해 편평상피세포암에서 더 흔하게 관찰되었다. 5) p53돌연변이가 있으면서 COX-2와 MMP-9은 발현이 되지 않는 비소세포폐암환자의 생존기간이 다른 발현 양상을 보이는 경우에서의 생존기간보다 더 연장되어 보였다(생존기간의 중앙값; 165.6주). 6) COX-2의 발현과 MMP-9의 발현 사이에는 유의한 상관관계가 있었다. 7) 폐암을 근치적으로 절제한 환자의 경우에 COX-2의 발현은 유의한 예후인자였다. MMP-9는 근치적 절제술을 받지 못한 환자군에서 유의한 예후인자로 작용하였다.