Early studies of the clonal status of parathyroid tumors assessed X-chromosome inactivation patterns by measuring isoforms of glucose-6-phopshate dehydrogenase in parathyroid adenomas of women heterozygous for the polymorphism. These stud­ies indicated that parathyroid adenomas were polyclonal as op­posed to monoclonal growths. The issue of the clonal status of parathyroid tumors was reevaluated several years later, [...]

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Introduction Over the past ten years, our knowledge of the molecular basis of parathyroid neoplasia has increased substantially. Many of the well established general themes in tumor biology appear to be applicable to parathyroid tumorigenesis, in spite of the typi­cally nonmalignant status of these tumors. Patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) have both an increased parathy­roid [...]

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The precursor lesions of invasive adenocarcinoma of the gallbladder have recently been recognized as those of in­testinal metaplasia, dysplasia and carcinoma in situ. The adenoma-carcinoma sequence occurs only in a minority of cases. Recognition of these lesions is, therefore, important when removing gallbladders for cholecystitis or cholelithia­sis. Some gallbladder adenocarcinomas are immunoreactive for alpha-fetoprotein. No [...]

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The staining to alpha-fetoprotein and Bcl-2 antibodies re­mained consistently negative to very weak in all parts of the tumour in all cases. Moderate to strong P53 staining was ob­served in 17 (89%) of the in situ component and 24 (86%) of the invasive components (Table 2). CEA staining was ob­served in both the in situ [...]

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Gallbladder carcinomas: An immunoprognostic evaluation of P53, Bcl-2, CEA and alpha-fetoprotein Cancer of the gallbladder is the fifth most common can­cer of the digestive tract. The mean five-year survival rate has remained at 1% despite surgical intervention; this is mainly attributed to its late presentation, with extensive lo­cal spread and concomitant invasion of the liver. [...]

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Similarly to other genes polymorphisms, significant differ­ences exist in VDR polymorphisms distribution among differ­ent ethnic groups. A possible explanation to polymorphism generation phenomena is DNA damage events in an ancient small population that grow up in frequency becoming poly­morphisms in modern populations. VDR haplotypes distribu­tion reflects out-of-Africa evolution theory that describe hu­man populations origin and [...]

Continue reading " The vitamin D receptor: biological and molecular properties. VDR polymorphisms and its ethnic distribution "

Morrison and co-workers analysed an Australian population sample and evidenced the presence of association between al- lelic variants in the 3′ region (for B allele) and osteocalcin bone turnover marker levels in serum. Since 1992, several studies about correlation of VDR polymorphisms with BMD and bone turnover markers have been published, generating con­flicting data. In [...]

Continue reading " The vitamin D receptor: biological and molecular properties. VDR polymorphisms and association studies "