A flow cytometric technique using thiazole orange to detect platelet engraftment following pediatric stem-cell transplants.

Background: Thiazole orange (TO) is a nucleic-acid-specific dye that enters cells without pretreatment. When it binds to either RNA or DNA, there is an increase in fluorescence emission. This property has been utilized to measure the amount of newly released platelets using flow cytometry.

Analysis of parameters affecting engraftment in children undergoing autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplants.

Eighty-three pediatric patients underwent autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplants at a single institution and were included in a study evaluating the correlations between five engraftment parameters and the time to both neutrophil and platelet recovery. The parameters included: the number of nucleated cells per kg (TNC/kg), the absolute CD34+ cell content per kg (CD34+/kg), the number of mononuclear cells per kg (MNC/kg), the number of BFU-E/kg, and the number of CFU-GM/kg. A two-tailed Mann-Whitney test (alpha = 0.

Analysis of parameters affecting engraftment in children undergoing allogeneic BM transplants.

Background: Animal studies performed on mice have shown that the number of cells infused following ablative regimens affected the speed and quality of engraftment. Similar studies on humans have resulted in contradicting results. We present our experience assessing multiple parameters.

The frequency of human papillomavirus detection in postmenopausal women on hormone replacement therapy.

Postmenopausal women enrolled in the Iowa portion of the postmenopausal estrogen/progestin interventions randomized clinical trial (n = 105) during 1989-1991 were studied for (i) the prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV) in this older age population (ages 45-64), and (ii) the association between hormone replacement therapies (HRTs) and changes in detection of HPV over a 2-year time period. HPV is causative in most cervical and some other genital cancers and in the presence of steroid hormones has been shown to increase neoplastic transformation by HPV in vitro. Using PCR to detect HPV DNA, the overall frequency of the virus regardless of time period was 50.