Substantial performance discrepancies among commercially available kits for reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction: a systematic comparative investigator-driven approach.

Reverse transcription followed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (rt-qPCR) has become the state-of-the-art tool for quantification of nucleic acids. However, there are still significant problems associated with its sensitivity, reproducibility, and efficiency and the choice of an appropriate rt-qPCR kit. The purpose of this article is to give insights into strategies to optimize and validate the performance of currently available kits for rt-qPCR and to provide up-to-date information about the benefits, potentials, and pitfalls of rt-qPCR assays.

Para-aortic lymph node metastasis in malignant dysgerminoma of the ovary.

Dysgerminomas comprise approximately 2-5% of all ovarian malignancies and mostly affect young adolescent women. Primary comprehensive surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy consisting of bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin (BEP) are the current recommended treatment options, the latter reserved for advanced stages (FIGO II-IV). We report two patients aged 20 and 26 years who presented with an initial FIGO stage IA, but inadequately assessed.

Mistletoe extract reduces the surgical suppression of natural killer cell activity in cancer patients. a randomized phase III trial.

Background: Major surgery suppresses natural killer (NK) cell cytotoxic activity which is potentially harmful for cancer patients by favouring haematogenic tumour cell dissemination. The influence of a perioperative infusion of a standardized mistletoe extract (Iscador) on immune functions was tested in a prospective, sequential, randomized clinical trial.

Patients And Methods: Colorectal cancer patients undergoing open tumour resection were randomly assigned to either mistletoe infusion or no additional therapy.

[Correlation of NK cell activity against autologous tumour cells and K562 cells with the clinical outcome during therapy with mistletoe extracts].

Background: Suppression of NK cell activity is considered to be an unfavourable prognostic factor for tumour progression. There is proof that mistletoe extracts may increase NK cell activity. However, the inverse relation between an increase of NK cell activity and clinical progress of cancer has not been investigated.