Quality assessment of HER2 testing by monitoring of positivity rates.

Interlaboratory variation in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) testing provides a challenge for targeted therapy in breast and gastric cancer. Assessment of positivity rates among laboratories could help monitor their performance and define reference values for positivity rates to be expected in a geographic region. Pathologists regularly determined the number of HER2-positive cases (HER2 3+, HER2 2+/amplified or amplified) in their laboratory, and figures were continuously entered into a central website.

Analysis of risk factors of the evolution of myelofibrosis in pre-fibrotic chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis: a retrospective study based on follow up biopsies of 70 patients by using the RECPAM method.

The advanced, fibrotic phase of chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis (CIMF) is preceded by a pre-fibrotic stage. However, the factors which may influence or predict the development of myelofibrosis are not well established. Thus we investigated follow up biopsies of 70 patients with CIMF, diagnosed in stages of no or only scant fiber increase, for the development of myelofibrosis.

Evolution of myelofibrosis in chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis as evidenced in sequential bone marrow biopsy specimens.

Although the new World Health Organization (WHO) classification acknowledges "prefibrotic" phases, progression of myelofibrosis in chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis (cIMF) is controversial because there are only a few studies about sequential biopsy specimens, and they yield conflicting results. The conflicting results might be due to a mixture of different degrees of myelofibrosis and therapy regimens within the respective groups studied. To prove this hypothesis, we studied sequential bone marrow biopsy specimens from patients with cIMF and compared 3 groups with different degrees of myelofibrosis at initial diagnosis with a group of patients with primarily unfibrosed disease who met the WHO criteria for prefibrotic cIMF.