Early Austrian multicenter experience with palonosetron as antiemetic treatment for patients undergoing highly or moderately emetogenic chemotherapy.

Background: Palonosetron is a new generation 5-HT3-receptor antagonist with a significantly prolonged half-life and a once-a-day administration compared to the conventional setrons. To evaluate the antiemetic efficacy of palonosetron in the daily hospital practice setting, a postmarketing study was carried out in Austria.

Methods: Palonosetron was administered at 0.

Prognostic significance of circulating tumor cells in bone marrow or peripheral blood as detected by qualitative and quantitative PCR in pediatric NPM-ALK-positive anaplastic large-cell lymphoma.

Clinical and histopathological characteristics have limited prognostic value for children with anaplastic large-cell lymphoma (ALCL). We evaluated the presence, extent, and prognostic impact of circulating tumor cells in bone marrow (BM) and peripheral blood (PB) of children and adolescents with NPM-ALK-positive ALCL at diagnosis using qualitative and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for NPM-ALK. Numbers of NPM-ALK transcripts were normalized to 10(4) copies ABL (NCNs).

Level of MYC overexpression in pediatric Burkitt's lymphoma is strongly dependent on genomic breakpoint location within the MYC locus.

Increased transcriptional activity of the MYC gene is a characteristic feature of Burkitt's lymphoma. Aberrant MYC expression is caused by (1) chromosomal translocation to one of the loci carrying an immunoglobulin gene, (2) mutation within the translocated allele, (3) loss of the block to transcription elongation, or (4) promoter shift. To investigate the influence of breakpoint locations within the MYC gene on MYC transcript levels, we determined both the precise genomic MYC/IGH breakpoints and the amount of MYC mRNA in 25 samples of pediatric Burkitt's lymphoma with translocation t(8;14)(q24;q32).

Combined polymerase chain reaction methods to detect c-myc/IgH rearrangement in childhood Burkitt's lymphoma for minimal residual disease analysis.

Background And Objectives: The translocation t(8;14)(q24;q32), involving the c-myc gene (8q24) and the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) locus (14q32), represents about 75% of all chromosomal translocations in Burkitt's lymphoma (BL). Due to the large variability of the breakpoint region, only the recently improved long-distance LD-polymerase chain reaction (PCR) allows the specific c-myc/IgH fusion to be identified at the genomic level. The sensitivity of the LD-PCR is only 10(-2) to 10(-3) due to the relatively large size of the amplification products (1 to 10 kbp).