In vitro detection of circulating tumor cells compared by the CytoTrack and CellSearch methods.

Comparison of two methods to detect circulating tumor cells (CTC) CytoTrack and CellSearch through recovery of MCF-7 breast cancer cells, spiked into blood collected from healthy donors. Spiking of a fixed number of EpCAM and pan-cytokeratin positive MCF-7 cells into 7.5 mL donor blood was performed by FACSAria flow sorting.

New Approach for Interpreting Changes in Circulating Tumour Cells (CTC) for Evaluation of Treatment Effect in Metastatic Breast Cancer.

Aim: Attempts have been made to use CTC values for interpretation of treatment response and to guide change of chemotherapy by using a static cut-off of 5 CTC to stratify patients in favourable or unfavourable responders. We propose a new approach to interpret treatment effect using significant changes in CTC values (SCV-limits(1)) as grouping parameter for responders and non-responders to chemotherapy among metastatic breast cancer (mBC) patients.

Method: CTC were analysed using the CellSearch System in blood from 47 mBC patients before the start of new chemotherapy and before the third cycle of therapy.

The load of short telomeres, estimated by a new method, Universal STELA, correlates with number of senescent cells.

Short telomeres are thought to trigger senescence, most likely through a single - or a group of few - critically shortened telomeres. Such short telomeres are thought to result from a combination of gradual linear shortening resulting from the end replication problem, reflecting the division history of the cell, superimposed by a more stochastic mechanism, suddenly causing a significant shortening of a single telomere. Previously, studies that have tried to explore the role of critically shortened telomeres have been hampered by methodological problems.

[Vitamin D deficiency].

The importance of vitamin D for osteoporosis and fractures has been known for more than 40 years. Vitamin D deficiency is diagnosed by measuring 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD), which should be > 50 nmol/l year round. Recent research suggests that a number of severe diseases could be prevented by increasing 25-OHD to 80 nmol/l.

[Effect of healthy school meal on selection of blood parameters].

Introduction: It was tested if a healthy school meal would result in significant changes in selected blood parameters and if such parameters would lie within generally accepted optimal values.

Material And Methods: The study was a block-randomized, controlled trial in which 145 pupils delivered blood before (week 39) and after the intervention (week 49). The intervention group received a healthy meal for two months (25-30% of the daily intake of calories).