Detection of tumour cells in the peripheral blood of patients with breast cancer. Development of a new sensitive and specific immunomolecular assay.

Malignant cells in the peripheral blood of patients with solid tumours are of considerable importance for the prognosis and therapeutic correlation. Their detection however is difficult due to lack of sensitivity, specificity and technical problems in standardisation. In this original article we show a new sensitive method overcoming the hitherto known difficulties by combining traditional antibody-techniques with a RT-PCR.

Regulation of purine nucleotide metabolism in hypoxic liver and intestine of rats: radical scavenging effects of allopurinol and oxypurinol.

The relationship between nucleotide catabolism and generation of activated oxygen species was investigated in liver, hepatocytes and small intestine of rats. In severe hypoxia nucleotide degradation via xanthine oxidase and urate oxidase requires about half of the oxygen consumed. Data on the changes of nucleobase compounds in rat hepatocytes and small intestine during ischemia and reoxygenation and the effects of allopurinol and oxypurinol thereon are presented.