34 research outputs found
Health of Immigrants in European countries
The health of older immigrants can have important consequences for needed social support and demands placed on health systems. This paper examines health differences between immigrants and the nativeborn populations aged 50 years and older in 11 European countries. We examine differences in functional ability, disability, disease presence and behavioral risk factors, for immigrants and non-immigrants using data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) database. Among the 11 European countries, migrants generally have worse health than the native population. In these countries, there is a little evidence of the “healthy migrant” at ages 50 years and over. In general, it appears that growing numbers of immigrants may portend more health problems in the population in subsequent years
Inter- and intra-tumoral relationships between vasculature characteristics, GLUT1 and budding in colorectal carcinoma
Vascular characteristics, hypoxia and tumor
budding are features that have been implied in the
biology and prognosis of colorectal cancer. Internal
relationships and the inter- and intra-tumoral variation of
these tumor properties remain to be determined. In the
current study we have characterized blood vessel status
in different areas of CRC and in the peritumoral
fibroblastic stroma. Analyses of these characteristics
have been supplemented by characterization of budding
and hypoxia.
Analyses revealed significantly lower values of
vessel perimeter (VP) and vessel lumen area (VL) at the
invasive front and surrounding stroma as compared to
the tumor center. Also, the number of vessels (VN) in
the peritumoral stroma was higher than in the center.
Thus, tumor center displays larger and fewer vessels as
compared to the tumor periphery.
GLUT1 expression was correlated directly with VN
(r=0.351, p=0.028) and inversely with VL and VP (r=-
0.432, p=0.006 and r=-0.484, p=0.002) at the invasive
front. Moreover, GLUT1 expression, VP at the invasive
front, and VN in the surrounding peritumoral stroma,
were associated with budding score (r=0.574, p<0.000,
r=-0.340, p=0,034 and r=-0,389, p=0.025 respectively).
Furthermore, GLUT1, budding score, vessel number
in peritumoral stroma, and vessel size in the invasive
front, were significantly different in tumors with or
without lymph node metastasis.
This study reports previously unrecognized
relationships between localization-specific vascular
characteristics, hypoxia and tumor budding. The findings
suggest potential functional relationships, which should
be further explored, and also highlight the inter-tumoral
variations in vasculature, which is highly relevant for
ongoing efforts to identify vessel-based biomarkers
Fibroblasts in urothelial bladder cancer define stroma phenotypes that are associated with clinical outcome
Little attention was given to the interaction between tumor and stromal cells in urothelial bladder carcinoma (UBC). While recent studies point towards the existence of different fibroblast subsets, no comprehensive analyses linking different fibroblast markers to UBC patient survival have been performed so far. Through immunohistochemical analysis of five selected fibroblast markers, namely alpha smooth muscle actin (ASMA), CD90/Thy-1, fibroblast activation protein (FAP), platelet derived growth factor receptor-alpha and -beta (PDGFRa,-b), this study investigates their association with survival and histopathological characteristics in a cohort of 344 UBC patients, involving both, muscle-invasive and non-muscle-invasive cases. The data indicates that combinations of stromal markers are more suited to identify prognostic patient subgroups than single marker analysis. Refined stroma-marker-based patient stratification was achieved through cluster analysis and identified a FAP-dominant patient cluster as independent marker for shorter 5-year-survival (HR(95% CI)2.25(1.08-4.67), p = 0.030). Analyses of interactions between fibroblast and CD8a-status identified a potential minority of cases with CD90-defined stroma and high CD8a infiltration showing a good prognosis of more than 80% 5-year-survival. Presented analyses point towards the existence of different stroma-cell subgroups with distinct tumor-modulatory properties and motivate further studies aiming to better understand the molecular tumor-stroma crosstalk in UBC