The role of psychological variables in pain report in children undergoing fixed appliance orthodontic treatment

The present study aimed to 1) examine the relationship between psychological factors (self esteem, child and parental anxiety, locus of control, family environment, expectation of pain, motivation to receive treatment) and pain report in children undergoing fixed appliance orthodontic therapy; 2)identify the specific factors which help to predict pain report; 3) to investigate the use and value of enhancing children's control/coping with pain when they are having fixed appliance orthodontic therapy. This research was considered to be clinically relevant as pain due to the appliance has been found to be a one of the major causes of discontinuation of treatment. This results in a lack of gain for the individual in addition to unnecessary cost to the health service. It was anticipated that knowledge gained from this research may help dentists to target individuals who are at increased risk of suffering more distress or of discontinuing their treatment. Over forty parents and children participated in the study. Questionnaires examining the various psychological factors were given to children and their parents. In addition children were asked to keep a diary of their experience of wearing their brace until they no longer felt any discomfort.Results indicate that psychological factors which may influence the acute dental pain reported in the first few days of wearing the appliance are different to those influencing longer lasting pain.Pain report over the initial few days appeared to be influenced by factors internal to the child (self esteem , locus of control, child trait anxiety and expectation of pain), however as time went on external factors became more important (family environment and parental state and trait anxiety). Three subscales from the Harter Self Esteem Questionnaire were found to account for a substantial amount of the variance in pain report over the first few days of wearing the appliance. The extent to which an individual attributed orthodontic status and treatment to chance also contributed significantly to the variance of pain reported over this time. Parental anxiety and cultural-intellectual orientation of the family as a whole contributed significantly to the variation in how long pain was reported for.Children who were given additional information about ways to cope with pain reported no less pain that children who were not given this information. Results were discussed with reference to possible future research

Circulating cell-free DNA as a predictive marker for distant metastasis of hepatitis C virus-related hepatocellular carcinoma

In a previous study, we showed that levels of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) were significantly higher in sera of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) associated with hepatitis C virus (HCV) than in sera of non-HCC patients with HCV. To confirm this finding, we analysed serum cfDNA levels in a cohort of 96 patients with HCV-related HCC and in 100 HCV carriers without known HCC. Again we found that serum cfDNA levels were significantly higher in HCC patients than in HCV carriers (115.9±98.3 vs 34.4±40.4 ng ml−1 (mean±s.d.), P<0.0001). Of 87 eligible patients who underwent curative hepatectomy, those with a high cfDNA level had a significantly shorter overall survival (OS) time than those in whom the cfDNA level was not high. Cox proportional hazards model showed the cfDNA level to be an independent prognostic factor for OS and cancer recurrence in distant organs. Our results suggest that the serum cfDNA level reflects the metastatic potential of HCV-related HCC and that it can be a useful predictive biomarker for distant metastasis after curative surgery

Identification of Stage-Specific Breast Markers using Quantitative Proteomics

YesMatched healthy and diseased tissues from breast cancer patients were analyzed by quantitative proteomics. By comparing proteomic profiles of fibroadenoma (benign tumors, three patients), DCIS (noninvasive cancer, three patients), and invasive ductal carcinoma (four patients), we identified protein alterations that correlated with breast cancer progression. Three 8-plex iTRAQ experiments generated an average of 826 protein identifications, of which 402 were common. After excluding those originating from blood, 59 proteins were significantly changed in tumor compared with normal tissues, with the majority associated with invasive carcinomas. Bioinformatics analysis identified relationships between proteins in this subset including roles in redox regulation, lipid transport, protein folding, and proteasomal degradation, with a substantial number increased in expression due to Myc oncogene activation. Three target proteins, cofilin-1 and p23 (increased in invasive carcinoma) and membrane copper amine oxidase 3 (decreased in invasive carcinoma), were subjected to further validation. All three were observed in phenotype-specific breast cancer cell lines, normal (nontransformed) breast cell lines, and primary breast epithelial cells by Western blotting, but only cofilin-1 and p23 were detected by multiple reaction monitoring mass spectrometry analysis. All three proteins were detected by both analytical approaches in matched tissue biopsies emulating the response observed with proteomics analysis. Tissue microarray analysis (361 patients) indicated cofilin-1 staining positively correlating with tumor grade and p23 staining with ER positive status; both therefore merit further investigation as potential biomarkers.Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation, Yorkshire Cancer Researc