Search

Objective: In patients with end-stage kidney disease, kidney transplantation is the kidney replacement therapy option that provides the most successful survival. However, immunosuppression agents administered after kidney transplantation can increase the risk of opportunistic infections. Microsporidia are obligate intracellular pathogens that can be fatal in immunosuppressed patients. The present study aimed to determine the prevalence of microsporidia in kidney transplantation recipients and the molecular characterization of the detected species., Methods: To evaluate the prevalence of renal microsporidiosis in kidney transplant recipients, the urine samples from a total of 325 patients were analyzed by real-time and nested polymerase chain reaction for Encephalitozoon spp. and Enterocytozoon bieneusi ., Results: Only one (0.4%) sample from the adult patient was positive for the Encephalitozoon species, while no positivity was found in pediatric patients. It was determined as Encephalitozoon intestinalis by ITS rRNA gene region sequence analysis. A microsporidia species obtained from humans in Türkiye has been characterized for the first time and registered in GenBank., Conclusion: Our epidemiological results show that the prevalence of renal microsporidiosis in kidney transplant recipients is very low. In addition, as a result of the phylogenetic analysis of the detected isolate, it was observed that it was 100% identical to the isolates reported from dogs in Kayseri, Türkiye. This situation provided essential data regarding the zoonotic transmission dynamics of microsporidia.

Background/aim: Alzheimer's disease (AD), one of the most common health issues, is characterized by memory loss, severe behavioral disorders, and eventually death. Despite many studies, there are still no drugs that can treat AD or stop it from progressing. Previous in vitro tests showed that O-demethyl galantamine (ODG) might have therapeutic potential owing to its 10 times higher acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity than galantamine (GAL)., Materials and Methods: We aimed to assess the effect of ODG at the molecular level in a 12-month-old 5xFAD Alzheimer's mouse model. To this end, following the administrations of ODG and GAL (used as a positive control), protein alterations were investigated in the cortex, hippocampus, and cerebellum regions of the brain. Surprisingly, GAL altered proteins prominently in the cortex, while ODG exclusively exerted its effect on the cerebellum., Results: GNB1, GNB2, NDUFS6, PAK2, and RhoA proteins were identified as the top 5 hub proteins in the cerebellum of ODG-treated mice. Reregulation of these proteins through Ras signaling and retrograde endocannabinoid signaling pathways, which were found to be enriched, might contribute to reversing AD-induced molecular changes., Conclusion: We suggest that, since it targets specifically the cerebellum, ODG may be further evaluated for combination therapies for AD., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© TÜBİTAK.)

Background: Protein tyrosine kinase-7, a regulatory protein in the Wnt signaling pathway, was highly overexpressed in various cancer types and assumed to be related to prognosis., Aims: The purpose of this study is to assess whether protein tyrosine kinase-7 expression status in curatively resected gastric carcinoma would independently identify patients with a high risk of recurrence and death., Study Design: Retrospective cohort study., Methods: We included patients who were at least 18 years of age and diagnosed with gastric cancer. The exclusion criterion was a metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis or operation. Data on clinicopathological prognostic determinants and clinical courses, including the date of disease relapse and survival status, were collected with the use of medical records. Surgically removed tumor tissue specimens were examined by two independent pathologists at the pathology department of our institution. Protein tyrosine kinase-7 expression status was assessed with immunohistochemical processing and stratified on a scale ranging from 0 to +3 according to the extent of stained tumor cells. It was then further categorized into two groups, one being + (positive), including +1, +2, and +3 scores, another was-(negative), including-and +/− scores., Results: A total of 114 patients were analyzed. Protein tyrosine kinase-7 expression was present in 66.7% of the surgical tumor specimens. There was no statistically significant difference in almost all relevant parameters between the protein tyrosine kinase-7 positive and negative groups. The estimated median survival in the protein tyrosine kinase-7 positive group was significantly better than the protein tyrosine kinase-7 negative group (60 vs 22 months, p<0.001). Disease-free survival was found to be 55 months in the protein tyrosine kinase-7 positive group, whereas it was 21 months in the negative group (p=0.015). In the multivariate analysis, along with negative protein tyrosine kinase-7 expression, poor performance status, and advanced stage were significantly associated with the risk of death (p<0.001 for each)., Conclusion: Compared to patients with negative PTK-7 expression, patients with positive PTK-7 expression have better disease-free survival and overall survival rates. Efforts should be made to enhance this finding and translate it into clinical practice.

In recent years, an increasing number of research papers revealed that the compositional and volumetric alterations in the extracellular matrix are the consequences of aging and may be related to Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this study, we aimed to demonstrate the alterations in hippocampal extracellular fluid proteins in vivo using the 5XFAD mouse model. Samples were obtained from hippocampi of 5XFAD mice (n = 6) and their non-transgenic littermates by intracerebral push-pull perfusion technique at 3 months of age, representing the pre-pathological stage of the AD. Proteins in the hippocampal perfusates were analyzed by Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography-Electrospray Ionization Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-qTOF-MS/MS). 178 proteins were identified and 19 proteins of them were found to be statistically significantly altered (p≤0.05, fold change ≥40%, unique peptide count ≥3) in the hippocampal CA1 extracellular fluid of the 5XFAD mouse model. Ingenuity pathway analysis of the protein expression results identified IL6 as an upstream regulator. The upregulation of IL6 was validated by immunohistochemical staining of the hippocampus and cortex of the 5XFAD mice prior to Aβ plaque formation. Furthermore, the iron level in the hippocampus was measured by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry as IL6 is mentioned in several studies to take part in iron homeostasis and inflammation and found to be increased in 5XFAD mice hippocampus. Alterations in extracellular matrix proteins in addition to increasing amount of hippocampal IL6 and iron in the early stages of AD may reveal inflammation-mediated iron dyshomeostasis in the early stages of neurodegeneration.

Objective: Head and neck cancers account for 17.6% of all malignant neoplasms. Data on the incidence of head and neck cancers and histological subtypes in Turkey are limited. This study aimed to provide an overview of statistics for head and neck cancers., Material and Method: This retrospective and descriptive study included 1973 cases of in-situ carcinomas, malignant and borderline neoplasia from the head and neck region in a period of 5 years, diagnosed at Dr.Lütfi Kırdar Kartal Education and Research Hospital's Department of Pathology. Demographic data of patients and data from histopathological report were recorded. The topography of all tumours was coded according to the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology, 2nd and 3rd edition and histological and behavioral codes were given according to ICD-O-3. Data was entered and analyzed using Microsoft Excel™, version 2010., Results: Male and female ratio was 1.03 for head and neck cancers. The most common sites for males were described as the ratio in head and neck cancers and all malignant tumours as follows: the skin (non-melanoma) (48.4%-8.2%), the larynx (12.6%-2.3%), the thyroid (11.1%-1.2%), the lips (7.8%-1.3%), and the nasopharynx (3.1%-0.5%). The most common sites for females were as follows: the thyroid (45.3%-8.3%), the skin (non-melanoma) (39.6%-7.3%), the lips (3.6%-0.6%), the nasopharynx (2.2%-0.4%) and the eye (1.7%-0.3%). The male: female ratio was 25.2 for larynx cancers. The most common histological types and rates for males and females were also given., Conclusion: This descriptive epidemiological pathology-based cancer incidence study has relative value for describing head and neck cancer incidences in the İstanbul region and shown that pathology report-based descriptive epidemiological studies are still valuable for determination of the regional distribution of cancer incidence out of the active cancer registration regions.