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Taiwan has the highest incidence rate of oral cancer in the world. Although oral cancer is mostly an environmentally induced cancer, genetic factors also play an important role in its etiology. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified nine susceptibility regions for oral cancers in populations of European descent. In this study, we performed the first GWAS of oral cancer in Taiwan with 1529 cases and 44,572 controls. We confirmed two previously reported loci on the 6p21.33 (HLA-B) and 6p21.32 (HLA-DQ gene cluster) loci, highlighting the importance of the human leukocyte antigen and, hence, the immunologic mechanisms in oral carcinogenesis. The TERT-CLMPT1L locus on 5p15.33, the 4q23 ADH1B locus, and the LAMC3 locus on 9q34.12 were also consistent in the Taiwanese. We found two new independent loci on 6p21.32, rs401775 in SKIV2L gene and rs9267798 in TNXB gene. We also found two suggestive novel Taiwanese-specific loci near the TPRS1 gene on 8q23.3 and in the TMED3 gene on 15q25.1. This study identified both common and unique oral cancer susceptibility loci in the Taiwanese as compared to populations of European descent and shed significant light on the etiology of oral cancer in Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liver cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors globally and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in Taiwan. The activity of α‐fucosidase (AFU) in the human body has been confirmed by many clinical studies and experiments to be applicable in the early diagnosis of primary liver cancer. Herein, an electrochemical method for determining AFU activity was developed based on measuring p‐nitrophenol (pNP), which is a product of the reaction between AFU and p‐nitrophenyl‐α‐L‐fucopyranoside. The electrochemical detection of pNP in serum samples exhibited a wide linear range (2.5–250 μM), which corresponds to approximately 2.5–250 U/L AFU. The recovery of AFU measured upon enzyme addition to standard serum was 97–110%. Moreover, no potential interferants had a significant effect on pNP quantification. In contrast, an optical absorption method was subject to interference by the serum color. Further, the linear range for pNP was only 2.5–50 μM and the recovery of AFU was 165–219%. The performance of this absorption method could lead to a misjudgment of the disease course. Therefore, the electrochemical method for AFU activity determination has greater potential for use in clinical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/purpose: Liver cancer is the second most common cancer in Taiwan. Research on projected cancer incident rates can facilitate appropriate public health planning, and incidence rate studies can offer insights and enable hypotheses about the etiology of particular cancers.Methods: Age-period-cohort models are used to estimate incidence trends in liver cancer from 1997 to 2014 and project trends up to 2035.Results: For men, the age-adjusted incidence rate showed an increasing trend from 1997, which peaked in 2004 (157.6 cases per 100,000 population), and a decreasing trend thereafter. The age-adjusted incidence rate is projected to decrease by 22.2% from 2014 to 2025 and by 37.3% from 2014 to 2035. For women, the age-adjusted incidence rate also showed an increasing trend from 1997, which peaked in 2004 (63.4 cases per 100,000 population), and a decreasing trend thereafter. The age-adjusted incidence rate is projected to decrease by 17.5% from 2014 to 2025 and by 27% from 2014 to 2035.Conclusion: This study revealed a reduction in the incidence rate of liver cancer for both sexes after 2004, and a further decrease until 2035 is projected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer has been ranked first in the causes of death for 31 consecutive years in Taiwan. Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a treatment for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and it becomes one of the important therapies for HCC these years. For those who had HCC and were treated by RFA, their clinical data are collected to build predictive models which can be used in predicting the recurrence or not of liver cancer after RAF treatment. Clinical data with multiple measurements are merged based on different time periods and these data are further transformed based on temporal abstraction (TA). Data processed by TA reveal variations of clinical data with different time points. The goal of this study is to evaluate whether clinical data handled by TA could facilitate performance of predictive models. Different data sets are used in developing predictive models, including clinical data which are not processed by TA called the original data set, clinical data which are processed by TA called the TA data set, and combination of the original data set and the TA data set called the TA+original data set. Support vector machine (SVM) was selected as a classifier to develop predictive models. The results demonstrate data sets processed by TA provide benefit for predictive models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the relationship between petrochemical air pollution and brain cancer (29 yr of age or younger), the authors conducted a matched case-control study using deaths that occurred in Taiwan from 1995 through 2005. Data on all eligible brain cancer deaths were obtained from the Bureau of Vital Statistics of the Taiwan Provincial Department of Health. The control group consisted of subjects who died from causes other than neoplasms or diseases that were not associated with respiratory problems. The controls were pair matched to the cases by sex, year of birth, and year of death. Each matched control was selected randomly from the set of possible controls for each case. The proportion of a municipality's total population employed in the petrochemical industry in a municipality was used as an indicator of a resident's exposure to air emissions from the petrochemical industry. The subjects were divided into tertiles according to the levels of the index just described. Subjects who lived in the group of municipalities characterized by the highest levels of petrochemical air pollution had a statistically significant higher risk of developing brain cancer than the group that lived in municipalities with the lowest petrochemical air pollution levels after controlling for possible confounders (OR = 1.65, 95% CI = 1.00-2.73). The findings of this study warrant further investigation of the role of petrochemical air pollution in the etiology of brain cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]