BackgroundManagement of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) with tumor thrombus extending to the renal vein and inferior vena cava (IVC) is challenging. The aim of this study was to evaluate the benefit of surgical management in such patients.MethodsFrom February 1995 to February 2013, 520 patients were treated for RCC at Hirosaki University Hospital, Hirosaki, Japan. The RCC patients with tumor thrombus extending to the renal vein (n = 42) and IVC (n = 43) were included in this study. The records of these 85 patients were retrospectively reviewed to assess the relevant clinical and pathological variables and survival. Prognostic factors were identified by multivariate analysis. The benefit of surgical management was evaluated using propensity score matching to compare overall survival between patients who received surgical management and those who did not.ResultsRCC was confirmed by pathological examination of surgical or biopsy specimens in 74 of the 85 patients (87%). Sixty-five patients (76%) received surgical management (radical nephrectomy with thrombectomy). Distant metastasis was identified in 45 patients (53%). The proportion of patients with tumor thrombus level 0 (renal vein only), I, II, III, and IV was 49%, 13%, 18%, 14%, and 5%, respectively. The estimated 5-year overall survival rate was 70% in patients with thrombus extending to the renal vein and 23% in patients with thrombus extending to the IVC. Multivariate analysis identified thrombus extending to the IVC, presence of distant metastasis, surgical management, serum albumin concentration, serum choline esterase concentration, neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio, and Carlson comorbidity index as independent prognostic factors. In propensity score-matched patients, overall survival was significantly longer in those who received surgical management than those who did not.ConclusionsSurgical management may improve the prognosis of RCC patients with thrombus extending to the renal vein and IVC.

Objectives: To assess the clinical benefit of pembrolizumab as second-line therapy for advanced urothelial carcinoma. Methods: We retrospectively compared the effects of pembrolizumab with those of conventional chemotherapy on the prognosis of patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma at six hospitals between January 2004 and August 2020. We compared the oncological outcomes between the patients treated with pembrolizumab and those treated with conventional chemotherapy using Kaplan-Meier curve analysis and multivariate Cox regression analysis with the inverse probability of treatment weighting method. Results: The numbers of patients in the pembrolizumab and chemotherapy groups were 121 and 67, respectively. Patients in the pembrolizumab group were significantly older (median 72 vs 66 years, P = 0.001), and had poor Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status (median 1 vs 0, P = 0.001). The unadjusted Kaplan-Meier curve analysis showed no significant differences in the median overall survival from the first-line chemotherapy (24.7 months vs 16.3 months, P = 0.159). Inverse probability of treatment weighting-adjusted multivariate Cox proportional hazards analyses showed a significant difference between the pembrolizumab and chemotherapy groups in overall survival (P = 0.003, hazard ratio 0.63). Conclusions: Despite the non-negligible age difference between the trial and our clinical practice, our study supports the benefit of second-line pembrolizumab over chemotherapy in real-world practice.

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Although the number of elderly patients requiring dialysis has increased, data regarding the prognosis of elderly patients undergoing hemodialysis are limited. In the present study, prognosis in Japanese hemodialysis patients aged ≥80 years was evaluated. From January 1988 to July 2013, 1144 consecutive patients with end-stage renal disease required renal replacement therapy at our institution; of these, 141 were aged ≥80 years. These patients' charts were retrospectively reviewed for relevant clinical variables and survival time. The life expectancies table from the National Vital Statistics database was used, and prognostic factors were assessed by multivariate analysis. In total, 107 deaths (76%) were recorded during the study period. The median survival time and estimated life-shortening period in the patients were 2.6 years and −5.3 years, respectively. Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Status and hemoglobin level were revealed as prognostic factors in the multivariate analysis. Estimates of prognosis and prognostic factors may provide useful information for physicians as well as elderly patients with end-stage kidney disease.

The aim of this study to determine whether the aberrant N-glycosylated serum immunoglobulins (Igs) can be applied as a diagnostic marker of urothelial carcinoma (UC). Between 2009 and 2016, we randomly obtained serum available from 237 UC and also 96 prostate cancer as other cancer controls from our serum bank and also obtained—from 339 healthy volunteers (HV)—controls obtained from community-dwelling volunteers in Iwaki Health Promotion Project. A total of 32 types of N-glycan levels on Igs were determined by high-throughput N-glycomics and analyzed by multivariable discriminant analysis. We found five UC-associated aberrant N-glycans changes on Igs and also found that asialo-bisecting GlcNAc type N-glycan on Igs were significantly accumulated in UC patients. The diagnostic N-glycan Score (dNGScore) established by combination of five N-glycans on Igs discriminated UC patients from HV and prostate cancer (PC) patients with 92.8% sensitivity and 97.2% specificity. The area under the curve (AUC) for of the dNGScore was 0.969 for UC detection that was much superior to that of urine cytology (AUC, 0.707) and hematuria (AUC, 0.892). Furthermore, dNGScore can detect hematuria and urine cytology negative patients. The dNGscore based on aberrant N-glycosylation signatures of Igs were found to be promising diagnostic biomarkers of UCs.

Although testicular cancer patients show lower total sperm concentration, intracytoplasmic sperm injection outcomes are acceptable. Further studies on the fertility potential of testicular cancer patients are warranted.

Osteopontin (OPN) is a matrix glycoprotein of urinary calculi. This study aims to identify the role of aberrant glycosylation of OPN in urolithiasis. We retrospectively measured urinary glycosylated OPN normalized by urinary full-length-OPN levels in 110 urolithiasis patients and 157 healthy volunteers and 21 patients were prospectively longitudinal follow-up during stone treatment. The urinary full-length-OPN levels were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and glycosylated OPN was measured using a lectin array and lectin blotting. The assays were evaluated using the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve to discriminate stone forming urolithiasis patients. In the retrospective cohort, urinary Gal3C-S lectin reactive-(Gal3C-S-) OPN/full-length-OPN, was significantly higher in the stone forming urolithiasis patients than in the healthy volunteers (p < 0.0001), with good discrimination (AUC, 0.953), 90% sensitivity, and 92% specificity. The Lycopersicon esculentum lectin analysis of urinary full-length-OPN showed that urinary full-length-OPN in stone forming urolithiasis patients had a polyLacNAc structure that was not observed in healthy volunteers. In the prospective longitudinal follow-up study, 92.8% of the stone-free urolithiasis group had Gal3C-S-OPN/full-length-OPN levels below the cutoff value after ureteroscopic lithotripsy (URS), whereas 71.4% of the residual-stone urolithiasis group did not show decreased levels after URS. Therefore, Gal3C-S-OPN/full-length-OPN levels could be used as a urolithiasis biomarker.

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