This prospective clinical trial revealed that routine determination of the fetal D status from maternal plasma is feasible. Noninvasive fetal RHD genotyping can be considered as sensitive as the traditional postnatal serologic assay.
This preliminary study demonstrates that rhGM-CSF upregulates HLA-DR expression on monocytes in septic patients with multi-organ dysfunction. Moreover, with the concomitant increase of the ex vivo whole blood TNF-alpha response, this upregulation of a monocytic activation marker is paralleled by a functional recovery.
Summary Several reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reacton (RT-PCR) assays have been descnbed for the detecbon of circulating tumour cells in bkJod and bone marrow. Target mRNA sequences for this purpose are the cytokeratins (CK) 19 and 20, the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), and the prostate-specific antigen messages. In this study, we investigated bioogical factors influencing the speficity of the CK1 9 and CEA RT-PCR assays. Bone marrow, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)-moobilized blood stem cells and peripheral blood samples obtained from healthy volunteers (n = 15; CEA n = 7), from patients with epithial (rn=9) and haematological (n = 23) cancer and from patients with chronic inflammatory diseases (n = 16) were examined. Neither CEA nor cytokeratin 19 messages coukd be amplified from bone marrow samples from healthy subjects and from patients with haematological malignancies. In contrast specimens from patients with inflammatory diseases scored positive up to 60%. To investigate the influence of inflammation on target mRNA expression, haemopoietic cells were cultured with and without cytokine stimulation in vitro. CK19 messages could be easily detected in cultured marrow cells without further stimulation, CEA messages only after y-interferon (y-INF) stimulation. In contrast, G-CSF-mobilized peripheral bklod stem cells were positive for CK19 messages only after stem cell factor (SCF) or interleukin stimulatin. We condude that btanscription of so-called tissue-specific genes is inductible in haemopoietic tissues under certain conditions. These factors have to be considered in future applications of RT-PCR for the detection of minimal residual disease.
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