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BackgroundOvarian cancer is sixth most common cancer among women and the leading cause of death in women with gynecological malignancies. Despite the great impact ovarian cancer has on women's health and its great impact in public economy, Brazil still lacks valuable information concerning epidemiological aspects of this diseaseMethodsWe've compiled clinical data of all ovarian tumors registered at the two public hospitals of reference (1997 - 2007), such as: patients' age at diagnosis, tumor histological type, tumor stage, chemotherapy regimens, chemotherapy responsiveness, disease-free survival, and overall survival.ResultsWomen's mean age at diagnosis was 54.67 ± 13.84 for ovarian cancer, 46.15 ± 11.15 for borderline tumors, and 42.01 ± 15.06 for adenomas. Among epithelial ovarian cancer cases, 30.1% were of serous, 13.7% were of mucinous, and 13.7% were of endometrioid type; exceptionally serous carcinoma was diagnosed in women younger than 30 years old. Endometrioid cancer had lower disease-free survival than others (p < 0.05). Cases were predominantly diagnosed as poor prognosis disease (FIGO III and IV, 56.2%). Regarding responsiveness to platinum-based therapy, 17.1% of patients were resistant, whereas 24.6%, susceptible. From these, we found equally responsiveness to platinum alone or its association with paclitaxel or cyclophosphamide.DiscussionOur data agreed with other studies regarding mean patients' age at diagnosis, histological type frequency, FIGO stages distribution, and chemotherapy regimens. However, the histological type distribution, with equal contribution of mucinous and endometrioid types seems to be a unique characteristic of the studied highly miscegenated population.ConclusionWe have enlighten the profile of the studied ovarian cancer population, which might enable the development of more efficient political strategies to control this malignancy that is the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths among women.

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Enzymes do not have long-term storage stability in soluble forms, thus drying methods could minimize the loss of enzymatic activity, the spray dryer removes water under high temperatures and little time. The aims of this study were to improve the stability of enzymatic extract from Myceliophthora thermophila for potential applications in industry and to evaluate the best conditions to remove the water by spray drying technique. The parameters were tested according to Box-Behnken and evaluated by analysis of variance (ANOVA), all the parameters measured were found to influence the final enzyme activity and spray drying process yield ranged from 38.65 to 63.75%. Enzyme powders showed increased storage stability than extract and maintained about 100% of collagenolytic activity after 180 days of storage at 30°C. The results showed that the microbial enzymes maintained activity during the spray drying process and were stable during long-term storage; these are promising characteristics for industrial applications.