Abstract: Cardiac transplantation is an effective therapeutic method for terminalstage heart diseases. The immunosuppressive treatment based on calcineurin inhibitors (CsA and FK506) is most commonly used, monoclonal antibodies are also used in some recipients as induction therapy before and/or after transplantation. Some new immunosuppressive drugs, such as Rapamycin and Everolimus, can not only inhibit the acute transplant rejection but also prevent cardiac vasculopathy. The application of some relatively nontraumatic tests, such as immunological indexes, cardiac markers and other serological parameters, are helpful for diagnosis and preventing postcardiac transplant rejection at early stage and improving the result of cardiac transplantation.
Objective To evaluate the diagnostic value of anti-nucleosome antibody (AnuA) in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Methods We searched MEDLINE, EMbase and The Cochrane Library to identify studies on the diagnostic value of AnuA in patients with SLE. The searching time was from 1990 to 2005. The quality of included studies was evaluated and the data were extracted. The Cochrane Collaboration’s RevMan software was used to analyze heterogeneity, and MetaDisc was used to perform meta-analyses and draw summary receiver operator characteristic curve (SROC). Results Twenty-five studies involving 7 289 patients (2 459 SLE and 5 030 non-SLE patients were diagnosed by gold standard) were included, most of which were poor in quality. The heterogeneity among studies was high (Plt;0.000 01, I2=87.2%). The pooled sensitivity was 64.9%, 95% CI 63.0 to 66.85, and the pooled specificity was 92.6%, 95% CI 91.8% to 93.3%. Area under the SROC was 0.918, SE0.0212. These data suggested that AnuA had a relatively high false negative rate (35.1%) and a relatively low false positive rate (7.4%). Conclusions AnuA has some value in diagnosing SLE and could possibly be used as one of the diagnostic tests for SLE.
ObjectiveTo explore the predictive value of serum prothrombin induced by vitamin K absence-Ⅱ (PIVKA-Ⅱ) detection for the biological characteristics of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-associated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).MethodsThis retrospective study included 394 patients with HBV-related HCC who were newly diagnosed and treated with surgical resection in West China Hospital of Sichuan University between June 2017 and December 2018. Their clinical information such as tumor size, tumor number, tumor cell differentiation, presence of microvascular invasion (MVI), distant metastasis, and portal vein tumor thrombus was collected from the medical record. The laboratory test results of patients during diagnosis and before surgery were collected, including alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), PIVKA-Ⅱ, alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), gamma-glutamyl transferase (γ-GGT), etc., and the relationships between PIVKA-Ⅱ levels and tumor biological characteristics were analyzed. Non-normal continuous variables were presented as medium (lower quartile, upper quartile).ResultsCompared with the patients with low HCC serum PIVKA-Ⅱ levels (≤40 mAU/mL), patients with high serum PIVKA-Ⅱ levels (>40 mAU/mL) had larger tumor diameters [5.00 (3.00, 9.00) vs. 2.50 (1.63, 4.95) cm, P<0.001], more severe Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) stage (P<0.001), and higher AFP [186.05 (6.86, 1 210.00) vs. 17.83 (4.33, 231.95) ng/mL, P<0.001], ALT [38.00 (26.00, 66.25) vs. 32.00 (22.00, 51.00) U/L, P=0.018], AST [42.00 (30.00, 76.00) vs. 34.00 (25.50, 48.25) U/L, P<0.001], and γ-GGT [71.00 (39.00, 165.50) vs. 55.50 (25.00, 93.00) U/L, P=0.005], and were more likely to form portal vein tumor thrombi (16.61% vs. 3.75%, P=0.003) and MVI (43.67% vs. 11.11%, P<0.001). In BCLC stage 0 HCC patients, the positive rate of PIVKA-Ⅱ was only 51.35%. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that PIVKA-Ⅱ>40 mAU/mL was an independent predictor of MVI [odds ratio=6.588, 95% confidence interval (CI) (1.645, 26.383), P=0.008]. The area under receiver operating characteristic curve of PIVKA-Ⅱ level predicting MVI was 0.761 [95%CI (0.693, 0.830)], with a sensitivity of 66.22% and a specificity of 79.06%.ConclusionIn HBV-related HCC patients, high PIVKA-Ⅱ is associated with the poor biological characteristics of tumor, and is an independent risk factor for tumor MVI.