Earticle

Purpose: Colorectal cancer (CRC) survivors face significant challenges after completing treatment, including returning to work, concerns about the future, and financial difficulties. Understanding how inner strength developed after treatment affects survivors’ lives is crucial for informing patient-centered care. This study explored the unique inner strength exhibited by CRC survivors during their transition to a “new normal.” Methods: We recruited 16 patients from Korea who had completed treatment, to explore their experiences of managing their health. We conducted a qualitative study from July 4, 2022 to July 25, 2022 using individual interviews and directed content analysis. Transcribed interview data were analyzed to interpret meaning from the data, consistent with the naturalistic paradigm. Results: Participants described their transition to a new normal by reframing the cancer experience, struggling to return to normal life, experiencing growth promoted by supportive relationships, and encountering both positive and negative life changes. Throughout these experiences as survivors, inner strength played a critical role in adapting to a new normal. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that inner strength serves as a dynamic psychological resource, enabling CRC survivors to reframe their illness, regain disrupted roles, and reconstruct a meaningful life despite ongoing physical and emotional challenges. In doing so, inner strength facilitates their adaptation to a new normal.

강원도 산지에서 채취한 만병초 잎의 70% ethanol 추출물과 다른 유기용매 분획 과정을 통한 3가지의 분획물에 대한 in vitro에서의 정상세포에 대한 세포독성과 유전독성, 여러 암 세포에 대한 항암 기능, 면역세포에 대한 면역기능 등을 조사하여 다음과 같은 결과를 얻었다. 1. 만병초 잎의 EtOH 추출물과 각 용매 분획물 들의 사람의 정상 세포인 HEL 299와 Chang에 대한 세포 독성을 SRB assay로 측정한 결과, 대부분의 시료 0.5㎎/㎖ 이하의 농도에서 35% 이하의 세포 독성이 나타났다. 2. 만병초 잎의 70% EtOH 추출물 및 각 다른 용매 분획물 만 처리한 정상 세포에 대한 유전독성을 comet assay에서 측정한 결과, 양성 대조구 (10−2M, H2O2)과 비교시, 가장 높은 농도인 1㎎/㎖의 농도에서 1/3 이하의 낮은 DNA damage 가 관찰되었다. 이것은 세포독성과 관련하여 대부분의 각 시료가 세포 DNA에 대하여 매우 약한 손상만 일으키는 것이 확인되었다. 3. 사람의 암세포에 대한 SRB 및 MTT assay를 이용한 만병초의 잎의 모든 시료의 1㎎/㎖의 농도의 70% EtOH의 추출물은 실험대상인 모든 사람의 암세포에 대하여 80% 이상의 항암 기능을, EtOAc fr.는 모든 암세포에 대하여 가장 높은 농도인 1㎎/㎖에서 70% 이상의 높은 억제 활성이 보인 결과로 부터 유효한 성분이 역시 EtOAc fr.에 함유되어 있을 것을 시사하였다. 4. 만병초 잎 추출물의 면역세포 생육에 대한 조사에서 사람의 B-cell과 T-cell에 대하여 0.5㎎/㎖의 농도에서 배양 3일째에 BuOH fr.에서 대조구와 비교시 1.6배 정도의 생육 촉진활성을 보였다. 5. SCGE를 통해 H2O2로 유도된 산화적 손상에 대한 만병초 잎 추출물과 분획물들의 유전독성 억제 기능은 EtOAc fr.이 100㎍/㎖ 농도에서 대조구 대비 68.5%의 가장 높은 산화 손상 억제율을 보였으며 BuOH fr.에서도 강한 유전독성 억제 기능이 있음이 확인되었다. 그러나 수용액 분획은 매우 약한 유전독성 억제 활성을 보여 각 분획의 특성이 다양함을 알 수 있었다.

Summary: We report the first hepatic adverse effect of tosufloxacin tosylate in a muscle invasive bladder cancer patient with normal liver functions and with scheduling to undergo a surgical operation for a neobladder. Tosufloxacin tosylate 150 mg was administered to a 57-year-old man who maintained transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TUR-BT) postoperative multiple medications. His labs presented significant increases in alanine amino transferase (ALT) and aspartate amino transferase (AST) levels with 2-week compliance of 150 mg tablet three times a day. After discontinuing tosufloxacin tosylate, the levels slowly decreased and completely returned to normal ranges without any intervention in a few weeks. The Naranjo Causality Algorithm indicates a probable relationship between increased ALT and tosufloxacin. The patient was to have the second surgical operation as scheduled after getting normal range of ATL level. Therefore, tosufloxacin should be avoided in patients at risk for having liver dysfunctions or diseases if the patients have a schedule for any operation. Background: Tosufloxacin tosylate has been shown to have favorable benefits as an antibiotic. Tosufloxacin tosylate may be considered to have the adverse effects such as nauseas, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, stomatitis, tendonitis, tendon rupture, headache, dizziness, drowsiness, insomnia, weakness, agitation including hemolysis in the event of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency as other fluoroquinolones. More severe adverse reactions of tosufloxacin tosylate over the above common adverse effects of fluoroquinolones were thrombocytopenia and nephritis. It also is not well known that tosufloxacin can cause hepatic problem. Here the study reports the first hepatic reaction from tosufloxacin and might arouse heath care providers' attention to appropriate drug choice for patients.

We report an unusual case of respiratory depression and prolonged apnea after the second dose of 100-mg intravenous tramadol. Due to continuous pain at foley catheter keep site, intravenous tramadol was administered to the patient. Soon after the second dose of tramadol injection, the patient became apneic. The patient did not respond to verbal command and started exhibiting oxygen desaturation. The patient was quickly treated with 100% oxygen, and it took 4 hours for the spontaneous respiration to return to regular. This case report demonstrates that even two doses of tramadol administered intravenously may manifest as sudden and prolonged apnea. Respiratory depression with tramadol has been reported in patients with impaired renal functions and Cytochrome P(CYP) 2D6 gene duplication

In an effort to elucidate the differential actions of blueberry(BB) in both normal and cancer cells, we utilized human breast cell lines to assess the accumulation of radical oxygen species(ROS) and ROS-associated apoptosis in both human normal breast epithelial(MCF10A) and breast cancer(MCF7) cells. BB extract was added to the cultures at a final concentration of $20{\mu}g/m{\ell}$ for 0(control), 6, 12, and 24 hr intervals. The MCF10A cells evidenced no marked ROS accumulation in the presence of BB, whereas the MCF7 cells evidenced clear ROS accumulation upon BB treatment from 12 hours forward. The number of dying or dead cells did not increase in the BB-treated MCF10A cell groups, whereas that number increased profoundly from 12 hr forward. Furthermore, the expression levels of certain stress-related, and pro- and antiapoptotic gene products evidenced differential responses to BB treatment between the MCF10A and MCF7 cell groups. These results indicate that the components of BB extract differentiate cancer cells by not preventing ROS accumulation within cells and by inducing ROS-associated cell death in cancer cells. However, no marked ROS accumulation or induction of cell death was noted in the normal breast epithelial cells. The fact that BB extract exerted a differential effect on cancer cells opens further directions of research regarding the specific components that exert the differential BB-mediated effects in the selective prevention of normal cells and therapy for cancer tissues in the physiological body.

This paper compares the performance of the combination of biomarkers to distinguish benign tumor from cancer and normal from cancer, from 21 urine biomarkers. Samples consist of 79 healthy women, 119 patients with benign tumor, and 137 patients with ovarian cancer. The concentrations of the 21 biomarkers were extracted using Luminex-PRA. The area under the curve (AUC) of ROC was evaluated to determine the optimum marker combination showing the best performance. The performance of the selected combination was confirmed with logistic regression. The highest AUC value of distinguishing benign tumor from cancer with a combination of two biomarkers and three biomarkers are 87.97% and 91.38%, respectively. And the highest AUC value of distinguishing normal from cancer with a combination of two biomarkers and three biomarkers are 87.39% and 90.68%, respectively. Interestingly, the benign-cancer classification shows a little higher performance than the normal-cancer classification.

Cancer show distinct pattern of gene expression when it is compared to normal. This difference results malignant characteristic of cancer. Many cancer drugs are targeting this difference so that it can selectively kill cancer cells. One of the recent demand for personalized treating cancer is retrieving normal tissue from a patient so that the gene expression difference between cancer and normal be assessed. However, in most clinical situation it is hard to retrieve normal tissue from a patient. This is because biopsy of normal tissues may cause damage to the organ function or a risk of infection or side effect what a patient to take. Thus, there is a challenge to estimate normal cell’s gene expression where cancers are originated from without taking additional biopsy. In this paper, we propose in-silico based prediction of normal cell’s gene expression from gene expression data of a tumor sample. We call this challenge as reverting the cancer into normal. We divided this challenge into two parts. The first part is making a generator that is able to fool a pretrained discriminator. Pretrained discriminator is from the training of public data (9,601 cancers, 7,240 normals) which shows 0.997 of accuracy to discriminate if a given gene expression pattern is cancer or normal. Deceiving this pretrained discriminator means our method is capable of generating very normal-like gene expression data. The second part of the challenge is to address whether generated normal is similar to true reverse form of the input cancer data. We used, cycle-consistent adversarial networks to approach our challenges, since this network is capable of translating one domain to the other while maintaining original domain’s feature and at the same time adding the new domain’s feature. We evaluated that, if we put cancer data into a cycle-consistent adversarial network, it could retain most of the information from the input (cancer) and at the same time change the data into normal. We also evaluated if this generated gene expression of normal tissue would be the biological reverse form of the gene expression of cancer used as an input,

The glycosyl epitope dimeric Lea (Lea-on-Lea), defined by mouse monoclonal antibody NCC-ST-421, was identified previously as tumor-associated antigen, expressed highly in various human cancer tissues and cell lines derived therefrom, but with minimal expression in various normal tissues. In the present study, we observed clearly higher expression of this epitope, defined by ST421, in β-haptoglobin (β-Hap) from sera of patients with colorectal cancer, compared to normal, healthy subjects or patients with chronic inflammatory processes (Crohn\'s disease, ulcerative colitis). We focused, therefore, on biochemical characterization of glycosyl epitope status expressed in β-Hap. We concluded that the dimeric Lea epitope is carried by O-linked but not by N-linked structure, based on the following observations: (i) Strong reactivity of Colo205 supernatant with ST421 was reduced clearly by pre-incubation of cells with benzyl-α -GalNAc. (ii) Treatment of β-Hap with α-L-fucosidase reduced its reactivity with ST421, but did not affect its reactivity with anti-Hap antibody. In contrast, treatment of purified β-Hap with PNGase F, which releases N-linked glycans, had no effect on reactivity with ST421, but changed molecular mass from 40 kDa to 30 kDa.

Human breast milk (HBM) provides neonates with indispensable nutrition. The present study evaluated the anti-cancer activity of diluted and pasteurized early HBM (< 6 weeks' lactation) on human breast cancer cell lines. The cell lines MCF7 and MDA-MB231 were exposed to 1 % HBM from the 1st, 3rd, and 6th weeks of lactation and exhibited reduced proliferation rates. As controls, breast cell lines (293T and MCF-10A), breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231), and $CD133^{hi}CXCR4^{hi}ALDH1^{hi}$ patient-derived human cancer stem-like cells (KU-CSLCs) were treated with prominent milk proteins ${\beta}$-casein, ${\kappa}$-casein, and lactoferrin at varying doses (10, 50, and $100{\mu}g$) for 24 or 48 hrs. The impact of these proteins on cell proliferation was investigated. Breast cancer cell lines treated with ${\kappa}$-casein and lactoferrin exhibited significantly reduced viability, in both a dose- and time-dependent manner. Interestingly, ${\kappa}$-casein selectively impacted only cancer (but not normal breast) cell lines, particularly the more malignant cell line. However, ${\beta}$-casein-exposed human breast cancer cell lines exhibited a significantly higher proliferation rate. Thus, ${\kappa}$-casein and lactoferrin appear to exert selective anti-cancer activities. Further studies are warranted to determine the mechanisms underlying ${\kappa}$-casein- and lactoferrin-mediated cancer cell-selective cytotoxic effects.

Cancer treatment remains a serious problem worldwide. Analysis of the relationship between cancer cells and normal cells reveals that these two share characteristics in contradiction, thus could be analyzed by using contradictory principles. Under the theory of contradictory principles, induction of a dormant state or reversal of cancer cells is an important treatment strategy beyond traditional cytotoxic therapy. Normal cells are also the targets and under the influence of anti-cancer treatments and should be considered during therapy. Findings based on crosstalk between these two cell types may offer opportunities for the development of new biomarkers and therapies.

Together with radiotherapy, chemotherapy using cytotoxic agents is one of the most common therapies in cancer. Metabolic changes in cancer cells are drawing much attention recently, but the metabolic alterations by anticancer agents have not been much studied. Here, we investigated the effects of commonly used cytotoxic agents on lung normal cell MRC5 and lung cancer cell A549. We employed cis-plastin, doxorubicin, and 5-Fluorouracil and compared their effects on the viability and metabolism of the normal and cancer cell lines. We first established the concentration of the cytotoxic reagents that give differences in the viabilities of normal and cancer cell lines. In those conditions, the viability of A549 decreased significantly, whereas that of MRC5 remained unchanged. To study the metabolic alterations implicated in the viability differences, we obtained the metabolic profiles using $^1H$-NMR spectrometry. The $^1H$-NMR data showed that the metabolic changes of A549 cells are more remarkable than that of MRC5 cells and the effect of 5-FU on the A549 cells is the most distinct compared to other treatments. Heat map analysis showed that metabolic alterations under treatment of cytotoxic agents are totally different between normal and cancer cells. Multivariate analysis and weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA) revealed a distinctive metabolite signature and hub metabolites. Two different analysis tools revealed that the changes of cell metabolism in response to cytotoxic agents were highly correlated with the Warburg effect and Reductive lipogenesis, two pathways having important effects on the cell survival. Taken together, our study addressed the correlation between the viability and metabolic profiles of MRC5 and A549 cells upon the treatment of cytotoxic anticancer agents.

Non-thermal plasma has attracted medical researchers, since they showed higher apoptosis rate in cancer cells than normal cells. However, it is hard to conclude general cancer cell specific effect because comparison between normal and cancer cell activities after plasma treatment have not been reported yet. This research proposes a comparison of Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) plasma effect on three normal cells lines and three cancer cells lines. We measured cell number, mitochondria activity (MTS assay) and amount of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) for three days. The results show that the number of cancer cells decreased more than normal cells following of exposure time. On the other hand, mitochondria activities and amounts of H2O2 increased following of exposure time. In addition, we found that DBD plasma exposure on cell suspension in media and media only illustrated no difference in mitochondria activity, H2O2 quantity, and cell number. Thus, we can confirm higher apoptosis rate in cancer cells which is related to the reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by DBD plasma. The related molecular mechanisms were investigated further.

In cancer cells, metabolic pathways are reprogrammed to promote cell proliferation and growth. While the rewiring of central biosynthetic pathways is being extensively studied, the dynamics of phospholipids in cancer cells are still poorly understood. In our study, we sought to evaluate de novo biosynthesis of glycerophospholipids (GPLs) in ex vivo lung cancer explants and corresponding normal lung tissue from six patients by utilizing a stable isotopic labeling approach. Incorporation of fully 13 C-labeled glucose into the backbone of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), phosphatidylcholine (PC), and phosphatidylinositol (PI) was analyzed by liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry. Lung cancer tissue showed significantly elevated isotopic enrichment within the glycerol backbone of PE, normalized to its incorporation into PI, compared to that in normal lung tissue; however, the size of the PE pool normalized to the size of the PI pool was smaller in tumor tissue. These findings indicate enhanced PE turnover in lung cancer tissue. Elevated biosynthesis of PE in lung cancer tissue was supported by enhanced expression of the PE biosynthesis genes ETNK2 and EPT1 and decreased expression of the PC and PI biosynthesis genes CHPT1 and CDS2 , respectively, in different subtypes of lung cancer in publicly available datasets. Our study demonstrates that incorporation of glucose-derived carbons into the glycerol backbone of GPLs can be monitored to study phospholipid dynamics in tumor explants and shows that PE turnover is elevated in lung cancer tissue compared to normal lung tissue.

Piperlongumine, a natural alkaloid isolated from the long pepper, selectively increases reactive oxygen species production and apoptotic cell death in cancer cells but not in normal cells. However, the molecular mechanism underlying piperlongumine-induced selective killing of cancer cells remains unclear. In the present study, we observed that human breast cancer MCF-7 cells are sensitive to piperlongumine-induced apoptosis relative to human MCF-10A breast epithelial cells. Interestingly, this opposing effect of piperlongumine appears to be mediated by heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1). Piperlongumine upregulated HO-1 expression through the activation of nuclear factor-erythroid-2-related factor-2 (Nrf2) signaling in both MCF-7 and MCF-10A cells. However, knockdown of HO-1 expression and pharmacological inhibition of its activity abolished the ability of piperlongumine to induce apoptosis in MCF-7 cells, whereas those promoted apoptosis in MCF-10A cells, indicating that HO-1 has anti-tumor functions in cancer cells but cytoprotective functions in normal cells. Moreover, it was found that piperlongumine-induced Nrf2 activation, HO-1 expression and cancer cell apoptosis are not dependent on the generation of reactive oxygen species. Instead, piperlongumine, which bears electrophilic ${\alpha},{\beta}$-unsaturated carbonyl groups, appears to inactivate Kelch-like ECH-associated protein-1 (Keap1) through thiol modification, thereby activating the Nrf2/HO-1 pathway and subsequently upregulating HO-1 expression, which accounts for piperlongumine-induced apoptosis in cancer cells. Taken together, these findings suggest that direct interaction of piperlongumine with Keap1 leads to the upregulation of Nrf2-mediated HO-1 expression, and HO-1 determines the differential response of breast normal cells and cancer cells to piperlongumine.

Atmospheric plasma's electron temperature is less than thermal plasma, so it is useful at bio experiment. We have investigated the optical emission spectroscopy (OES) lines by spectrometer during Atmospheric plasma bombardment onto the PBS surface by using an Ar gas flow. Also we have measured the OH radical density inside the solution induced by the Atmospheric plasma bombardment. OH radical species are appeared at 308 nm and 309 nm. Densities of OH radical species has been found to be significantly decreased versus depth of the solution from 2 mm to 6 mm. OH radical density inside the PBS is measured to be about $1.87{\times}1016cm-3$ downstream at 2 mm from the surface under optimized Ar gas flow of 200 sccm in Atmospheric plasma. Also we have investigated cell viability of lung cancer and normal cell after Atmospheric plasma treatment for fixed exposure time in 60 seconds, but different depths. We used SEM, we observed change of cell morphorogy, did experiment about FDA & PI Staining method. It is found that there is selectivity between the lung cancer and lung normal cell, in which cancer cell definitely has higher cell death ratio more than normal cell. We have investigated change of bond structure in FT-IR spectroscopy, the following peaks were observed: and intense O-H peak at 3422 cm-1 and at 2925 cm-1 corresponds to C-H stretch vibrations of methylene group.

Purpose This study aimed to evaluate the risk of cervical cancer diagnosed within 1 year after the last of multiple consecutive normal Papanicolau (Pap) tests.Materials and Methods The database of the National Health Insurance Service was used. We obtained Pap test data for 11,052,116 women aged 30-79 between 2007-2012. The cumulative incidence rates and 5-year overall survival rates of cervical cancer diagnosed within 1 year after the last normal Pap test were compared between women with one (N1), two (N2), and three consecutive normal Pap tests (N3). Women who did not receive a Pap test during the study period were assigned in the N0 group.Results The 1-year cumulative incidence rates of cervical cancer were 58.9, 24.6, 20.3, and 14.2 per 105 in the N0, N1, N2, and N3 groups, respectively. Compared to the N1 group, the risk of cervical cancer diagnosed within 1 year of the last normal Pap test decreased by 17% (relative risk [RR], 0.825; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.716 to 0.951) in the N2 group and 42% (RR, 0.578; 95% CI, 0.480 to 0.695) in the N3 group. However, the 5-year survival rate in women diagnosed with cervical cancer within 1 year of the last normal Pap test in the N3 group was not higher than that of the N1 group (79.6% vs. 81.3%, p=0.706).Conclusion As normal Pap tests are consecutively repeated, cervical cancer risk significantly decreases. However, previous consecutive normal Pap tests are not associated with improving survival outcomes in women shortly diagnosed with cervical cancer after the last normal Pap test.

Purpose This retrospective cohort study was conducted to estimate the optimal interval for gastriccancer screening in Korean adults with initial negative screening results. Materials and MethodsThis study consisted of voluntary Korean screenees aged 40 to 69 years who underwentsubsequent screening gastroscopies after testing negative in the baseline screeningperformed between January 2007 and December 2011. A new case was defined as thepresence of gastric cancer cells in biopsy specimens obtained upon gastroscopy. Thefollow-up periods were calculated during the months between the date of baseline screeninggastroscopy and positive findings upon subsequent screenings, stratified by sex and agegroup. The mean sojourn time (MST) for determining the screening interval was estimatedusing the prevalence/incidence ratio. ResultsOf the 293,520 voluntary screenees for the gastric cancer screening program, 91,850(31.29%) underwent subsequent screening gastroscopies between January 2007 andDecember 2011. The MSTs in men and women were 21.67 months (95% confidenceintervals [CI], 17.64 to 26.88 months) and 15.14 months (95% CI, 9.44 to 25.85 months),respectively. ConclusionThese findings suggest that the optimal interval for subsequent gastric screening in bothmen and women is 24 months, supporting the 2-year interval recommended by the nationwidegastric cancer screening program.