Abdominal actinomycosis is very rare infectious disease and seldom reported as a cause of abdominal mass. This disease is diagnosed by pathologic findings and culture result but it is very difficult to differentiate with other granulomatous illammatory disease, diverticular disease, malignancy, etc. The radiologic findings were non-specific and CT scan revealed the inflammatory mass with multiple small abscesses and fibrous change. The treatment of choice for actinomycosis is medical treatment with penicillin but surgical intervention may be needed when complication such as obstruction, fistula formation, abscess formation develop. We report a patient with abdominal actinomycosis that presented with transverse colonic obstruction and severe abdominal wall inflammation. This patient had no past operative history but got intrauterine contraceptive devices during last 10 years. We treated this patient by surgical resection and antibiotic therapy.
Abdominal Wall ; Abscess ; Actinomycosis* ; Colon* ; Colon, Transverse ; Communicable Diseases ; Fistula ; Humans ; Inflammation ; Intrauterine Devices ; Penicillins ; Tomography, X-Ray Computed

No abstract available.
Human ; Authorship ; Biomedical Research ; Scientific Misconduct ; Publications

No abstract available.
Korea

No abstract available.
Violence*

No abstract available.
Colorectal Neoplasms ; Humans ; Prevalence ; Stomach ; Stomach Neoplasms

No abstract available.

No abstract available.
Wound Healing

The pregnancy-associated breast cancer is one of the most common malignacy developed during pregnant period and occupies 1-2% of the all breast cancer pateints. It is easy to miss appropriate diagnosis due to difficulty of physical examination of the breast and limitation of proper diagnostic modality. The pregnancy-associated breast cancer has been reported to portend an extremely poor outcome. But recent studies have found no difference in survival between general breast cancer and pregnancy-associated breast cancer. The treatment of choice is the modified radical mastectomy and adjuvant chemotherapy if needed. The authors report two patients of breast cancer diagnosed and treated during pregnancy with review of literature.
Breast Neoplasms* ; Breast* ; Chemotherapy, Adjuvant ; Diagnosis ; Humans ; Mastectomy, Modified Radical ; Physical Examination ; Pregnancy*

PURPOSE: A single nucleotide polymorphism is an important genetic variation in various pathologic situations. We examined MTHFR and HFE polymorphisms in a colorectal cancer group compared to those in a normal, healthy control group. METHODS: Genomic DNA was isolated from whole blood of 99 colorectal cancer patients and 146 normal control patients and was subjected to MTHFR and HFE genotyping by using PCR-based restriction fragment length polymorphism analyses for the MTHFR C677T and A1298C sequences and for the HFE H63D and C282G sequences. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS 11.0. RESULTS: The total allele frequencies of MTHFR C677T, A1298C, HFE H63D and C282Y were 0.398, 0.224, 0.014 and 0.022, respectively. The frequencies of homozygous mutants of MTHFR C677T and A1298C were 14.4% and 4.1% in the control group and 6.1% and 1.0% in the case group. There were no homozygous mutants of HFE in either group. Heterozygous mutants of H63D and C282Y were 2.1% and 4.1% in the control group and 4.0% and 5.1%, respectively in the case group. The odds ratio of a MTHFR C677T homozygous mutant was 0.604 (95% CI 0.375~0.973), and that of a MTHFR A1298C heterozygous and homozygous mutants were 0.513 (95% CI 0.298~0.883), but the difference was not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: A homozygous mutant of MTHFR C677T and a homozygous and heterozygous mutant of A1298C showed a protective tendency against colorectal cancer. The HFE polymorphic mutant is quite rare in Korean population, which restricts the application of this polymorphism in a cancer epidemiologic study. The MTHFR C677T and A1298C variations should be useful predictive markers for colorectal cancer.
Case-Control Studies* ; Colonic Neoplasms ; Colorectal Neoplasms* ; DNA ; Epidemiologic Studies ; Gene Frequency ; Genetic Variation ; Humans ; Odds Ratio ; Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length ; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide

PURPOSE: Tumor invasion and metastasis are multistep phenomina, involving proteolytic degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM) and alteration of cell adhesion. It is another oncologic therapeutic strategy to block tumor invasion and metastasis through analyzing the molecules which are involved in these processes. We examined the expressions of some of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) in colorectal cancer and analyze the correlation with clinical factors and survival. METHODS: Fifty-five patients with colorectal cancer who underwent surgical resection were included. The expressions of the MMP-2, -7, -9, and -12 in tumor tissue and normal mucosa using RT-PCR technique was carried out. We evaluated and analyzed the correlation among these molecules, clinical characteristics, and survival. RESULTS: Expressions of MMP-7, -9, and -12 were significantly higher in tumor tissue than in normal mucosa (P=0.00). The expressions of MMP-2 between cancer and normal mucosa had no significant difference but it had a significant difference according to the lymph node (LN) invasion (P=0.03) in tumor tissues. Three-year overall survival was worse in patient with high expression of MMP-2 compared to low expression. CONCLUSION: The expressions of MMP-7, -9, -12 in tumor tissue were higher than in normal mucosa and MMP-2 expression of tumor tissues had a significant difference according to LN invasion. MMP-2 overexpression seems to be a prognostic factor for 3-yr overall survival. But, large scale study with long term survival analysis will be needed for the prognostic significance of MMPs.
Cell Adhesion ; Colorectal Neoplasms ; Extracellular Matrix ; Humans ; Lymph Nodes ; Matrix Metalloproteinase 2 ; Matrix Metalloproteinases ; Mucous Membrane ; Neoplasm Metastasis