In 1952, Dr. Collier observed first a characteristic lesion of marginal corneal furrow in the patient who had rheumatoid arthritis with Sjogren's syndrome. The furrows are usually bilateral, but one may be more advanced than the other. This corneal thining may be superficial and nonprogressive or it may progress to epithelial breakdown, lamellar collagen dissolution with marked thining and perforation. Almost absence of inflammatory reaction in this furrow may be differentiated from polyarteritis nodosa. Terrien's marginal degeneration may be differentiated from this furrow by age, vascularization in the thining bed, and encircling the cornea. The case reported in the following was a 42 year old woman who had bilateral marginal furrows in the cornea with rheumatoid arthritis Which was documented by positive C-reactive protein, positive RA factor, increased ESR and hand X-ray finding suggestive of rheumatoid arthritis.
Adult ; Arthritis, Rheumatoid* ; C-Reactive Protein ; Collagen ; Cornea ; Female ; Hand ; Humans ; Polyarteritis Nodosa ; Sjogren's Syndrome

OBJECTIVE: Angiogenesis is central role to both the proliferation and metastasis of malignant tumor. The intense interest in angiogenesis has also lead to a re-examination of the activity of established cytotoxic agents which are known to be an antiangiogenic effect anecdotally. In this study, anti-angiogenic effect of cisplatin, paclitaxel and thalidomide was evaluated in human ovarian cancer cell lines and cervical cancer cell line. METHODS: Human ovarian cancer cell line A2780, cisplatin resistant human ovarian cancer cell line A2780-CDDP, human breast cancer cell line MCF-7, and squamous cell uterine cervical carcinoma cell line SiHa were used to evaluate the level of mRNA and protein expression of VEGF, bFGF and TSP-1, 2 before and after the treatment with cisplatin, paclitaxel, and thalidomide using RT-PCR, protein extraction, and Western blot. The results were analyzed with Wilcoxon signed rank test in the SAS ver 8.1. RESULTS: Targeted mRNAs were synthesized as 212 bp VEGF, 238 bp bFGF, and 492 bp band sized except mRNA of TSP-2 via RT-PCR. The protein of VEGF and bFGF were appeared as 21KDa and 17 KDa size, however, the protein of TSP-1 was not appeared through western blot. No effect of cisplatin on protein expression was measured in these cell lines, but paclitaxel influenced the expression of bFGF in MCF-7 cell line and the expression of TSP-1 in MCF-7 and SiHa cell lines. TSP-1 expression was influenced by thalidomide in A2780 cell line. The protein expression of VEGF and bFGF were not influenced following treatment with cisplatin, paclitaxel, and thalidomide. CONCLUSION: These results were suggested that bFGF and TSP-1 will be used as a target gene for the assay of antiangiogenic effect of paclitaxel in breast and uterine cervical cancer tissue and TSP-1 will be used as that of thalidomide in ovarian cancer. Furthermore, thalidomide will be tried as an adjunctive agent for the improvement of the survival in the case of the patient with ovarian cancer.
Blotting, Western ; Breast ; Breast Neoplasms ; Cell Line* ; Cisplatin ; Cytotoxins* ; Humans ; MCF-7 Cells ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Ovarian Neoplasms ; Paclitaxel ; RNA, Messenger* ; Thalidomide ; Thrombospondin 1 ; Uterine Cervical Neoplasms ; Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A

OBJECTIVES: This retrospective study was conducted to analyze the hypothesis that with neoadjuvant chemotherapy of vinblastine, bleomycin, and cisplatin followed by radical hysterectomy or radiation therapy and concurrent chemoradiation with cisplatin based regimen would improve survival in patients with barrel-shaped or bulky-endophytic (Diameter > 4cm) cervical carcinomas than those of radiation alone or combined radiation and surgery. STUDY DESIGN: Eighty-eight patients with barrel-shaped or bulky-endophytic cervical carcinomas, treated at the Hanyang University Hospital from 1983 to 1997, were the subjects of this investigation. Fifty-six of these patients were treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by radical hysterectomy with bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy ( Stage I b2, 8; IIa, 15; IIb, 20; III- IV, 13), twelve patients were treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by radiation therapy ( Stage Ilb, 4; IIJ-IV, 8), and twenty patients were treated by concurrent chemo-radiotherapy ( Stage IIb, 2; III-IV, 18). RESULTS: The incidence of parametrial extension and pelvic lymphnode metastases was higher in patients with barrel-shaped or bulky-endophytic cervical carcinomas than non-barrel-shaped cervix (p .025: .001). 5-years disease free survival rate was determined for patients treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by radical hysterectomy with bilateral pelvic lymphadenectomy was 73.3 %. For patients treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by radiation therapy it was 45.7%. For patients treated by concurrent chemo-radiotherapy it was 46.1%. CONCLUSION: These data support an improvement in survival of patients with barrel-shaped or bulky-endophytic cervical carcinomas treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by radical hysterectomy or radiation therapy and concurrent chemo-radiotherapy.
Bleomycin ; Cervix Uteri* ; Cisplatin ; Disease-Free Survival ; Drug Therapy* ; Female ; Humans ; Hysterectomy ; Incidence ; Lymph Node Excision ; Neoplasm Metastasis ; Retrospective Studies ; Vinblastine

The protein encoded by the Bcl-2 proto-oncogene has been shown to prolong cell su-rvival by preventing cell death(Apoptosis) induced by many insults including cancer therap-eutic drugs. Recently many researches have elucidated the bcl-2 expression in several hu-man solid cancers. However, there is still a few avaiable data to determine the role of Bcl-2 expression in the ovarian carcinogenesis and its prognostic significance in ovarian can-cers. Hence, we examined the expression of Bcl-2 in 68 ovarian epithelial cancers using immunohistochemistry and determined whether Bcl-2 expression has prognostic significance in the ovarian epithelial cancers. We found Bcl-2 expression(>5% positive cell) in 31 patients(40%). Bcl-2 expression were exclusively negative in the mucinous type of the ovarian epithelial cancer. Bcl-2 exp- ression was not correlated with tumor stage(stage I & II vs III & IV, p=0.63). The patients with Bcl-2 positivity had lower recurrence rate than the patients with negativity at the se- cond look operation(p<0.01). Although there was a trend that the patients with Bcl-2 posi- tivity had better acturial survival than the patient with negativity, the stastical significance was not present(3 years acturial survival;+vs-;63%, 29%;p>0.05). These results sug- gest the Bcl-2 expression appears an early event in the ovarian carcinogenesis and has an inhibiting role in progression of ovarian tumor.
Carcinogenesis ; Humans ; Immunohistochemistry ; Mucins ; Ovarian Neoplasms* ; Proto-Oncogenes ; Recurrence