Objective: Patients who have had pelvic radiotherapy as part of their cancer therapy may develop subsequent urinary bladder injury. The acute changes that the urothelium undergo after radiation are known, but the healing mechanism of the urothelium of the urinary bladder after pelvic radiotherapy is not clearly understood. Proopiomelanocortin (POMC) peptides, which have immunomodulatory effects, are produced locally in sites outside of the central nervous system. This study aims to determine the role of POMC expression in the urothelium during radiation injury. Methods: Twenty-four male Swiss Albino mice were divided into four groups. A single-fractioned 10 Gy of ionizing radiation was applied to the pelvic zone of all mice with Cobalt-60 radiotherapy. The first group 1, which consisted intact animal and not irradiated was the control group, and the second, third, and fourth groups were euthanized after 24 h (Group 2), 48 h (Group 3), and 7 days (Group 4) after irradiation. All bladders were prepared for histochemical analysis using hematoxylin eosin (H&E) and immunohistochemical analysis using anti-POMC antibody. Results: No morphological differences were seen in all the group samples stained with H&E. POMC expression of the urothelium of bladder tissue samples shows different staining levels. Group 1 (96.7 ± 7.68), Group 2 (88.3 ± 8.04), and Group 3 (85.10 ± 10.9) were very weakly stained, but the POMC immunoreactivity of Group 4 (113.0 ± 12.8) was observed to be strong. Conclusion: Expression of POMC from urothelium seems to prevent bladder damage from radiation supplying differentiation and restoration of the urothelium.

Introduction: This study aims to investigate the prognostic significance of the pre-treatment hemoglobinred blood cell distribution width (RDW) ratio (HRR) in terms of overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with locally advanced nasopharyngeal cancer (LANC) treated with chemoradiotherapy.Methods: Patients with LANC who attended the oncology clinic between October 2010 and June 2020 were retrospectively screened. HRR was calculated as hemoglobin (g/dL) divided by the RDW (%). Patients were assigned to either the low HRR group or the high HRR group.Results: A total of 102 patients were included in the study. The cut-off value for HRR was taken as 0.97. Between the low and high HRR groups, mean age, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance score, gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT), albumin and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels, weight loss at diagnosis, and recurrence and metastasis rate were significantly different. In the low HRR group, OS and DFS were 44.4 (95% CI: 4.9-83.8) and 15.7 months (95% CI: 0.1-36.2), respectively, but could not be reached in the high HRR group (p<0.001). In the multivariate analysis, low HRR was shown to be an independent factor in terms of both OS (p=0.004, hazard ratio (HR)=3.07, 95% CI: 1.444-6.529) and DFS (p<0.001, HR=3.94,.Conclusion: This is the first study showing that HRR is an independent prognostic marker for OS and DFS in patients with LANC treated with chemoradiotherapy. Thus, HRR can be used as an easily applicable, inexpensive marker in clinical practice in this patient group.

Abstract:Objective: This study investigated whether or not the stress and hypoxia, which are the effects of radiation on normal vascular endothelium, leading to the release of HIF-1α, VEGF, eIF2, TIA-1, and TSP-1 were related and the possibility of them stimulating angiogenesis.Materials and Methods: Twenty-four male Swiss Albino mice were separated into 4 groups. The first group was the control group (Group 1), and the second, third, and fourth groups were euthanized after 24 h (Group 2), 48 h (Group 3), and 7 days (Group 4), respectively. A single-fractioned 10 Gy of ionizing radiation was applied to all mice's pelvic zone with Co-60. Bladders were removed completely from the pelvic region. Immunohistochemistry and light microscopy were used to investigate whether there would be an increase or not in the angiogenesis pathway by using the HIF-1α, VEGF, eIF2, TIA-1, and TSP-1 antibodies.Results: The HIF-1α antibody showed strong staining in Group 3, while the staining intensity was less in other groups. VEGF showed weak staining in Groups 1 and 4, while moderate staining in Group 2 and strong staining in Group 3 was observed. eIF2 showed strong staining in Groups 1 and 4. Groups 2 and 3 were stained weakly. In the present study, staining with TSP-1 was very strong in the samples belonging to Group 1, while other groups showed very weak staining.Conclusion: When normal tissue was exposed to radiation, the positively effective factors (HIF-1, VEGF, eIF2, and TIA-1) on the angiogenesis pathway were increased while the negative factor (TSP-1) was decreased. Radiation may initiate physiological angiogenesis in the normal tissue and accelerate healing in the damaged normal tissue.

ÖzetServiks kanseri jinekolojik kanserler içinde sıklık açısından ikinci sırada yer almaktadır. Radyoterapi, yaklaşık yüzyıllık süreçte serviks kanseri tedavisinde kullanılmaktadır. Özellikle de lokal ileri hastalıkta ilk tedavi seçeneği olmuştur. Tek başına eksternal radyoterapi büyük tümörlerde düşük kontrol oranı sağlamaktadır. Serviks kanserinde brakiterapinin de kullanılması ile büyük tümörlerin kontrol oranları yükselmiştir. Son yıllarda radyoterapinin etkinliğini arttırmak amacıyla kemoradyoterapinin birlikte kullanımı gündeme gelmiştir. Kemoradyoterapi çalışmalarında en sık sisplatin, 5-FU, mitomisin-C ve hidroksiüre kullanılmıştır. Bu çalışmaların sonucunda kemoradyoterapinin uygulandığı randomize çalışmalarda görülmüştür ki serviks kanserinde kemoradyoterapi uygulanmasının, özellikle de sisplatinin sağkalım avantajı sağladığı gösterilmiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Serviks kanseri, radyoterapi, kemoradyoterapi AbstractCervical cancer ranks second in terms of frequency of gynecological cancers. Radiation therapy used to treat cervical cancer in the process nearly a century. In particular, became first-line treatment in locally advanced disease. Provides a low control rate in large tumors with external beam radiotherapy alone. Large tumors with the use of brachytherapy in cervical cancer control rates were also increased. The most common work chemoradiotherapy cisplatin, 5-FU and mitomycin-C, hydroxyurea, is used. Suffered as a result of these studies, randomized trials that applied chemoradiotherapy implementation of chemoradiation in cervical cancer, especially cisplatin shown to provide a survival advantagein recent years, in order to increase the effectiveness of radiotherapy with chemoradiotherapy was introduced.

Asian Pac J Cancer Prev, 15 (17), 7401-7405 IntroductionGastric cancer is the fourth common cancer worldwide and is the second leading cause of death from cancer (Qurieshi et al., 2011;Zare et al., 2013;Calik et al., 2014;Oh et al., 2014). At present complete resection is the only curative therapy (Yu et al., 2013). 25-40% of the patients are suitable for curative surgery. Postoperative local recurrence is an important issue; 38% loco regional recurrence and 28% peritoneal spread are observed post operatively (Czito et al., 2013). Intergroup 0116 study (INT 0116) demonstrated significance of post-operative RT in gastric cancer. Following a 10 year-follow-up period, a significant benefit was observed in relapse free survival and in overall survival (Smalley et al., 2012). Based on the results of this study, post-operative chemoradiotherapy became a standard procedure in stage IB-IV M0 patients. Because of the critical organs in the vicinity, which are low in tolerance, planning of RT in gastric cancer is important (Czito et al., 2013). In this study 2D and 3D therapy plannings were compared in terms of dosimetric parameters. The aim was to assess the field efficiency of the 2D plan and to evaluate the 3D plan in terms of both its coverage of the target volume and its effect to decrease the normal tissue doses.