Five topics were presented in this symposium. The fi rst part of the morning session was on the epidemiology of gastric cancer, with a presentation from Kee-Seng Chia, NUS. He emphasized the decline in the incidence of gastric cancer worldwide and the rising trend of cardial cancer in Western countries. He also highlighted the central role of Helicobacter pylori infection in noncardia gastric cancer and, in contrast, the reduced risks of gastric cardia cancer associated with H. pylori seropositivity. Yoshiaki Ito, from the Oncology Research Institute, Singapore, spoke about carcinogenesis and molecular biology. He explained the relationship between RUNX3, a gastric tumor suppressor gene, and the tumorigenicity and intestinalization of gastric epithelial cells [1]. Next, Soo-Chin Lee, an oncologist from the NUH, Singapore, gave a concise review of gastric cancer genetics. She highlighted several hereditary gastric cancer syndromes and the high incidence of stomach cancer in Asian families with hereditary nonpolyposis colon cancer (HNPCC). She recommended that gastric cancer surveillance should be considered for Asian HNPCC kindreds. Finally, she summarized the current available genetic tests for identifying high-risk families for gastric cancer. Enders Ng, from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, discussed the role of H. pylori in gastric carcinogenesis. He highlighted a few randomized controlled trial studies regarding the impact of H. pylori eradication on gastric cancer carcinogenesis [2,3]. The studies showed that eradication retarded the progression of atrophy and intestinal metaplasia in the stomach, but did not reverse either the intestinal metaplasia or glandular atrophy. The last speaker, Patrick Tan, from the Genome Institute of Singapore, talked about the application of tissue microarrays in gastric cancer research [4]. He discussed patterns of gene expression correlated to gastric cancer regulation that may predict survival. He gave as an example that the expression of the phospholipase A2 Group IIA gene in gastric cancer was associated with prolonged survival.

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Purpose of the study. Assessing the association between the life quality of patients with Sjogren’s Disease and ongoing therapy with various disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs.Material and methods. The study was conducted on the basis of the regional rheumatology center of the consultative diagnostic clinic of the Sverdlovsk Regional Clinical Hospital No. 1. This work is based on the results of a simultaneous study of 74 patients with primary Sjogren’s Disease (SD), distributed in three comparison groups receiving various disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs chlorambucil, methotrexate and hydroxychloroquine. The diagnosis of SD was carried out according to European-American criteria AECGC (2002) [18]. In order to analyze the quality of life of patients with SD, the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF‑36) was used. Statistical data processing was carried out using Statistica 7.0 program.Results. Assessment of the quality of life of patients with SD, which is an integrative criterion of human health and well-being, revealed the absence of statistically significant differences (p > 0.05) on eight scales and two health components of the SF‑36 questionnaire in the analyzed groups that differ in the treatment of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs chlorambucil, methotrexate and hydroxychloroquine.Conclusions. The obtained data indicate an equivalent quality of life in SD patients treated with different disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs methotrexate, chlorambucil and hydroxychloroquine, and therefore hydroxychloroquine can be considered as an alternative basic therapy in patients with SD with certain limitations and contraindications methotrexate and chlorambucil.