Secondary metabolites from actinomycetes especially the genus Streptomyces may be one of the most important sources for novel anticancer agents. A purified fraction from a novel actinomycete strain, Streptomyces sp. H7372, was elucidated in breast cancer cells. We have isolated three purified fractions from a novel strain, Streptomyces sp. H7372. One of the fractions, designated as 31-2, exhibited the strongest growth-inhibitory effect and thereby was selected for further studies. 31-2 exerted a growth-inhibitory effect on a panel of 15 human cancer and 2 non-malignant cell lines. In MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells, 31-2 induced a cytostatic (anti-proliferative) effect without causing cytotoxicity (cell death). Our data suggest that the cytostasis resulted from cell cycle arrest at the G1 phase in MCF-7 cells and at the S phase in MDA-MB-231 cells. Western blot analysis demonstrated a modulation of phosphorylation of the Rb and CDC2 proteins and of CDK4, cyclin D1 and cyclin D3 in the 31-2-treated breast cancer cell lines. The protein levels of CDK2, CDK6, and PCNA were not affected by 31-2 treatment. 31-2 also exhibited an anti-invasive effect in MDA-MB-231 cells. However, this effect is not attributed to the modulation of proteolytic activity in MDA-MB-231 cells as the enzymatic degradation of type IV collagen was not affected by 31-2. The 31-2 is a potent cytostatic and anti-invasive agent and modulates the cell cycle pathway. Together, these results will have important implications in searching for novel approaches to treat cancer.
The stabilization mechanism of natural rubber (NR) latex from Hevea brasiliensis was studied to investigate the components involved in base-catalyzed ester hydrolysis, namely, hydrolyzable lipids, ammonia, and the products responsible for the desired phenomenon observed in ammonia-preserved NR latex. Latex stability is generally thought to come from a rubber particle (RP) dispersion in the serum, which is encouraged by negatively charged species distributed on the RP surface. The mechanical stability time (MST) and zeta potential were measured to monitor field latices preserved in high (FNR-HA) and low ammonia (FNR-LA) contents as well as that with the ester-containing components removed (saponified NR) at different storage times. Amounts of carboxylates of free fatty acids (FFAs), which were released by the transformation and also hypothesized to be responsible for the like-charge repulsion of RPs, were measured as the higher fatty acid (HFA) number and corroborated by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) both qualitatively and quantitatively. The lipids and their FFA products interact differently with Nile red, which is a lipid-selective and polarity-sensitive fluorophore, and consequently re-emit characteristically. The results were confirmed by conventional ester content determination utilizing different solvent extraction systems to reveal that the lipids hydrolyzed to provide negatively charged fatty acid species were mainly the polar lipids (glycolipids and phospholipids) at the RP membrane but not those directly linked to the rubber molecule and, to a certain extent, those suspended in the serum. From new findings disclosed herein together with those already reported, a new model for the Hevea rubber particle in the latex form is proposed.
Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) is accepted as the gold standard treatment for renal stones that are smaller than 2 cm. Recently, retrograde intrarenal surgery (RIRS) has been introduced as another form of treatment. We report our experience in dealing with renal stones smaller than 2 cm using RIRS as the primary treatment and following failed ESWL.
Ketamine can be abused as a recreational drug, and there has been a recent surge in its usage. The effects of ketamine on the urinary system were unknown until the recent publication of a few case reports. Many doctors are still unaware of this new clinical entity, termed ketamine-associated ulcerative cystitis. We report a case that we encountered and discuss the diagnosis and disease management in addition to a review of the literature.
OBJECTIVE: There is currently no documentation on the availability and implementation of policies related to men's health in Asia. This Delphi study aimed to achieve an Asian consensus on men's health policy based on the opinions and recommendations from men's health key opinion leaders.
STUDY DESIGN: A two-phase Delphi online survey was used to gather information from men's health stakeholders across Asian countries.
METHODS: All stakeholders were invited to participate in the survey through men's health conferences, personal contacts, recommendations from international men's health organizations and snowballing method. Stakeholders were asked about their concerns on 17 men's health key issues as well as their opinion on the availability and recommendations on men's health policies and programmes in their countries.
RESULTS: There were a total of 128 stakeholders (policy makers, clinicians, researchers and consumers), from 28 Asian countries, who responded in the survey. Up to 85% of stakeholders were concerned about various men's health issues in Asia and in their respective country, particularly in smoking, ischaemic heart disease and high blood pressure. There is a lack of men's health policies and programmes in Asia (availability = 11.6-43.5%) and up to 92.9% of stakeholders recommended that these should be developed.
CONCLUSIONS: These findings call for policy change and development, and more importantly a concerted effort to elevate men's health status in Asia.
Incidence of urolithiasis is on the rise due to climatic changes especially global warming.The pain due to presence of ureteric stone is a well known identity but many times it may be asymptomatic or even masked by concurrent presence of backache. In the present article, we describe the case of a 43-year-old male who came to the clinic for treatment of backache persisting for more than two years. The patient complained of backache two years back for which he was treated with analgesics and physiotherapy which relieved his pain. No X-ray was taken earlier because the attending clinician thought the backache to be musculo-skeletal in origin. Recently, one day a sudden episode of backache in the midst of night compelled him to seek medical treatment. However, this time a X-ray was performed and it showed the presence of calculi in the right upper pelvis of ureter which measured 1.9 cm vertically. An ultrasound confirmed the diagnosis. The patient was treated with two episodes of shock wave therapy which failed to crush the stone. A Double-J stent was inserted under general anaesthesia. The stone was crushed using a ureteroscope guided laser. The present case report describes how backache in professionals cannot be lightly attended. Even the characteristic groin to loin pain may be absent. All cases of backache should be properly investigated with an X-ray to rule out renal or ureteric calculi.
INTRODUCTION: Sexual dysfunction in men, such as erectile dysfunction, hypogonadism, and premature ejaculation, generates considerable attention. Its association with physical and psychological health is an issue which should be addressed seriously.
AIM: A review of the literature pertaining to the correlation between sexual dysfunction and physical and psychological health.
METHODS: PubMed search for relevant publications on the association between sexual dysfunction in men and physical and psychological health.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Clinical and epidemiological evidence that demonstrates the association between sexual dysfunction in men and physical and psychological health.
RESULTS: Sexual dysfunction, i.e., erectile dysfunction, hypogonadism, and premature ejaculation, has been shown to be associated with physical and psychological health. There is a strong correlation between sexual dysfunction and cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, quality of life, and depression.
CONCLUSION: The association between men's sexual dysfunction and physical and psychological health is real and proven. Therefore, it should not be taken lightly but instead treated as a life-threatening medical problem.
Distant haematogenous metastasis in penile cancer is rare. A patient who had total penectomy and bilateral inguinal lymphadenectomy for penile cancer but later presented with hypercalcemia of malignancy and pathological fracture of the humerus is reported.
Sex has always been a taboo subject in Asian society. However, over the past few years, awareness in the field of men's sexual health has improved, and interest in sexual health research has recently increased. The epidemiology and prevalence of erectile dysfunction, hypogonadism and premature ejaculation in Asia are similar in the West. However, several issues are specific to Asian males, including culture and beliefs, awareness, compliance and the availability of traditional/complementary medicine. In Asia, sexual medicine is still in its infancy, and a concerted effort from the government, relevant societies, physicians and the media is required to propel sexual medicine to the forefront of health care.
Natural rubber (NR) gloves manufactured from NR latex are widely utilized in various applications as a personal protective device due to their exceptional barrier characteristics in infection control. However, the use of NR gloves was associated with concerns on NR protein allergy. With comprehensive leaching procedures now a common practice in NR latex glove factories to eliminate latent rubber proteins and chemical allergens, occurrences and complaints of protein allergy from medical glove users have decreased drastically over the past two decades. The present work aims to eliminate further the residual rubber allergens in NR latex through effective purification of the NR latex and compounding the thus purified latex with an established formulation for allergy-free NR for glove applications. NR latex was purified by deproteinization and saponification, respectively. Several analytical techniques were used to verify rubber allergens eliminated in the purified latexes. Saponified NR (SPNR) latex was the purified NR latex of choice since it is devoid of allergenic proteins and poses the lowest risk of Type I allergy. The purified NR latex was compounded with zinc diethyldithiocarbamate (ZDEC), zinc dibutyldithiocarbamate (ZDBC), and zinc 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (ZMBT), respectively, for glove dipping. Among the investigated accelerators, only ZDBC was not detected in the artificial sweat that came into contact with the dipped articles. Thus, it is deduced that ZDBC poses the lowest risk of Type IV allergy to consumers. Additionally, the morphological and physical properties of dipped articles were assessed. It was revealed that the dipped film from the SPNR latex compounded with ZDBC provided thinner and less yellow products with a more uniform internal structure and a tensile strength comparable to those of commercial NR gloves.
Studies have shown that certain features from geography, demography, trade area, and environment can play a vital role in retail site selection, largely due to the impact they asserted on retail performance. Although the relevant features could be elicited by domain experts, determining the optimal feature set can be intractable and labor-intensive exercise. The challenges center around (1) how to determine features that are important to a particular retail business and (2) how to estimate retail sales performance given a new location? The challenges become apparent when the features vary across time. In this light, this study proposed a nonintervening approach by employing feature selection algorithms and subsequently sales prediction through similarity-based methods. The results of prediction were validated by domain experts. In this study, data sets from different sources were transformed and aggregated before an analytics data set that is ready for analysis purpose could be obtained. The data sets included data about feature location, population count, property type, education status, and monthly sales from 96 branches of a telecommunication company in Malaysia. The finding suggested that (1) optimal retail performance can only be achieved through fulfillment of specific location features together with the surrounding trade area characteristics and (2) similarity-based method can provide solution to retail sales prediction.
Natural rubber (NR) latex derived from Hevea brasiliensis is a complex colloid comprising mainly rubber hydrocarbons (latex particles) and a multitude of minor non-rubber constituents such as non-rubber particles, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and soluble organic and inorganic substances. NR latex is susceptible to enzymatic attack after it leaves the trees. It is usually preserved with ammonia and, to a lesser extent, with other preservatives to enhance its colloidal stability during storage. Despite numerous studies in the literature on the influence of rubber proteins on NR latex stability, issues regarding the effect of protein hydrolysis in the presence of ammonia on latex stability during storage are still far from resolved. The present work aims to elucidate the interplay between protein hydrolysis and ammoniation in NR latex stability. Both high- and low-ammonia (with a secondary preservative) NR latexes were used to monitor the changes in their protein compositions during storage. High-ammonia (FNR-A) latex preserved with 0.6% (v/v) ammonia, a low 0.1% ammonia/TMTD/ZnO (FNR-TZ) latex, and a deproteinized NR (PDNR) latex were labeled with fluorescence agents and observed using confocal laser scanning microscopy to determine their protein composition. Protein hydrolysis was confirmed via sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE). The results revealed that protein hydrolysis increased with the storage duration. The change in protein composition accompanying hydrolysis also allows the spatial distribution of allergenic proteins to be estimated in the latex. Concurrently, the latex stability increased with the storage duration, as measured by the latex's mechanical stability time (MST) and the zeta potential of the latex particles. As monitored by AFM, the surface roughness of the NR latex film increased markedly during extended storage compared with that of the DPNR latex, which remained smooth. These results underscore the pivotal role of ammonia in bolstering NR latex stability brought on by protein hydrolysis, which greatly impacts latex film's formation behavior. NR latex stability underpins the quality of latex-dipped goods during manufacturing, particularly those for medical gloves.
Scrotal tuberculosis (TB) is rare. Lack of awareness may lead to a misdiagnosis and/or delayed diagnosis of scrotal TB. Clinicians should have a high suspicion index for scrotal TB when facing a patient with a chronic scrotal lump. Since scrotal TB can be medically cured, biopsy of the scrotal lump for pathology study and/or urine polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis for M. tuberculosis should be performed first for rapid diagnostic purposes, and therefore unnecessary surgery may thereby be circumvented.
Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women worldwide. The incidence of breast cancer in Malaysia is lower compared to international statistics, with peak occurrence in the age group between 50 to 59 years of age and mortality rates of 18.6%. Despite current diagnostic and prognostic methods, the outcome for individual subjects remain poor. This is in part due to breast cancers' wide genetic heterogeneity. Various platforms for genetics studies are now employed to determine the identity of these genetic abnormalities, including microarray methods like high density single-nucleotide-polymorphism (SNP) oligonucleotide arrays which combine the power of chromosomal comparative genomic hybridization (cCGH) and loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in the offering of higher-resolution mappings. These platforms and their applications in highlighting the genomic alteration frameworks manifested in breast carcinoma will be discussed.
Primary gastrointestinal (GIT) lymphoma constitutes only 5 - 10% of all gastrointestinal tumours. The optimal therapy for these lymphomas is poorly defined and still controversial. We present our experience in the treatment and outcome of primary GIT lymphomas in UKM Medical Center, Malaysia. A retrospective review of all patients with primary GIT lymphoma from the year 2002 until 2007 was done. Our series has shown that primary GIT lymphoma is a rare disease as it comprises only 6.5% of all lymphomas treated in this institution. We had a female predominance of this disease with a large majority at an advanced stage of the disease. There was equal distribution involving stomach, small and large intestines. The incidence of primary GIT lymphomas was 6.5% with a female predominance. The majority had advanced diseases (stage III and IV) with equal distribution involving the stomach, small and large intestines. The most common histological variant was diffuse large B cell lymphoma (66%). Most (83%) patients with intestinal lymphoma had surgical resection and adjuvant chemotherapy. All patients with gastric lymphomas had chemotherapy alone. The mortality rate was 22% predominantly in younger patients with aggressive histology subtypes and advanced disease.
Hand-assisted laparoscopic nephrectomy (HAL-N) and nephroureterectomy (HAL-NU) were introduced to bridge the gap between open and laparoscopic surgery. This newer technique has the benefits of both laparoscopic and open surgical approaches but has a shorter learning curve and decreased operative time compared to laparoscopic surgery. A review of our 2-year experience showed that for the seventeen cases of HAL-N that was performed, the mean operative time was 187.8 minutes while the mean length of hospital stay was 4.1 days. For the two HAL-NU cases, the mean operative time was 415 minutes while the mean length of hospital stay was 5.5 days. Only one complication occurred and it was an incisional hernia at the hand-port site. There was no recurrence for the carcinoma cases. Our experience shows that this technique is feasible and safe.