Luding an age-related artifact. Although a higher macular thickness in males compared to females has been reported before [35?7], the macular thickness in our control cohort did not differ between males and females. A possible explanation for the differences observed in our patients could be that the small differences between men and women, which are most likely hormone mediated, may be accentuated by the elevated copper levels in Wilson’s disease. The fact that the laboratory parameters did not serve as predictors for retinal degeneration measured by macular thickness is not at all astonishing as all patients were under therapy. We believe that analyzing the retinal layers using OCT can provide valuable information on the ongoing neuronal degeneration in Wilson’s disease and that longitudinal evaluations are suitable for monitoring these patients. OCT and VEPs appear to be ideal tools for treatment trials and for evaluating the long-term efficacy of treatment during routine consultations. Licochalcone-A However, the manual segmentation algorithm for analysis of the deeper retinal layers used in this study is laborious and therefore not very feasible for the clinical routine. Some clinical trials have already applied fully automated segmentation techniques [17,21,38] that will soonOptical Coherence Tomography in Wilsons’s Diseasebe available for a wider public and may allow analysis of the deeper retinal layers in routine clinical practice.HH AM GG HPH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HPH GG. Wrote the paper: PA AM OA HPH. Revised the 3687-18-1 manuscript: HPH GG OA MR.Author ContributionsConceived and designed the experiments: PA HH AM. Performed the experiments: PA AKM EC DF MR HH. Analyzed the data: PA AKM MR
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer type and the second leading cause of cancer related mortality in the Western countries [1]. It is thought to develop slowly via a progressive accumulation 15755315 of genetic mutations, epigenetic and gene expression alterations; recurrence risk and overall mortality of CRC is closely related to the stage of disease at time of primary diagnosis [2]. Histological differentiation of high-grade dysplasia from well-differentiated carcinoma is often difficult, even in the case of correct sampling. A molecular test for CRC should be able to identify the disease at early stage with high specificity and sensitivity, thus enabling effective treatment from the onset before the disease progresses. Microarray analyses have already been applied to investigate gene expression changes in many cancer types including CRC [3?14]. Gene expression marker sets can be identified by whole genomic expression profiling of colonic biopsy samples which would establish the basis of the molecular biological classificationof colorectal diseases. Recent microarray studies determined mRNA expression patterns related to: ?colorectal carcinogenesis, progression and metastatic development [3?]. ?different subtypes of CRC with diverse clinicopathological parameters [4,8?0]. ?limited number of experiments focusing on molecular-based prognosis [11]. The whole genomic microarrays are suitable for high-throughput marker selection, but the high costs and time-consuming execution make their prospective introduction as a diagnostic tool difficult. Furthermore, the evaluation of the huge amount of data collected by microarray analyses requires an extensive bioinformatics with multivariate statistical methods. However, the newer generati.Luding an age-related artifact. Although a higher macular thickness in males compared to females has been reported before [35?7], the macular thickness in our control cohort did not differ between males and females. A possible explanation for the differences observed in our patients could be that the small differences between men and women, which are most likely hormone mediated, may be accentuated by the elevated copper levels in Wilson’s disease. The fact that the laboratory parameters did not serve as predictors for retinal degeneration measured by macular thickness is not at all astonishing as all patients were under therapy. We believe that analyzing the retinal layers using OCT can provide valuable information on the ongoing neuronal degeneration in Wilson’s disease and that longitudinal evaluations are suitable for monitoring these patients. OCT and VEPs appear to be ideal tools for treatment trials and for evaluating the long-term efficacy of treatment during routine consultations. However, the manual segmentation algorithm for analysis of the deeper retinal layers used in this study is laborious and therefore not very feasible for the clinical routine. Some clinical trials have already applied fully automated segmentation techniques [17,21,38] that will soonOptical Coherence Tomography in Wilsons’s Diseasebe available for a wider public and may allow analysis of the deeper retinal layers in routine clinical practice.HH AM GG HPH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HPH GG. Wrote the paper: PA AM OA HPH. Revised the manuscript: HPH GG OA MR.Author ContributionsConceived and designed the experiments: PA HH AM. Performed the experiments: PA AKM EC DF MR HH. Analyzed the data: PA AKM MR
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer type and the second leading cause of cancer related mortality in the Western countries [1]. It is thought to develop slowly via a progressive accumulation 15755315 of genetic mutations, epigenetic and gene expression alterations; recurrence risk and overall mortality of CRC is closely related to the stage of disease at time of primary diagnosis [2]. Histological differentiation of high-grade dysplasia from well-differentiated carcinoma is often difficult, even in the case of correct sampling. A molecular test for CRC should be able to identify the disease at early stage with high specificity and sensitivity, thus enabling effective treatment from the onset before the disease progresses. Microarray analyses have already been applied to investigate gene expression changes in many cancer types including CRC [3?14]. Gene expression marker sets can be identified by whole genomic expression profiling of colonic biopsy samples which would establish the basis of the molecular biological classificationof colorectal diseases. Recent microarray studies determined mRNA expression patterns related to: ?colorectal carcinogenesis, progression and metastatic development [3?]. ?different subtypes of CRC with diverse clinicopathological parameters [4,8?0]. ?limited number of experiments focusing on molecular-based prognosis [11]. The whole genomic microarrays are suitable for high-throughput marker selection, but the high costs and time-consuming execution make their prospective introduction as a diagnostic tool difficult. Furthermore, the evaluation of the huge amount of data collected by microarray analyses requires an extensive bioinformatics with multivariate statistical methods. However, the newer generati.