Iraqi Journal of Cancer and Medical Genetics

In America, at the beginning of the seventies of the last century Professor Dr. Knudson published a new theory for the initiation of cancer indicating that the cancer in order to be initiated; two-hits (genetic mutation) in the same gene must be occurred. And in inherited cases one hit came congenitally which remains until the occurrence of the second hit in the same gene due to external factor, i.e, that cancer in order to arise, Knudson in his hypothesis said that there should be an internal factor originally came with the birth and the presence of an external factor, both work on the same locus to cause genetic mutation. However, in sporadic cancer the two hits must be occurred after birth in the same locus. This theory had proved its validity over the years and verified with evidence accumulated from the application of modern techniques in genetic engineering and oncogenes and particularly in tumour suppressor genes and what was found on one type of eye cancer, breast and others. That theory brought about a new start in understanding the process of carcinogenesis and still dominating the specialized scientific literatures. Sailing for the past, to turn the pages of a book in the medicine and surgery for the greatest surgeon of his time under the title (Al-Tasrif Limen Ajiza An Al-Taaleef) written by the Andalusian surgeon Abu al-Qasim Khalaf bin Abbas Alzahrawi, will bring about to find that Alzahrawi explained this hypothesis clearly and reported that the cancer in order to occur, two hits must be occurred in an organ, one is internal and the other is external, just as the findings of Knudson reported after a thousand years of Alzahrawi time. Here, local and international scientific media have to know that the two hits theory was proposed by Alzahrawi a thousand years before, and that Dr. Knudson thankfully came to announce his two hit theory perhaps without knowing what was written by Alzahrawi. Moreover all scientific and academic medical authorities should commemorate and loyal to this honourable scientist through nominating hospitals or medical colleges by his name or through establishing national medical prize holding his name.

This study was conducted on normal mice. The mice were divided into three groups of five mice each (A, B and C ) and two control groups of three mice each. The second control group and the three other groups (A, B and C) of mice were inoculated with mammary gland carcinoma. After (11) days of successful tumour growth, the tumours appeared in different parts of the animal bodies in accordance with the gross observations. All the animal groups (A,B and C) under study were irradiated with laser in different duration times (1-3) weeks consecutively. According to the histological sections of the lymph nodes of the animals of the groups (A,B and C) the results showed various histological changes in the lymphocytes such as increased size and multiplication of the nuclei, cytoplasm cleavage in group (B) animals in comparison with the histological changes which were more abundant in the lymphocytes of the lymph nodes of group (C) animals that irradiated with laser of duration time of three weeks, whereas the histological changes that occurred in the lymphocytes of the lymph nodes of both group (A) animals which irradiated with laser of duration time of one week and the second control group of animals which inoculated with mammary gland carcinoma (non-irradiated with laser) were multiplication of the nuclei in some lymphocytes of the lymph nodes. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of low level laser (LLL) on the histological changes by stimulating the lymph node action in order to inhabit cancer cells activity.

The records of Hematological Diseases Unit at Baghdad Teaching Hospitals and National Center for Research and Treatment of Hematological Diseases (Al-Mustansiryiah University) were inspected for leukemia and lymphoma patients who were diagnosed and treated during the period 2008-2010, and their ABO blood groups were also obtained. The patients were distributed as 281 ALL, 128 CLL, 192 AML, 208 CML, 114 HDL (Hodgkin’s lymphoma) and 197 NHL (non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma). In addition, 595 blood donors were also included and considered as controls. Testing the goodness of fit for ABO blood group allele and phenotype frequencies showed a good agreement with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) in controls and in ALL, CLL and HDL patients. In contrast, a significant corrected deviation was observed in CML (Pc = 0.04) and NHL (Pc = 2.3 x 10-6) patients. A further group of patients (CLL) also showed a significant deviation from HWE, but the difference was significant before correction (P = 0.05; Pc = 0.20). A further analysis of ABO blood group alleles revealed that their estimated numbers and frequencies varied between patients and controls, but a significant difference was recorded in CLL, CML and NHL patients. The allele I*A was significantly decreased in CLL (32.0 vs. 41.5%) and CML (28.8 vs. 41.5%) patients as compared with controls, but a corrected significant level was only observed in CML patients (Pc = 0.003). In NHL patients, the allele I*B was significantly decreased and the difference remain significant after correction (25.9 vs. 34.1; Pc = 0.03). These findings suggest a role of blood group phenotypes and alleles in the etiology of hematological malignancies.

This study included, 1500 patients showing thyroid cancer (500 female and 1000 male), were selected to determine the histopathic disorder and DNA aberration in thyroid tissue compared with 200 healthy people of both genders in four years study (2006 – 2010). Histopathological examination of thyroid disorders showed the presence of papillary carcinoma in patients with goiter and most of benign tumors appeared in female patients and were less in male. Cancer study showed that cancer studied were mostly of papillary carcinoma, whereas medullary carcinoma was less frequent. DNA analysis using hexamere RAPD primers from patients with thyroid carcinoma and thyroid disorders compared with healthy persons showed different patterns analyzed as follow: Patients with hyper and hypo thyroidism showed no DNA aberration when compared with each other and with healthy persons, whereas different patterns of DNA electrophoresis were noticed with patients with cancer cases. This pattern showed that patients with medullary and papillary carcinoma showed bands in location significantly different from those patients with thyroditis and healthy subjects. Further analysis with specific primers showed significant change in bands at location amplified compared with healthy persons suggesting a sever change in DNA sequence in patients with carcinomas which may attributed to BRAF mutation.

The present study was conducted to investigate the active constituents found in ethanolic extract of Sesamum indicum defatted seeds and it’s cytotoxic activity on three types of cancer cell lines (Hep-2, AMN-3, and RD) and one normal embryo rat cell line (Ref). Results of general chemical detection showed that ethanolic extract of sesame seeds contain phenols, tannins, saponines, glycosides, alkaloids, coumarines, and flavonoids. The qualitative and quantitative determination of sesamin bioactive compound using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) analysis was carried out and compared with standard sesamin. It was found that the concentration of sesamin was 79.9% of ethanolic extract according to total peak area. Results of in vitro growth inhibition of sesame extract against cell lines demonstrated that the growth of these cells significantly decreased when compared with control cell lines (untreated), and the effects were dose and time- dependent for Hep-2, AMN-3,RD and Ref cells. A clear cytotoxic activity was observed after 72 hr at concentration( 1000 μg/ml) which reached (85.83%, 40.06%, and 20.20%) in the cell lines respectively, while the percentage of inhibition during exposure time of 48 hrs recorded 31.03% at a concentration of 1000μg/ml for RD cells.

In tumor pathogenesis and metastasis, defects in apoptosis are essential. They allow tumor cells to overcome nutrient deprivation, absence of growth-stimulating signals and presence of growth-inhibitory signals. Newcastle disease virus Iraqi Strain is interesting oncolytic agent with promising anti-tumor properties. One of the major anti-tumor properties is apoptotic induction. This experiment aimed to investigate the ability of Iraqi strain of NDV to induce apoptosis in vitro and in vivo and to give preliminary look about the main pathway that induces apoptosis. Mitochondrial permeability transition apoptosis test was used for detecting apoptosis in vitro and mAb Rabbit anti-mouse caspase-12 was used for tumor sections for in vivo experiment. In vitro results revealed that NDV infection induce apoptosis significantly when compared to control cells. In vivo Immunohistochemical Detection of Caspase-12 in Mammary Adenocarcinoma revealed a significantly (p<0.05) marked increase in the mean percentage of cells expressing caspase-12 in NDV treated group compared with the untreated control group at day 7, 14 and at day 31. These results revealed that NDV had powerful effect on inducing apoptosis in AMN3 mammary adenocarcinoma in vitro. Moreover, caspase-12 expression was high in tumor sections which suggest that NDV induce endoplasmic reticulum apoptosis pathway. This study indicating the role of NDV Iraqi strain in inducing apoptosis through ER pathway in cancer cell which is interesting feature that may make NDV Iraqi strain is a good addition to antitumor arsenal.

Objectives: The aim of this study is to estimate the roles of interleukine-6 in breast cancer Iraqi women and to assess the correlation between the serum levels of IL-6 with the progression of disease stage.
Method: Fifty patients with proved diagnosis of breast cancer by clinical examinations presented to the Al alwyah hospital for gynecological diseases and obstetrics /Breast cancer early detection clinic) in Baghdad. All were females and didn’t have received any chemo/or radiological treatment .also 20 sample of apparently healthy women were involved as a control. The blood samples (5ml) were drown from all of the studied cases in order to be used for measuring their serum level of (IL-6) by using Enzyme –Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) .
Result: Serum (IL-6) level were increased with high significant difference in Breast cancer patients and showed significant correlation in all disease stages as compared to control group with the highest level in stage I patients group.
Conclusion: serum level of (IL-6) is highly correlated with breast cancer and might have detecting and diagnostic usefulness.

A total of 116 males with primary infertility and 32 fertile males (controls) were genotyped for HLA-DQB1 alleles by the reverse hybridization method (INNO-LiPA). Based on WHO criteria of 2010 for general seminal fluid analysis, the patients were distributed into three groups: 32 azoospermic (AZO), 40 oligozoospermic (OLI) and 44 asthenozoospermic (AST) patients. Four HLA-DQB1 alleles (DQB1*0204, DQB1*0301, DQB1*0302 and DQB1*0601) showed differences between AZO patients and controls, but none of them attended a significant level. In OLI patients, two alleles (DQB1*0301, DQB1*0501) showed increased frequencies as compared with controls, but the difference was not significant for DQB1*0301 allele, while it was significant (P=0.03) for DQB1*0501 allele (25.0 vs. 6.3%). For AST patients, DQB1*0301 (22.7 vs. 6.3%) and DQB1*0501 (27.3 vs. 6.3%) alleles showed increased frequencies as compared with controls, but both differences attended a significant level (P = 0.05 and 0.02, respectively). With respect to the impact of these alleles on anti-spermatozoa antibody (ASA) production, DQB1*0301 allele was probably associated with predisposition to develop ASAs in OLI patients, while DQB1*0501 was probably associated with a protection in AST patients. These results suggest that HLA-DQ locus may harbour genes that are important in the predisposition to develop infertility in Iraqis.

This study was designed to evaluate the anticancer Effects of the beta glucan (ß- glucan ) extract of the Saccharomyces
cerevieses on cancer cell lines.
In vitro study was performed on two cancer cell lines (murine mammary adenocarcinoma AMN-3 cell line) and rat emberyogenic fibroblast (Ref) as normal cell line. Periods of exposure of cell lines were measured at 24-hours, 48-hr, and 72-hr in a microtitration plate under complete sterile conditions. Different concentrations starting from (5,50,500, 1000) μg/ml of two fold dilution for extract were prepared and tested on each cell lines, The extract showed concentration and time dependence growth inhibitory effects, and the highest effect was obtained from beta glucan extract at higher concentrations after 48 hr. of exposures on AMN3, that the higher concentrations gave a significantly (P<0.05) and the higher inhibition growth rate of cells were increased at 24 hours.

This study was carried out to evaluate some virological parameters: hepatitis B surface antigen (HBS Ag), Anti-hepatitis C virus antibody (Anti-HCV Ab.) and Human immunodeficiency virus ( HIV ) in β-Thalassemia . Those were analyzed in the period from first of October 2010 to May 2011. The study included: 200 patients with β-Thalassemia referred to the Ibn-AlBalady hospital center and Al-Karamh Hospital Center, 100 patients from each center and 50 cases of children infected with other mild diseases as a control for β- Thalassemia group from those attending the General Pediatric Hospital). Most of Thalasseamic patients were distributed between (2–35) years of age .In this study we found that the Enzyme linked Immuno-Sorbent Assay (ELISA) test showed that 2.5% of Thalassemia patients were infected with hepatitis B, 21% of them had hepatitis C virus infection. On the other side the patients showed negative results for HIV.

Helicobacter pylori Causes a wide range of gastric diseases. The bacteria is genetically unstable which is reflected on its virulence factors and type of diseases. H. pylori (210) isolated from Iraqi patient, they were studied to determine the CagA 3’ region to estimate the tyrosine phosphorylation site i.e. EPIYA motifs. Results revealed that the EPIYA of Iraqi patients belongs to Western type, different combination were recorded such as AC, BC, ABCCC. CagA multimerization (CM) sequences belong mainly to western type, each molecule has 2 CM sequence regions , in addition Iraqi strains exhibited other type of CM motifs which different from Western and East Asian CMs, but they are present in public databases as it appeared when searching such databases using BLAST program.