| 1. |
- Look, M, et al.
(författare)
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Pooled analysis of prognostic impact of uPA and PAI-I in breast cancer patients
- 2003
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Ingår i: Thrombosis and Haemostasis. - 0340-6245. ; 90:3, s. 538-548
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this report we present an extension of the pooled analysis of the prognostic impact of urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and its inhibitor PAI-I in breast cancer patients. We analyzed a different endpoint, metastasis-free survival (MFS). We checked the consistency of the estimates for uPA and PAI-I for relapse-free survival (RFS) and MFS exploring possible sources of heterogeneity. Nodal status, the most important prognostic factor for breast cancer, introduced heterogeneity in the uPA/PAI-I survival analyses, reflecting the interaction between nodal status and uPA/PAI-I. The estimates for uPA and PAI-I were found to be consistent, even when a different transformation of their values was used. The heterogeneity of the separate data sets decreased if the levels of uPA and PAI-I were ranked, data sets were pooled, and the analyses corrected for the base model that included all traditional prognostic factors, and stratified by data set. We conclude that uPA and PAI-I are ready to be used in the clinic to help classify breast cancer patients into high and low risk groups.
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| 2. |
- Hedlund, Katarina, et al.
(författare)
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Plant species diversity, plant biomass and responses of the soil community on abandoned land across Europe: idiosyncracy or above-belowground time lags
- 2003
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : Wiley. - 1600-0706 .- 0030-1299. ; 103:1, s. 45-58
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We examined the relationship between plant species diversity, productivity and the development of the soil community during early secondary succession on former arable land across Europe. We tested the hypothesis that increasing the initial plant species diversity enhances the biomass production and consequently stimulates soil microbial biomass and abundance of soil invertebrates. We performed five identical field experiments on abandoned arable land in five European countries (CZ, NL, SE, SP and UK) which allowed us to test our hypothesis in a range of climate, soil and other environmental factors that varied between the experimental sites. The initial plant diversity was altered by sowing seed mixtures of mid-successional grassland species with two or five grass species, one or five legumes and one or five forbs. The results of low and high sown diversity treatments were compared with plots that were naturally colonized by species present in the seed bank. In three out of the five field sites, there was no correlation between plant species number and plant biomass production, one site had a positive and the other a negative relation. Treatments with a high diversity seed mixture had a higher biomass than the naturally colonized plots. However, there was no significant difference between high and low sown diversity plots at four out of five sites. The three-year study did not give any evidence of a general bottom-up effect from increased plant biomass on biomass of bacteria, saprophytic fungi or abundance of microarthropods. The biomass of arbuscular mycorrhizal was negatively related to plant biomass. The abundance of nematodes increased after abandonment and was related to plant biomass at four sites. Our results support the hypothesis that plant species diversity may have idiosyncratic effects on soil communities, even though studies on a longer term could reveal time lags in the response to changes in composition and biomass production of plant communities.
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| 3. |
- Look, MP, et al.
(författare)
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Pooled analysis of prognostic impact of urokinase-type plasminogen activator and its inhibitor PAI-1 8377 breast cancer patients
- 2002
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Ingår i: Journal of the National Cancer Institute. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 1460-2105 .- 0027-8874. ; 94:2, s. 116-128
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and its inhibitor (PAI-1) play essential roles in tumor invasion and metastasis. High levels of both uPA and PAT-1 are associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer patients. To confirm the prognostic value of uPA and PAI-1 in primary breast cancer, we reanalyzed individual patient data provided by members of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer-Receptor and Biomarker Group (EORTC-RBG). Methods: The study included 18 datasets involving 8377 breast cancer patients. During follow-up (median 79 months), 35% of the patients relapsed and 27% died. Levels of uPA and PAI-1 in tumor tissue extracts were determined by different immunoassays; values were ranked within each dataset and divided by the number of patients in that dataset to produce fractional ranks that could be compared directly across datasets. Associations of ranks of uPA and PAI-1 levels with relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) were analyzed by Cox multivariable regression analysis stratified by dataset, including the following traditional prognostic variables: age, menopausal status, lymph node status, tumor size, histologic grade, and steroid hormone-receptor status. All P values were two-sided. Results: Apart from lymph node status, high levels of uPA and PAI-1 were the strongest predictors of both poor RFS and poor OS in the analyses of all patients. Moreover, in both lymph node-positive and lymph nodenegative patients, higher uPA and PAI-1 values were independently associated with poor RFS and poor OS. For (untreated) lymph node-negative patients in particular, uPA and PAI-1 included together showed strong prognostic ability (all P<.001). Conclusions: This pooled analysis of the EORTC-RBG datasets confirmed the strong and independent prognostic value of uPA and PAI-1 in primary breast cancer. For patients with lymph node-negative breast cancer, uPA and PAI-1 measurements in primary tumors may be especially useful for designing individualized treatment strategies.
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