These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Current urinary mass screening for catecholamine metabolites at 6 months of age may be detecting only a small portion of high-risk neuroblastomas: a chromosome and N-myc amplification study.
    Author: Kaneko Y, Kanda N, Maseki N, Nakachi K, Takeda T, Okabe I, Sakurai M.
    Journal: J Clin Oncol; 1990 Dec; 8(12):2005-13. PubMed ID: 2230892.
    Abstract:
    We studied 96 infants and children with untreated neuroblastomas. Chromosomes of tumor cells were analyzed in 68, and N-myc copy numbers were determined in 67 patients. Patients found by a mass screening program for 6-month-old infants (group A1, 39 patients) or those less than 12 months of age found clinically (group A2, 13 patients) were rarely in the disseminated stage (A1, three of 39; A2 one of 13); their tumors usually had near-triploid (3n) or hypertetraploid (greater than 4n) karyotypes (A1, 28 of 37; A2, nine of 11), and never had N-myc amplification (A1, zero of 34; A2, zero of 11). In contrast, children 12 months or over (group B, 27 patients) were usually in the disseminated stage (19 of 27) (P less than .0001); their tumors usually had near-diploid (2n) or near-tetraploid (4n) karyotypes (16 of 20) (P = .0027), and often had N-myc amplification (nine of 22) (P less than .0001). Of the 40 clinically found patients (A2 and B), six had undergone the screening with a negative result at the age of 6 months. Two of the six patients had N-myc amplification in the tumors. Most tumors found by the screening showed known characteristics predicting a good prognosis, and the majority of tumors showing characteristics predicting a poor prognosis were found in patients aged between 12 and 36 months. Our chromosome and N-myc amplification studies suggest that a low-risk tumor does not usually evolve to a high-risk tumor. Thus, the current mass screening program may be detecting only a small portion of highly malignant neuroblastomas at the earliest stage. Infants should be screened twice, at 6 months as well as at 12 months of age, for the early detection of high-risk neuroblastomas.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]