Nor Hayati Othman

Antiproliferative effect of Tualang honey on oral squamous cell carcinoma and osteosarcoma cell lines

BackgroundThe treatment of oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC) and human osteosarcoma (HOS) includes surgery and/or radiotherapy which often lead to reduced quality of life. This study was aimed to study the antiproliferative activity of local honey (Tualang) on OSCC and HOS cell lines.MethodsSeveral concentrations of Tualang honey (1% - 20%) were applied on OSCC and HOS cell lines for 3, 6, 12, 24, 48 and 72 hours. Morphological characteristics were observed under light and fluorescent microscope. Cell viability was assessed using MTT assay and the optical density for absorbance values in each experiment was measured at 570 nm by an ELISA reader. Detection of cellular apoptosis was done using the Annexin V-FITC Apoptosis Detection Kit.ResultsMorphological appearance showed apoptotic cellular changes like becoming rounded, reduction in cell number, blebbed membrane and apoptotic nuclear changes like nuclear shrinkage, chromatin condensation and fragmented nucleus on OSCC and HOS cell lines. Cell viability assay showed a time and dose-dependent inhibitory effect of honey on both cell lines. The 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) for OSCC and HOS cell lines was found to be 4% and 3.5% respectively. The maximum inhibition of cell growth of ≥80% was obtained at 15% for both cell lines. Early apoptosis was evident by flow cytometry where percentage of early apoptotic cells increased in dose and time dependent manner.ConclusionTualang honey showed antiproliferative effect on OSCC and HOS cell lines by inducing early apoptosis.

The effects of tualang honey on female reproductive organs, tibia bone and hormonal profile in ovariectomised rats - animal model for menopause

BackgroundHoney is a highly nutritional natural product that has been widely used in folk medicine for a number of therapeutic purposes. We evaluated whether Malaysian Tualang honey (AgroMas, Malaysia) was effective in reducing menopausal syndrome in ovariectomised female rats; an animal model for menopause.MethodsThe rats were divided into two control groups and three test groups. The control groups were sham-operated (SH) and ovariectomised (OVX) rats. The SH and OVX control rats were fed on 0.5 ml of distill water. The rats in the test groups were fed with low dose 0.2 g/kg (THL), medium dose, 1.0 g/kg (THM) and high dose 2.0 g/kg (THH) of Tualang honey in 0.5 ml of distill water. The administration was given by oral gavage once daily for 2 weeks. The reproductive organs (uterus and vagina), tibia bone and aorta were taken for histopathological examination while serum for hormonal assays.ResultsAdministration of Tualang honey for 2 weeks to ovariectomised rats significantly increased the weight of the uterus and the thickness of vaginal epithelium, restored the morphology of the tibia bones and reduced the body weight compared to rats in the ovariectomised group. The levels of estradiol and progesterone, in honey treated groups were markedly lower than that in the OVX group. At low doses (0.2 g/kg; THL group) of Tualang honey there was an increased in serum free testosterone levels compared to OVX group (P < 0.01). Progesterone concentrations was significantly decreased in the OVX group as compared to SHAM group (P < 0.05).ConclusionsTualang honey was shown to have beneficial effects on menopausal (ovariectomised) rats by preventing uterine atrophy, increased bone density and suppression of increased body weight. Honey could be an alternative to HRT.

An automated cervical pre-cancerous diagnostic system

OBJECTIVE This paper proposes to develop an automated diagnostic system for cervical pre-cancerous. METHODS AND DATA SAMPLES: The proposed automated diagnostic system consists of two parts; an automatic feature extraction and an intelligent diagnostic. In the automatic feature extraction, the system automatically extracts four cervical cells features (i.e. nucleus size, nucleus grey level, cytoplasm size and cytoplasm grey level). A new features extraction algorithm called region-growing-based features extraction (RGBFE) is proposed to extract the cervical cells features. The extracted features will then be fed as input data to the intelligent diagnostic part. A new artificial neural network (ANN) architecture called hierarchical hybrid multilayered perceptron (H(2)MLP) network is proposed to predict the cervical pre-cancerous stage into three classes, namely normal, low grade intra-epithelial squamous lesion (LSIL) and high grade intra-epithelial squamous lesion (HSIL). We empirically assess the capability of the proposed diagnostic system using 550 reported cases (211 normal cases, 143 LSIL cases and 196 HSIL cases). RESULTS For evaluation of the automatic feature extraction performance, correlation test approach was used to determine the capability of the RGBFE algorithm as compared to manual extraction by cytotechnologist. The manual extraction of size was recorded in micrometer while the automatic extraction of size was recorded in number of pixels. Region color was recorded in mean of grey level value for both manual and automatic extraction. The results show that the estimated size and mean of grey level have strong linear relationship (correlation test more than 0.8) with those extracted manually by cytotechnologist. Hence, the size of nucleus, size of cytoplasm and grey level of cytoplasm created very strong linear relationship with correlation test more than 0.95 (approaching one). For the intelligent diagnostic, the performance of the H(2)MLP network was compared with three standard ANNs (i.e. multilayered perceptron (MLP), radial basis function (RBF) and hybrid multilayered perceptron (HMLP)). The performance was done based on accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, false negative and false positive. The H(2)MLP network performed the best diagnostic performance as compared to other ANNs. It was able to achieve 97.50% accuracy, 100% specificity and 96.67% sensitivity. The false negative and false positive were 1.33% and 3.00%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS This project has successfully developed an automatic diagnostic system for cervical pre-cancerous. This study has also successfully proposed one image processing technique namely the RGBFE algorithm for automatic feature extraction process and a new ANN architecture namely the H(2)MLP network for better diagnostic performance.

The prevalence of acute respiratory symptoms and role of protective measures among Malaysian hajj pilgrims.

BACKGROUND Respiratory symptoms including cough, runny nose, sore throat, and fever are the most common clinical manifestations faced by hajj pilgrims in Mecca. The aim of the study was to determine the prevalence of respiratory symptoms among Malaysian hajj pilgrims and the effect of a few protective measures taken by hajj pilgrims to reduce respiratory symptoms. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted by distributing survey forms to Malaysian hajj pilgrims at transit center before flying back to Malaysia. The recruitment of respondents to the survey was on a voluntary basis. RESULTS A total of 387 survey forms were available for analysis. The mean age was 50.4 +/- 11.0 years. The common respiratory symptoms among Malaysian hajj pilgrims were: cough 91.5%, runny nose 79.3%, fever 59.2%, and sore throat 57.1%. The prevalence of hajj pilgrims with triad of cough, subjective fever, and sore throat were 40.1%. The symptoms lasted less than 2 weeks in the majority of cases. Only 3.6% did not suffer from any of these symptoms. Seventy-two percent of hajj pilgrims received influenza vaccination before departure and 72.9% wore facemasks. Influenza vaccination was not associated with any of respiratory symptoms but it was significantly associated with longer duration of sore throat. Wearing masks was significantly associated with sore throat and longer duration of sore throat and fever. CONCLUSIONS The prevalence of respiratory symptoms was high among Malaysian hajj pilgrims and the current protective measures seemed inadequate to reduce it. Beside standardization of the term used in hajj studies, more collaborative effort should be taken to reduce respiratory symptoms. The hajj authority should prepare for the challenge of pandemic influenza by providing more healthcare facilities and implementation of more strict measures to reduce the transmission of pandemic influenza strain among hajj pilgrims.

Teratocarcinosarcoma of the nasal cavity and ethmoid

Sinonasal teratocarcinosarcoma is very unusual malignant neoplasm histologically consisting of an epithelial element and one or more mesenchymal components. This is a report of teratocarcinosarcoma, in a 74-year-old male, involving the right nasal cavity and ethmoids with intracranial extension. The tumour was totally resected via the craniofacial approach and the patient was given post-operative chemotherapy. Extensive tumour necrosis, rapid growth and local destruction are the prominent features of this tumour. The clinical presentation, pathological features and clinical course of this rare malignancy are discussed with a review of the literature.

Honey and Cancer: Sustainable Inverse Relationship Particularly for Developing Nations—A Review

Honey and cancer has a sustainable inverse relationship. Carcinogenesis is a multistep process and has multifactorial causes. Among these are low immune status, chronic infection, chronic inflammation, chronic non healing ulcers, obesity, and so forth. There is now a sizeable evidence that honey is a natural immune booster, natural anti-inflammatory agent, natural antimicrobial agent, natural cancer “vaccine,” and natural promoter for healing chronic ulcers and wounds. Though honey has substances of which the most predominant is a mixture of sugars, which itself is thought to be carcinogenic, it is understandable that its beneficial effect as anticancer agent raises skeptics. The positive scientific evidence for anticancer properties of honey is growing. The mechanism on how honey has anticancer effect is an area of great interest. Among the mechanisms suggested are inhibition of cell proliferation, induction of apoptosis, and cell-cycle arrest. Honey and cancer has sustainable inverse relationship in the setting of developing nations where resources for cancer prevention and treatment are limited.

Comparative study between Pap smear cytology and FTIR spectroscopy: a new tool for screening for cervical cancer

Aims: To evaluate Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy as new tool for screening of cervical cancer in comparison with cervical cytology. Methods: A total of 800 cervical scrapings were taken by cytobrush and placed in ThinPrep medium. The samples were dried over infrared transparent matrix. Beams of infrared light were directed at the dried samples at frequency of 4000 to 400 cm‐1. The absorption data were produced using a Spectrum BX II FTIR spectrometer. Data were compared with the reference absorption data of known samples using FTIR spectroscopy software. FTIR spectroscopy was compared with cytology (gold standard). Results: FTIR spectroscopy could differentiate normal from abnormal cervical cells in the samples examined. The sensitivity was 85%, specificity 91%, positive predictive value 19.5% and negative predictive value of 99.5%. Conclusion: This study suggests that FTIR spectroscopy could be used as an alternative method for screening for cervical cancer.

The inference of breast cancer metastasis through gene regulatory networks

Understanding the mechanisms of gene regulation during breast cancer is one of the most difficult problems among oncologists because this regulation is likely comprised of complex genetic interactions. Given this complexity, a computational study using the Bayesian network technique has been employed to construct a gene regulatory network from microarray data. Although the Bayesian network has been notified as a prominent method to infer gene regulatory processes, learning the Bayesian network structure is NP hard and computationally intricate. Therefore, we propose a novel inference method based on low-order conditional independence that extends to the case of the Bayesian network to deal with a large number of genes and an insufficient sample size. This method has been evaluated and compared with full-order conditional independence and different prognostic indices on a publicly available breast cancer data set. Our results suggest that the low-order conditional independence method will be able to handle a large number of genes in a small sample size with the least mean square error. In addition, this proposed method performs significantly better than other methods, including the full-order conditional independence and the St. Gallen consensus criteria. The proposed method achieved an area under the ROC curve of 0.79203, whereas the full-order conditional independence and the St. Gallen consensus criteria obtained 0.76438 and 0.73810, respectively. Furthermore, our empirical evaluation using the low-order conditional independence method has demonstrated a promising relationship between six gene regulators and two regulated genes and will be further investigated as potential breast cancer metastasis prognostic markers.

A review of feature selection techniques via gene expression profiles

The invention of DNA microarray technology has modernized the approach of biology research in such a way that scientists can now measure the expression levels of thousands of genes simultaneously in a single experiment. Although this technology has shifted a new era in molecular classification, interpreting microarray data still remain a challenging issue due to their innate nature of “high dimensional low sample size”. Therefore, robust and accurate feature selection methods are required to identify differentially expressed genes across varied samples for example between cancerous and normal cells. Successful of feature selection techniques will assist to correctly classify different cancer types and consequently led to a better understanding of genetic signatures in cancers and would improve treatment strategies. This paper presents a review of feature selection techniques that have been employed in microarray data analysis. Moreover, other problems associated with microarray data analysis also addressed. In addition, several trends were noted including highly reliance on filter techniques compared to wrapper and embedded, a growing direction towards ensemble feature selection techniques and future extension to apply feature selection in combination of heterogeneous data sources.

Growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) and GHRH receptor (GHRH-R) isoform expression in ectopic acromegaly

Bronchial endocrine neoplasms causing acromegaly due to ectopic production of growth hormone (GH)‐releasing hormone (GHRH) have been reported. We describe the case of a 39‐year‐old man with clinical and biochemical acromegaly. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed an enlarged pituitary, which was confirmed histologically to harbour somatotroph hyperplasia. Further investigations identified a circumscribed central mass in the right lung which was surgically resected and histologically confirmed to be an endocrine tumour with strong immunopositivity for GHRH, synaptophysin and chromogranin; the lesion also exhibited mild positivity for peptide YY, calcitonin gene‐related peptide (CGRP), glucagon‐like peptide (GLP)−1, corticotrophin‐releasing hormone (CRH), tyrosine hydroxylase, vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and enkephalin. S100 protein was identified in stellate cells surrounding nests of epithelial tumour cells. The MIB‐1 antibody labelled about 10% of the tumour cells. We established that the tumour not only produced GHRH but the GHRH‐receptor (GHRH‐R) as well. GHRH and GHRH‐R mRNA were identified and the latter was characterized as two variants, a full‐length transcript and a truncated splice variant that has been described in human pituitary somatotroph adenomas. We suggest that GHRH expression by this tumour and the presence of its receptor may be responsible for enhanced growth. The expression of a truncated splice variant that is unable to transduce GHRH signalling may be implicated in the less aggressive behaviour of well‐differentiated endocrine tumours that produce GHRH compared with small‐cell lung carcinomas that are very responsive to GHRH growth stimulation.