Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P02794 (ferritin)
 17,525 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Ferritins, a group of isomeric proteins that have important functions in iron metabolism and storage, have been demonstrated to be carcinoembryonic antigens. It has been recently shown that a subpopulation of lymphocytes from the peripheral blood of patients with Hodgkin's disease or breast cancer bear ferritin on their surface membranes. In view of the potential diagnostic and prognostic value of ascertaining the number of ferritin-bearing lymphocytes, the authors developed a simple indirect immunofluorescent technique for identifying them and used this technique to examine the peripheral blood lymphocytes of 44 patients with carcinomas of the head and neck (26), colon (14), and lung (4). It was found that patients with cancer had a mean percentage of 10% ferritin-bearing lymphocytes in their peripheral blood as compared with 3.1% in controls. Ferritin binding did not appear to be influenced by a cell's capacity to form sheep erythrocyte (E) rosettes since no correlation could be found between the percentages of lymphocytes bearing ferritin and those forming three different varieties of E-rosettes. There appeared to be no correlation of the percentages of ferritin-bearing lymphocytes with clinical staging except for a small, but significant (P less than 0.05), increase in the number of patients with head and neck cancer and nodal metastases. Although the functional significance of ferritin-bearing lymphocytes is currently unknown, the appearance of this subpopulation of cells in the blood appears to be associated with cancer. This assay may prove to be useful as a diagnostic tool, as a prognostic tool, or as a means of identifying patients at a risk for developing cancer and, therefore, it deserves further exploration.
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PMID:Ferritin-bearing lymphocytes in patients with cancer. 636 Mar 36

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in ferritin as an oncofetal protein. However, the clinical significance of ferritin expression in cancer tissues remains unknown. We performed an immunohistochemical study to examine the expression of ferritin in colorectal adenocarcinoma (n = 104). A total of 95 out of 104 (91.3%) colon cancers were positive for ferritin expression. The degree of immunoreactivity has no significant correlation with tumor grade (p = 0.964), size (p = 0.659), serosal invasion (p = 0.331), nodal metastasis (p = 0.955), distant metastasis (p = 0.354) and DNA ploidy status (p = 0.126), but there was a strong association between ferritin expression of tumor cells and stromal mononuclear cell infiltration (p = 0.004). In terms of prognostic significance, multivariate analysis showed that nodal metastasis (p = 0.0123) and distant metastasis (p = 0.0237) were independent poor prognostic factors. However, there was no significant difference in survival between patients with weak and strong ferritin expression in cancer tissues (p = 0.3766). The results indicate that the majority of colorectal adenocarcinomas exhibit ferritin expression. The grade of ferritin expression is strongly associated with stromal mononuclear cell infiltration, but has no significant correlation with any staging parameters or the survival of cancer patients.
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PMID:Prognostic significance of ferritin expression in colorectal adenocarcinoma. 764 31

We present a 57-year old male patient with thalassemia intermedia and right heart failure. He had a 30-year history of anemia and short-term iron therapy without blood transfusion. Hemoglobin level was 7.1 g/dl and hematocrit was 22.7%. White blood-cell and platelet counts, and serum ferritin level were normal. Electrocardiography showed irregular narrow QRS bradyarrhythmia, suggesting slow atrial fibrillation at a mean rate of 35 beats/min. Echocardiographic examination revealed dilatation of the right atrium and ventricle, depressed systolic right ventricular function, advanced tricuspid regurgitation, and mild pericardial effusion. In the electrophysiologic study, no electrical activity was recorded in the right atrium. It was inexcitable at multiple sites and no retrograde conduction to the right atrium could be elicited by ventricular pacing. His bundle (HB) recording showed fixed retrograde HB activation with ventricular rhythm originating from different foci. Retrograde V-H conduction time during ventricular rhythm was 95 msec and did not change. There was no retrograde nodal conduction. A VVIR pacemaker was implanted. During a six-month follow-up, he felt well, his functional capacity was NYHA class II, and his basic rhythm was widened QRS arrhythmia with a rate of 20 beats/min. To the best of our knowledge, atrial electrical inactivity together with right-heart failure and pericarditis confined to the right heart chambers has hitherto not been reported in thalassemic disorders.
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PMID:Persistent atrial standstill and idioventricular rhythm in a patient with thalassemia intermedia. 1971 59

Experimental and epidemiologic evidence suggests that dysregulation of proteins involved in iron metabolism plays a critical role in cancer. The mechanisms by which cancer cells alter homeostatic iron regulation are just beginning to be understood. Here, we demonstrate that iron regulatory protein 2 (IRP2) plays a key role in iron accumulation in breast cancer. Although both IRP1 and IRP2 are overexpressed in breast cancer, the overexpression of IRP2, but not IRP1, is associated with decreased ferritin H and increased transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1). Knockdown of IRP2 in triple-negative MDA-MB-231 human breast cancer cells increases ferritin H expression and decreases TfR1 expression, resulting in a decrease in the labile iron pool. Further, IRP2 knockdown reduces growth of MDA-MB-231 cells in the mouse mammary fat pad. Gene expression microarray profiles of patients with breast cancer demonstrate that increased IRP2 expression is associated with high-grade cancer. Increased IRP2 expression is observed in luminal A, luminal B, and basal breast cancer subtypes, but not in breast tumors of the ERBB2 molecular subtype. These results suggest that dysregulation of IRP2 is an early nodal point underlying altered iron metabolism in breast cancer and may contribute to poor outcome of some patients with breast cancer.
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PMID:IRP2 regulates breast tumor growth. 2428 26