Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UNIPROT:P61278 (somatostatin)
 22,083 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Tumours of the thymus are uncommon and are generally regarded as being indolent. Whilst this is often true of thymomas; thymic adenocarcinoma and thymic neuroendocrine cancer can be aggressive and have a poor prognosis. Understanding the biology of these tumours is important for prognosis and management. The pathological features of these tumours are examined in detail. Imaging modalities for aiding in diagnosis and staging of these tumours are described; this includes CT and MRI, plus more recent advances including the use of FDG-PET and Indium-111 Octreotide scintigraphy. The treatment options available including curative surgery, debulking surgery, chemotherapy, somatostatin analogues and peptide receptor radionuclide therapy are discussed. The optimal chemotherapy regimens are still unclear, although promising results have been obtained with platinum-based chemotherapy. The role for adjuvant therapy in both thymic carcinoma and thymoma is unclear except, in patients with stage I thymomas. There is a high expression of somatostatin receptors in thymic tumours and anti-tumour benefit has been reported in patients treated with somatostatin analogues. A new development is the role of peptide receptor radionuclide therapy. This has become an established therapy in management of gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours and its use has been recently described in case reports in both thymoma and thymic carcinoma.
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PMID:A review of thymic tumours. 1834 28

In this review article, state-of-the-art diagnostic tools and innovative treatments of thymoma and thymic carcinoma (TC) are described with special respect to advanced tumour stages. Complete surgical resection (R0) remains the standard therapeutic approach for almost all a priori resectable mediastinal tumours as defined by preoperative standard computed tomography (CT). If lymphoma or germ-cell tumours are differential diagnostic considerations, biopsy may be indicated. Resection status is the most important prognostic factor in thymoma and TC, followed by tumour stage. Advanced (Masaoka-Koga stage III and IVa) tumours require interdisciplinary therapy decisions based on distinctive findings of preoperative CT scan and ancillary investigations [magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)] to select cases for primary surgery or neoadjuvant strategies with optional secondary resection. In neoadjuvant settings, octreotide scans and histological evaluation of pretherapeutic needle biopsies may help to choose between somatostatin agonist/prednisolone regimens and neoadjuvant chemotherapy as first-line treatment. Finally, a multimodality treatment regime is recommended for advanced and unresectable thymic tumours. In conclusion, advanced stage thymoma and TC should preferably be treated in experienced centres in order to provide all modern diagnostic tools (imaging, histology) and innovative therapy techniques. Systemic and local (hyperthermic intrathoracic chemotherapy) medical treatments together with extended surgical resections have increased the therapeutic options in patients with advanced or recurrent thymoma and TC.
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PMID:State of the art: diagnostic tools and innovative therapies for treatment of advanced thymoma and thymic carcinoma. 2667 Aug 6

Precise diagnostic work up of a suspected thymic pathology in patients with myasthenia gravis (MG) is very important for potential surgical implications and further disease course. In this study the diagnostic value of combined preoperative radiological (CAT scan) and nuclear based imaging (octreotide and thallium scintigraphy) in patients with MG was evaluated. Twenty four patients were included. Histopathology revealed thymoma in nine patients, thymic carcinoma (TC) in one patient, lymphofollicular hyperplasia in seven patients, and involuted thymus in another seven patients. Diagnostic sensitivity for detecting thymoma/TC was 80 % in CAT scan as well as in somatostatin scintigraphy; the combination of both procedures reached 90 %. However, the diagnostic specifity to exclude thymoma in CAT scan was 100 % and in octreotide scintigraphy 85.7 %. Semiquantitative octreotide uptake significantly correlated with histological grading of thymoma/TC (r = 0.764) and histological proliferation rate Ki67 (r = 0.894). Thallium scintigraphy was positive only in one out of four thymoma cases. In this study, somatostatin scintigraphy has been shown to be a useful additional diagnostic technique in detecting thymic malignancies in patients with MG. These results might be especially helpful in patients with late onset MG as these patients are in general no candidates for thymectomy.
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PMID:Thymic pathologies in myasthenia gravis: a preoperative assessment of CAT scan and nuclear based imaging. 2681 Jul 25