Prognostic Significance of Cellular Iron Metabolism in Breast Cancer

Breast carcinoma is among the most common malignancy in women. Objective: Aim of the present study was to evaluate the prognostic significance of iron expression in the biopsies of patients with breast cancer. Methods: 24 breast biopsies were studied. 19 cases were poorly differentiated, 5 cases were moderately differentiated and there was no well differentiated case. Iron, Estrogen receptor (ER), Progesterone receptor (PR), HER2 and Ki-67 immunohistochemical staining was performed for all these cases. Results: Among the 5 moderately differentiated cases, 3 (60%) were positive for iron staining and among 19 poorly differentiated cases, 11 cases (57.89%) were positive. More iron positive cases (7 out of 14) were triple positive belonging to Luminal B class. Out of 14 iron positive cases, 11 were positive for HER2, 10 for ER, 9 for PR and all positive for Ki-67. Conclusions: Iron deficiency in premenopausal and overload in post-menopausal women can contribute to the development of breast carcinoma. So, iron can be considered as a cheap and effective marker for the prognosis of breast cancer. Association between a risein iron levels and HER2 expression may providenewstrategy for breast cancer treatment.

Bacteriocin Based Strategy for the Control of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Isolated Form District Sargodha

The current research work was designed to study the bacteriocin based control of antibiotic resistant bacteria of the upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) prevailing in native population of District Sargodha. For this purpose 439 throat samples were obtained from patients of URTI from District Sargodha. Out of 439 samples, 391 were processed for further experimentation. Three bacterial strains were isolated and identified as the cause of the respiratory infections. The strains were Morexella catarrhalis, Neisseria meningitidis and Alcaligenes sargodhrensis. The bacterial strain; Alcaligenes sargodhrensis was a novel strain. Morexella catarrhalis and Neisseria meningitidis were identified using their biochemical characters and Bergey’s identification key. For Alcaligenes sargodhrensis 16S RNA ribotyping was employed to reveal its sequence. Its sequence was then subjected to Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST, NCBI) for its identification. It was observed that Alcaligenes sargodhrensis was 93% similar to Alcaligenes faecalis and 92% like Alcaligenes aquatilis. The difference of 7% of sequence confirms its novelty. Therefore, it was assigned the named “Alcaligenes sargodhrensis”. The prevalence of bacterial strains was also studied. It was found that Morexella catarrhalis was 81.07% prevalent; Neisseria meningitidis had prevalence of 16.11% and the incidence of Alcaligenes sargodhrensis was observed to be 2.81% in local population of District Sargodha. The gender based epidemiology revealed that Morexella catarrhalis (85.18%) and Alcaligenes sargodhrensis (3.70%) were more prevalent among males while the occurrence of Neisseria meningitidis was more among females (18.75%) as compared with males (11.11%). The patients were grouped in different categories depending upon their age. The prevalence of bacterial strains in different age groups was studied. It was observed that Morexella catarrhalis mainly targets the people of young age (one year to 20 years). Neisseria meningitidis was isolated from patients of middle age group (21 years to 40 years) while Alcaligenes sargodhrensis caused infections in elderly patients of age 60years and above. The antibiotic resistance assay was performed using selected antibiotics (amoxicillin, ciprofloxacin, moxifloxacin, erythromycin and levofloxicin) of analytical grade. The results revealed that Morexella catarrhalis was resistant against amoxicillin (80.12%) and erythromycin (76.02%) while showed mild resistance for levofloxicin (53.33%) and ciprofloxacin (17.35%). It was sensitive against moxifloxacin. The antibiotic resistant pattern of Neisseria meningitidis exhibits that it was slightly resistant against amoxicillin (7.93%) and erythromycin (1.58%) while sensitive for flouroquinoles (ciprofloxacin, moxifloxacin and levofloxicin). The Alcaligenes sargodhrensis showed mild resistance against amoxicillin (54.54%), erythromycin (27.27%) and 9.09% resistant against ciprofloxacin and levofloxicin while sensitive against moxifloxacin. A growth curve of identified bacterial strains was produced at various ranges of temperature and pH. The pattern of growth curve was determined by observing the optical density (OD) at 600nm. It was noticed that the optimum temperature for Morexella catarrhalis and Neisseria meningitidis was 350C -370C while for Alcaligenes sargodhrensis it was 350C - 450C. The optimum pH was 6.5 to 7 for all isolated bacterial strains. For isolation of bacteriocin, L. acidophilus was isolated from fermented milk. The bacteriocin was extracted using ammonium sulphate precipitation method. Bacteriocin’s sensitivity for variable ranges of temperature and pH was determined. It was found that bacteriocin is stable up to 1000C and pH 11. For the molecular characterization of bacteriocin; Sodium Deodecyl Sulphate Poly Acryl amide gel electrophoresis (SDSPAGE) was used. The molecular weight of partially purified bacteriocin was 13kDa. To establish the anti-bacterial potential of bacteriocin against isolated pathogenic bacterial strains well diffusion assay was used. The maximum inhibition zone was observed for Neisseria meningitidis (0.60mm ± 0.45), following Morexella catarrhalis (0.40mm ± 0.10) and Alcaligenes sargodhrensis (0.23mm ± 0.15). The outcomes of this study concluded that bacteriocin has potential to inhibit the growth of antibacterial resistant respiratory pathogens. The comparative study of bacteriocin and antibiotics exhibits that there was no significant difference for the antibacterial potential of selected antibiotics and bacteriocin. The bacteriocin showed comparable antibacterial activity with the antibiotics. The present study play a role of baseline research project, presenting the opportunity of using the bacteriocin as substitute approach. On the basis of this study, an advance research project can be planned for the control of developing antibiotic resistance.