UL Institute of Clinical and Preventive Medicine

The Institute of Clinical and Preventive Medicine of the University of Latvia (UL) was founded to develop research in the fields of oncology and preventive oncology, as well as tuberculosis and septicemia; to carry out organised pilot studies to optimize cancer screening, and to carry out a unique population study in Europe for gastrointestinal cancer prevention (GISTAR). The Institute develops common patients’ with tumours and other patients’ biobanks intended to be part of the National Biobank structure. Workplaces for doctoral students, post-doctoral scientists and other new scientists are created on the basis of the Institute. Residents and students are attracted to research work. The I…

Implementation of gastric cancer screening - the global experience.

2014

Gastric cancer (GC) is still an important global healthcare problem, and in absolute figures it is going to remain at the present level in foreseeable future. In general, survival of patients with GC is poor mainly due to advanced-stage diagnosis. Early-stage GC can be cured by endoscopic resection or less invasive surgical treatment. Unfortunately, there is no appropriate screening strategy available for global application. This article provides a description of established national and regional GC screening programs and the screening modalities used. This review also summarizes current approaches to develop cancer-screening biomarkers. Although candidates with initial promising results ha…

Early detection of gastric cancer beyond endoscopy - new methods

2021

Early detection of gastric cancer is remaining a challenge. This review summarizes current knowledge on non-invasive methods that could be used for the purpose. The role of traditional cancer markers such as CEA, CA 72-4, CA 19-9, CA 15-3, and CA 12-5 lies mainly in therapy monitoring than early detection. Most extensive studied biomarkers (pepsinogens, ABC method) are aiming at the detection of precancerous lesions with modest sensitivity for cancer. Tests based on the detection of cancer-specific methylation patterns (PanSeer), circulating proteins and mutations in circulating tumour DNA (CancerSEEK), as well as miRNA panels have demonstrated promising results bringing those closer to pra…

Review: Epidemiology of Helicobacter pylori infection

2019

This review summarizes recent publications on the epidemiology of Helicobacter pylori. Two major systemic analyses, from Malaysia and Ethiopia, were published. The Brazilian Consensus Conference has stated that H pylori infection is an infectious disease with an indication for antimicrobial therapy. A continuous decrease in H pylori prevalence was reported from many regions worldwide, including Korea, China, Iran, and Austria. A cross-sectional H pylori prevalence study conducted in the United Arab Emirates found 41% prevalence in a group of healthy children and adults. Several studies from Asia addressed H pylori prevalence in adults undergoing regular checkup. The largest of such studies,…

Lack of Association Between Rs2067474 Polymorphism in the Histamine Receptor H2 Gene and Gastric Cancer In Latvian Population

2018

Abstract Histamine has an important role in the process of the gastric mucosa inflammation acting via histamine receptor H2 (encoded by the gene HRH2). Single nucleotide polymorphism of the enhancer element of HRH2 gene promoter rs2067474 (1018G>A)may be associated with changes of expression of the receptor. We attempted to clarify the association of this polymorphism with gastric cancer and/or atrophic gastritis in the Latvian (Caucasian) population. The study group consisted of 121 gastric cancer patients and 650 patients with no evidence of gastric neoplasia on upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. Genotyping for rs2067474 was performed with the TaqMan probe-based system using a commercia…

Tumor-associated autoantibody signature for the early detection of gastric cancer

2012

Autoantibodies against tumor-associated antigens are very attractive biomarkers for the development of noninvasive serological tests for the early detection of cancer because of their specificity and stability in the sera. In our study, we applied T7 phage display-based serological analysis of recombinant cDNA expression libraries technique to identify a representative set of antigens eliciting humoral responses in patients with gastric cancer (GC), produced phage-antigen microarrays and exploited them for the survey of autoantibody repertoire in patients with GC and inflammatory diseases. We developed procedures for data normalization and cutoff determination to define sero-positive signal…

Evaluation of T7 and lambda phage display systems for survey of autoantibody profiles in cancer patients.

2008

In the current study we attempted to evaluate the suitability of T7 Select 10-3b and lambdaKM8 phage display systems for the identification of antigens eliciting B cell responses in cancer patients and the production of phage-displayed antigen microarrays that could be exploited for the monitoring of autoantibody profiles. Members of 15 tumour-associated antigen (TAA) families were cloned into both phage display vectors and the TAA mini-libraries were immunoscreened with 22 melanoma patients' sera resulting in the detection of reactivity against members of 5 antigen families in both systems, yet with variable sensitivity. T7 phage display system showed greater sensitivity for the detection …

The accuracy of flexible spectral imaging colour enhancement for the diagnosis of gastric intestinal metaplasia

2014

Background Targeting biopsies on the basis of visual recognition of mucosal changes in the stomach instead of the currently accepted random biopsy sampling may be attractive. Aim The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of endoscopic findings using flexible spectral imaging colour enhancement (FICE) for intestinal metaplasia (IM) in the gastric mucosa. Methods A consecutive cohort of 126 individuals aged over 50 years (27% men) was subjected to upper endoscopy using FICE. Histological assessment (per patient and per biopsy) was considered the gold standard to accuracy estimates. Results Histological assessment revealed IM in 50% of the individuals [OLGIM (operative link on gastric…