Aim: Disorders in the metabolism of homocysteine and B vitamins, which are involved in a one-carbon transfer reaction and important for DNA synthesis and methylation, have been hypothesized to be associated with carcinogenesis. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the levels of homocysteine, vitamin B12 and folic acid in patients with newly diagnosed lung cancer and determines whether they might be used as an accurate tumor marker for monitoring the patients if they are found to be elevated in lung cancer. Materials and Methods: Forty male patients with lung cancer were included in this study. Age-matched forty healthy males who had not malignant disease or had not received any drug affecting plasma homocysteine levels were selected as control group. Homocysteine, vitamin B12 and folate levels were measured in the samples obtained from the patients and controls. Results: Mean age of the patients with lung cancer was 58.7 ± 9.9 years. All the patients were cigarettes smokers. Mean daily consumption of cigarettes was 2.0±0.7 packs and mean duration of smoking was 30 ± 11 years. Histologic type of carcinoma was found to be squamous cell carcinoma in 55%, adenocarcinoma — in 35%, and small cell carcinoma — in 10% of the cases. Clinical stage was stage IA in 20%, stage IB — in 20%, stage IIA — in 2.5%, stage IIB — in 10%, stage IIIA — in 12.5%, stage IIIB — in 20%, and stage IV — in 15% of the cases. Mean homocysteine level was 15.3 ± 7.3 μmol/l in the patients with lung cancer while 9.8 ± 2.6 μmol/l in controls. Homocysteine level was significantly higher in the patients with lung cancer compared to control group (p < 0.001). Mean folate level was 4.3 ± 1.8 pg/ml in cancer cases while 6.1 ± 2.3 pg/ml in controls. That is to say, plasma folate levels were significantly lower in cases of lung cancer compared to controls (p < 0.001). There was no significantly difference between groups with regard to B12 levels (mean B12 level was 234 ± 99 and 240 ± 104 ng/ml in the patients with lung cancer and controls, respectively, p = 0.78). Plasma homocysteine, vitamin B12 and folate levels did not show significant difference with respect to histologic type of carcinoma. No significant correlation was found between plasma homocysteine, vitamin B12, folate levels and number of cigarettes smoked per day, duration of smoking, age of the patient, and clinical stage of carcinoma. There was also no correlation between number of cigarettes smoked per day, duration of smoking, age of the patient and clinical stage of carcinoma. A possible inverse correlation between plasma homocysteine, vitamin B12 and folate levels was not observed. Conclusion: In conclusion, high plasma homocysteine and low folate levels could be associated with lung cancer. However, further studies performed on large patient population are needed.

Pancreas cancer (PCa) is one of the mortal cancer types with ranking as fourth leading cancer death in both sexes together. FOLFIRINOX (FFX) and Gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel (GNP) are approved as first-line metastatic treatment in PCa. The aim of this study was to compare the clinical outcomes, treated with FFX and GNP as first-line metastatic PCa. Medical records of patients diagnosed with metastatic PCa, from January 2010 to December 2020 were analyzed. This study was a retrospective cohort, multi-institution analysis. The focus of the present study was to compare the efficiency of FFX and GNP chemotherapy combinations in the first-line treatment of PCa. Efficacy had been measured by progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). 182 patients diagnosed with PCa receiving metastatic first-line treatment were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were divided into two groups one hundred and three (56.6%) patients treated with FFX and seventy-nine (43.4%) patients treated with GNP. Patients in the FFX group were younger and had a better ECOG performance status. Overall response rate (ORR) was 69.9% in FFX and 37.9% in GNP group (p: 0.000). Disease control rate (DCR) was 73.7% in patients treated with FFX and 39.2% in GNP group (p: 0.000). The median PFS was 8.3 months (FFX 9.1 vs. GNP 6.7, HR = 0.25, 95% CI: 0.16-0.38) the median OS was 12.2 months (FFX 14.1 vs. GNP 9.6, HR = 0.48, 95% CI: 0.31-0.72). Guidelines recommend both FFX and GNP regimens as a first-line treatment of metastatic PCa. In clinical routine, it is still unclear which regiment is more effective. The present study showed increased survival parameters with FFX versus GNP with similar toxicity profiles.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most aggressive cancer. MicroRNAs (miRNAs), are small noncoding regulatory RNAs, that function post-transcriptionally. MiRNA deregulation was observed in the development and progression of HCC. In this study we aimed to investigate the expression levels of four miRNA (mir-33a, mir-203b, mir361-3p and mir-424) in HCC patients in comparison to healthy individuals. Venous blood samples were collected from both HCC patients and healthy individuals. In order to determine relative expression levels of mir-33a, mir-203b, mir361-3p and hsa-mir-424 in HCC patients using probe-based Quantitative Real Time PCR (qRT-PCR) is performed. The cycle threshold (Ct) results were analyzed according to the 2???Ct method and statistical analyses was performed by IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 15. qRT-PCR analysis revealed that the expression level of mir-33a (fold change: 7.3 and p<0,001), mir-203b (fold change: 4.6 and p<0,001), mir361-3p (fold change: 5.1 and p<0,001) were down regulated compared to healthy individuals and mir-424 did not show any significant change between the HCC patients and controls. Our results indicated that mir-33a, mir-203b and mir-361-3p, may significantly contribute to tumor pathogenesis in HCC and would have potential to be used as a non-invasive biomarker for cancer therapy.