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Biomedical subjects

A Chidambaram

Publications and source records attributed to A Chidambaram.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

Cytogenetic abnormalities in an ossifying fibroma from a patient with bilateral retinoblastoma.

Cytogenetic analysis of a cemento-ossifying fibroma from a patient with nonfamilial bilateral multicentric retinoblastoma revealed three reciprocal translocations with the karyotype 46,XY,t(1;18)(q21;q21.3),t(3;10)(p13;q22),t(6;11)(p22;p15). Routine and high-resolution cytogenetic analysis of peripheral blood leukocytes showed an apparently normal, 46,XY chromosome pattern with no deletion of chromosome 13. Molecular analysis demonstrated no gross differences in the retinoblastoma gene or the TP53 gene between constitutional and tumor DNA. This is the first cytogenetic analysis of a cemento-ossifying fibroma and the first report of this tumor in a retinoblastoma patient. The data may be added to the small, but growing literature on cytogenetic aberrations in benign tumors and may lend insight into genes involved in cell proliferation and neoplastic transformation.

Adolescent

A germ line mutation in exon 5 of the p53 gene in an extended cancer family.

Germ line p53 point mutations have been reported for some families with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, a syndrome characterized by a dominantly inherited increased susceptibility for the development of early age of onset neoplasms of diverse origin in multiple family members. All of the initially reported p53 germ line mutations have been found exclusively within a single conserved, nonpolymorphic region of the gene between condons 245 and 258. The restricted distribution of these inherited mutations has led to speculation that germ line p53 mutations have unique properties [B. Vogelstein, Nature (Lond.), 348: 681-682, 1990]. We report here on the identification of a p53 germ line mutation at codon 133 (ATG----ACG) in nine members of an extended Li-Fraumeni syndrome family. This mutation leads to an amino acid substitution in the protein and is shown to completely cosegregate with Li-Fraumeni syndrome associated cancer in this family. Its location extends the region of the p53 gene where inherited mutations predisposing to cancer are observed and suggests that their distribution may be diverse.

Adult

A genetic linkage study of familial breast-ovarian cancer.

Linkage analysis was conducted in 17 families identified by the familial occurrence of breast and ovarian cancer using a series of 17 serologic and biochemical markers. Lod scores suggestive of linkage of breast/ovarian cancer susceptibility to the RH blood group locus on chromosome 1p were obtained. When the presence of fibrocystic disease of the breast in a first-degree relative of an affected family member was added as an indicator of susceptibility, the evidence for linkage increased. No evidence of linkage to GPT or ABO, both previously suggested to be linked to breast cancer susceptibility, was seen in this study.

Age Factors

Estimating the age-at-onset function using life-table methods.

In the analysis of dominantly inherited diseases, the age-at-onset function is often estimated from the observed age-at-onset distribution of cases. This estimate is confounded with the age distribution of the population from which the cases were sampled and is accurate only if there are no competing causes of death. In this paper, we present a straightforward method for calculating a more accurate age-at-onset function under etiologic heterogeneity. We use the life-table approach and survival analysis methods. This method is illustrated using data on first-degree relatives of probands from two sets of families with high cancer incidence: one with breast/ovarian cancer and the other with colon cancer. A comparison of the estimated age-at-onset function obtained by the two methods is presented. In both cases, colon cancer as well as breast/ovarian cancer, the estimates of onset probabilities based on proportion of cases, are consistently higher than those obtained by the life-table method. For breast/ovarian cancer, this difference is not as striking as it is in the case of colon cancer; nevertheless, the method using proportion of cases tends to give a lower estimate of the age-at-onset function (higher probability of being affected at lower age) than the life-table approach.

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