Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to D K Kalousek.
We identified three patients with an acquired Robertsonian translocation among 1,200 patients with hematopoietic malignancy. In each case the translocation served to produce partial chromosomal trisomy or tetrasomy within the malignant clone. Acquired Robertsonian translocation represents another, although rare, mechanism of clonal evolution in malignant cells.
The authors have compared an automated method for DNA extraction with an established manual method using routine clinical specimens. The purity, yield, and quality of the extracted DNA was assessed by ultraviolet absorbency measurements, gel electrophoresis, and DNA probe hybridization. The automated DNA extractor can provide high molecular weight DNA equivalent in purity, yield, and quality to that obtained by the manual method with substantial savings in technologist time and overall costs associated with the procedure.
Confined placental chromosomal mosaicism can be detected in 1-2% of pregnancies studied by chorionic villus sampling at 9-12 weeks of gestation. It is more commonly found in the cytotrophoblast than in placental connective tissue. Aneuploid conceptions are more likely to have confined chromosomal mosaicism than euploid ones. Although intrauterine survival of chromosomally abnormal embryos and fetuses appears to be significantly enhanced by placental mosaicism, the effect of placental mosaicism on chromosomally normal fetuses is variable and, at the present time, still unpredictable.
Fourteen children with a primary myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) were seen at this center over a 10-year period. Six of the patients, including two pairs of siblings, had a monosomy 7 population in their bone marrow. Seven patients had the clinical and laboratory features of "juvenile chronic myeloid leukemia." Three patients could be considered to have either the monosomy 7 syndrome or "juvenile chronic myeloid leukemia," indicating that these two entities are not mutually exclusive. All patients fulfilled the French-American-British (FAB) criteria for a myelodysplastic syndrome. Clonal chromosomal abnormalities were detected in 13 of the 14 patients, and consistently involved either monosomy 7, multiple abnormalities, and/or multiple clones. Hematopoietic progenitor assays of blood and marrow samples obtained from most patients showed abnormal progenitor frequencies, or differentiation patterns in culture (or both), often affecting the erythroid as well as the granulopoietic lineages. In particular, granulopoietic progenitors from four to six patients in the "juvenile chronic myeloid leukemia" category generated predominantly abnormal appearing macrophage colonies. Clinical outcomes were poor with rapid transformation to acute myeloid leukemia in most patients. All treated patients responded poorly to conventional chemotherapy, although in two cases remission was achieved with intensive therapy and allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. Childhood myelodysplasia includes a group of diseases that are clinically heterogeneous, and current terminology is confused and inconsistent. Until a better understanding of the biologic and molecular basis of these diseases is obtained, it is proposed that the use of the FAB categories developed for adult MDS might help to improve diagnostic precision and therapeutic comparisons.
We report a lethal case of congenital erythroleukemia presenting on the first day of life with peripheral blast cells and a leukemic infiltrate in the placenta. Although initial bone marrow examination did not fulfill the French-American-British (FAB) cooperative group criteria for acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), including M6, a malignant clone was confirmed by cytogenetic analysis: 49,XX, +8, +19, +21. Evolution to erythroleukemia (M6) occurred over a two-month period. The diagnosis of erythroleukemia was supported by immunophenotyping employing an antibody to glycophorin A. The clinical course was complicated by liver failure of unknown etiology. Comparison to previously reported cases of early childhood erythroleukemia is made.
A newborn male infant was found to have an unusual pattern of congenital anomalies associated with an apparently balanced de novo reciprocal translocation: 46,XY,t(1;2)(p22;q22). The infant had a previously apparently undescribed multiple congenital anomalies and mental retardation syndrome.
Although variations in the incidence and types of central nervous system abnormalities have been demonstrated between early and late pregnancy, the reason for this finding has not yet been determined. Among 569 spontaneously aborted embryos, we describe 38 central nervous system lesions, many of which are different from those observed at birth. The importance of correlating morphology and cytogenetic studies in the understanding of pathogenesis of embryonic neural tube defects is emphasized.
Prenatal diagnosis of mosaicism causes problems in interpretation and in genetic counselling. Part of the difficulty with any prenatal diagnosis of mosaicism is interpretation of results without knowing the exact origin, embryonic or extraembryonic, of the abnormal cell line. To confuse the issue in cases of prenatal diagnosis of 45,X/46,XY mosaicism is the recent demonstration that a diagnosis of 45,X/46,XY made prenatally is not necessarily associated with the same phenotype as when diagnosed postnatally. We present two cases of prenatal diagnosis of sex chromosome mosaicism (45,X/46,XY and 45,X/47,XYY). Posttermination examination of the phenotypically normal male fetuses and their placentas established that the placenta was the most likely source of the 45,X cell line. An approach to confirming the prenatal diagnosis of sex chromosome mosaicism and establishing its origin utilizing detailed cytogenetic examination of both fetus and placenta is suggested.
We studied the structure and number of lymph vessels in 12 spontaneously aborted previable fetuses with posterior cervical cystic hygroma and generalized edema of variable origin (monosomy X, trisomy 21, trisomy 13, suspected Noonan syndrome, and lethal multiple pterygium syndrome) and compared them to 5 therapeutically aborted, apparently normal fetuses. We found that in the non-45,X fetuses with cystic hygroma and edema the lymphatic vessels at all studied sites were dilated and appeared increased in number. The 45,X fetuses had no recognizable lymphatic vessels in the edematous cutaneous tissue of the limbs, and only occasional dilated vessels in the wall of the nuchal cystic hygroma and in the lungs. These findings may be useful in differentiating between monosomy X and other conditions causing nuchal cystic hygroma in specimens in which the fetus was incomplete and/or cytogenetic study could not be done.
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The cell lines C-4I and C-4II were established in culture from a nonkeratinizing squamous carcinoma of the uterine cervix. Both lines contain human papillomavirus (HPV) type 18 DNA (Brandt et al., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, 5:179, 1987) and both are hypodiploid with similar, but not identical, karyotypes. Each line expresses multiple characteristics of ectocervical epithelial differentiation, but the characteristics differ between the lines. In the present study, G banding of the lines showed that cells of both lines have two normal chromosomes 1-5, 8-10, 13, 16, and 17, one normal chromosome 12 and 14, and no normal chromosomes 15 and 18. The lines share three abnormal chromosomes, der(8)t(8q;12q), der(18)t(18q;?), and i(5p). There are specific differences between the lines. C-4I has two normal chromosomes 6, while C-4II has one; C-4II has two chromosomes 11 and der(18)t(18q;?), while C-4I lacks both chromosomes 11 and has one der(18)t(18q;?). Each line has unique markers that include del(11)(p11), del(22)(q12), and del(21)(q21) in C-4I and i(15q), der(X)t(Xq;9p), der(6)t(6p;14q), and del(4)(q21) in C-4II. The results show that these phenotypically distinct lines are derived from the same clone and that the 8q arm (the site of HPV 18 integration) is present in three copies in both lines. They also define several chromosome rearrangements that are compatible with the expression of specific differentiation markers.
To assess the contribution of chromosome anomalies to the high failure of in vitro fertilization (IVF), 94 unfertilized eggs from 43 women participating in the IVF program were cytogenetically investigated. The mean age of the oocyte donors was 33.6 years. Chromosome karyotypes were obtained in 65 of 94 oocytes: 34 oocytes (52.3%) had a normal haploid chromosome complement; 10 (15.4%) were hypohaploid; 7 (10.8%) were hyperhaploid; 8 were diploid; and 6 were hypodiploid or hyperdiploid (from 36 to 53). Eleven eggs showed prematurely condensed chromosomes of the G1-phase from sperm, as well as a set of maternal metaphase II chromosomes. These results are compared to similar reports in the literature.
Confined placental mosaicism is tissue specific chromosomal mosaicism arising in both chromosomally normal and abnormal zygotes. Studied by first trimester chorionic villus sampling it has been reported in about 1-2% of human gestations. It is more common in the cytotrophoblast than in placental connective tissue. While intrauterine survival of some chromosomally abnormal embryos and fetuses appears to be significantly enhanced by its presence, the effect of confined placental mosaicism on chromosomally normal fetuses is variable and at present time still unpredictable.
We have previously shown that Philadelphia chromosome (Ph1)-positive cells rapidly disappear when marrow from patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) is cultured under conditions that maintain normal haematopoiesis for many weeks. The ability of marrow maintained in culture for 10 days to serve as an autograft has now been tested in three patients treated with intensive chemoradiotherapy. Two weeks after transplantation, marrow samples from all patients showed trilineage haematopoiesis. Neutrophil counts greater than 1.0 x 10(9)/l were achieved in all patients within 4 weeks, and platelet counts greater than 20 x 10(9)/l were achieved in two patients within 5 weeks. During this period of haematopoietic recovery, marrow cells were exclusively Ph1-negative in two patients and predominantly so in the third. These results suggest that engraftment can occur from Ph1-negative haematopoietic stem cells selected by maintenance of autologous CML marrow in culture for 10 days. Thus, the feasibility of using this approach to allow intensive and potentially curative therapy for CML has been established.
Cytogenetic analysis of 14 placentas from live newborn infants or from terminated pregnancies with trisomies 13 and 18 revealed that all were mosaic. The mosaicism was confined to the cytotrophoblast and not detected in villous stroma, chorionic plate, or amnion. The percentage of cells with a normal karyotype varied from 12% to 100%, the average being 70%. No such confined mosaicism could be detected in 12 placentas of trisomy 21 fetuses. These findings suggest that a postzygotic loss of a trisomic chromosome in a progenitor cell of trophectoderm facilitates the intrauterine survival of trisomy-13 and -18 conceptuses. They also imply that it is placental function which determines the intrauterine survival and that the mother plays no active role in rejection of trisomic conceptions. The combination of both a pre- and post-zygotic cell division defect in viable trisomy-13 and -18 conceptions points to the possibility of a genetic predisposition to such events. The detection of only a diploid cell line in the cytotrophoblast of some pregnancies with trisomies 13 and 18 also suggests that direct preparation is unreliable for prenatal diagnosis of these trisomies on chorionic villi sampling and that long-term villous culture should be used.
We have identified an unusual pediatric patient among twelve patients with myelodysplasia and an unbalanced translocation involving chromosomes 1 and 7: -7, +der(1)t(1;7)(p11;p11). This 16-year-old male patient developed myelodysplasia and evolving acute leukemia, which were preceded by a 7-year history of marrow hypoplasia. The remaining patients were adults with clinical and hematologic findings similar to other reported cases with this chromosomal abnormality. The late appearance of this unbalanced clonal abnormality in this patient with marrow hypoplasia documents the importance of close cytogenetic follow-up of all patients with suspected bone marrow injury.
We reviewed the morphologic findings of 948 previable fetuses and identified the fetal akinesia deformation sequence (FADS) in 16 cases. In eight fetuses who had joint contractures, micrognathia, and pulmonary hypoplasia, the cause of fetal akinesia could be attributed to an abnormal intrauterine environment restricting fetal movement. The other eight fetuses had pterygia across the immobilized joints, in addition to main manifestations of FADS. Since most of the fetuses with pterygia were of only 8-9 weeks developmental age, we suggest that embryonic onset of immobility interferes with limb development and results in joint fixation and pterygium formation, in contrast to fetal-onset immobility, which causes joint contractures alone.
Amnion rupture sequence is considered an uncommon, sporadic condition among liveborn infants. We have examined 1,010 previable fetuses (9-20 weeks developmental age) to determine the incidence and nature of amnion rupture sequence at this stage of development. We found 18 affected fetuses (15 spontaneous and 3 induced abortions) with the incidence of 1:56. Eleven fetuses had limb constrictions and amputations only; 7 fetuses also had nonlimb involvement, including disruptions of the craniofacial region mimicking encephalocele, unusual facial clefts, and abdominal defects. In 6 pregnancies, constrictions of the umbilical cord by amniotic bands were the cause of fetal intrauterine death.