N-myc oncogene and urinary catecholamines in children with neuroblastoma

✍ Scribed by Barontini, Marta ;Gutiérrez, Marina I. ;Levin, Gloria ;Mur, Nora ;Diez, Blanca

• Book ID: 102522693
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 475 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0098-1532
• DOI: 10.1002/mpo.2950210708

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

This paper reports the analysis of N‐myc amplification, urinary vanillylmandelic acid (VMA), and norepinephrine (NE) excretion and survival in 22 children with neuroblastoma and 7 with ganglio‐neuroblastoma. Five patients had N‐myc amplification (from 30 to more than 200 copies), all of whom had advanced‐stage disease. The urinary excretion of VMA was normal in all of them, only one showed increased NE excretion. All patients with stage C‐D disease and one copy of N‐myc had increased VMA urinary excretion and increased (9/14) or normal (5/14) NE urinary excretion. All patients with stage A or B disease had one copy of N‐myc. Half of them showed increased VMA urinary levels, while only 3/10 showed increased NE urinary values.

Comparison of cumulative survival curves in relation to N‐myc amplification and to VMA and NE urinary excretion showed a clear parallelism. Amplification of N‐myc corresponded to normal VMA and NE urinary excretion, and was associated with the worst prognosis (P < 0.01), while increased VMA and/or NE excretion was found in patients with only one copy of N‐myc. © 1993 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.