Durre Aden

and 2 more

Background: Urinalysis is one of the most commonly performed screening tests in the Clinical laboratory to diagnose and monitor various urological and systemic conditions. Newly developed automated urine analyzers are expected to routinely screen urine to reduce TAT and provide clinicians with prompt clinical information with a lower false-negative rate. The study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic performance of the two Automated Urine analyzers and compare them with microscopy. Method: There were 124 randomly selected samples of patients coming to the clinical pathology laboratory were taken for each Automated analyzer and microscopic evaluation. The results of various cells, formed elements and microorganisms were compared between both the automated urine analyzers and microscopy and the degree of concordance was calculated for each parameter. Results: The degree of concordance of RBC, WBC and epithelial cells was good between the two automated analyzers; URiSCAN Super+ YD Diagnostics and Sysmex UC-3500 -UF 5000 Urine Analyzer and microscopy with p <0.001. The concordance between the Sysmex UC-3500 - UF 5000 Urine Analyzer and manual microscopy was better than between manual microscopy and Uriscan Super + YD Diagnostics. There was no concordance between all these methods for either crystals, cast, bacteria and fungi with p >0.05 Conclusion: The results from the automated analyzers for RBCs, WBCs and epithelial cells were similar to the result of manual microscopy and the analyzers can be relied upon. However, bacteria, fungi, dysmorphic red cells, casts and crystals need to be analyzed by microscopic examination before giving a final diagnosis.

sufian zaheer

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The past few decades have witnessed a major leap in knowledge relating to the role of tumor microenvironment in carcinogenesis and evolving behaviour of the tumor. Multiple factors within the tumor microenvironment modulate the cancer cells and the associated therapies. Stephen Paget first asserted that the microenvironment plays an important role in the growth of tumor metastasis. The most important player in the tumor microenvironment is cancer-associated fibroblast which significantly participates in the proliferation, invasion and metastasis of tumor cells. Cancer-associated fibroblasts show phenotypic and functional heterogeneity. Mostly cancer-associated fibroblasts originate from quiescent resident fibroblast or mesoderm-derived precursor cells (mesenchymal stem cells), although several alternate sources of origin have been noted, however, due to a lack of specific fibroblast-restricted markers, it is very difficult to trace lineage and identify the biological origin of distinct sub-types of CAFs. CAFs are predominantly shown by several studies to mainly act as tumor-promoting agents, however, tumour-inhibiting actions are also being validated by several studies. A more objectified and comprehensive functional and phenotypic classification of CAF is required, which will help in better way for tumor management. Here, in this review, we have tried to review the current status of CAF origin, along with phenotypic and functional heterogeneity, and recent progress in cancer-associated fibroblast (CAF) research.