Inhibition of Legionella pneumophila PCR in respiratory samples: a quantitative approach.

Impurities in complex biological samples that persist through nucleic acid preparation can inhibit PCR or reduce the sensitivity and efficiency of PCR amplification and thus affect reliable results in PCR diagnostics. To obtain information on the incidence of inhibition events and on the magnitude of the loss of sensitivity, respectively, we devised a relative inhibition assay and examined 100 samples from patients with respiratory tract infections. As a reference, samples were spiked with Legionella (L.) pneumophila. Detection was by standard nucleic acid purification and subsequent real-time PCR. By comparing the crossing points of the fluorescent curves to those of an L. pneumophila standard dilution series, we were able to quantify the respective degrees of inhibition into several categories. We found complete inhibition in 2% of the samples. 12% were not reliably detected. 65% of the tested samples showed moderate to strong inhibition, but were still reliably detected, whereas in 21% of the samples no inhibition was observed. Except for a significantly higher inhibition in tracheal aspirates than in BAL samples, the degree of inhibition did not correlate with the physical properties of the respective sample. The relative inhibition assay established an unexpectedly broad distribution of the inhibition-degrees in inflammatory respiratory materials.

Drug resistance towards etoposide and cisplatin in human melanoma cells is associated with drug-dependent apoptosis deficiency.

Anticancer drugs kill susceptible cells through induction of apoptosis. Alterations of apoptotic pathways in drug-resistant tumor cells leading to apoptosis deficiency might represent a potent mechanism conferring drug resistance. We have assessed the effect of etoposide and cisplatin on the apoptotic pathways of the drug-sensitive human melanoma cell line MeWo as well as its etoposide- and cisplatin-resistant sublines (MeWo(Eto01), MeWo(Eto1), (and) MeWoCis01, MeWo(Cis1)). Etoposide and cisplatin induced apoptosis in drug-sensitive MeWo cells as indicated by dose-dependent (i) cytochrome c release, (ii) caspase activation, (iii) DNA fragmentation, and (iv) cleavage of poly(ADP-ribose)polymerase. In contrast, whereas low etoposide-resistant cells (MeWo(Eto01)) demonstrated reduced but detectable apoptotic activities, highly etoposide-resistant cells (MeWo(Eto1)) did not exhibit any of the apoptotic events observed in etoposide-induced cell death downstream of a strongly reduced cytochrome c release. Highly cisplatin-resistant cells (MeWo(Cis1)), however, demonstrated a reduced caspase 9 activity and cytochrome c release but the extent of effector caspase activation as well as DNA fragmentation was comparable to that of sensitive MeWo cells at equitoxic concentrations. In addition, poly(ADP-ribose)polymerase cleavage was strongly reduced in highly cisplatin-resistant sublines. Taken together, sensitive and drug-resistant MeWo cells utilized different apoptotic pathways upon drug exposure in a drug-dependent fashion and apoptosis deficiency was strongly associated with the drug-resistant phenotype.