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Background Lung carcinoma is a leading cause of death worldwide. Histological subtype of lung adenocarcinoma is an important indicator of patient's outcome as it is helpful in surgical planning and guidance of prognosis. Objective To determine the diagnostic efficacy of computerized tomography-guided core needle biopsy (CNB) in identifying the histopathological subtype of lung adenocarcinoma. Methods and materials This is a retrospective, descriptive study including clinical data of 73 patients irrespective of their age and gender, who underwent computerized tomography-guided CNB for lung masses at the Department of Pathology, Aznostics - the Diagnostic Centre, Lahore, Pakistan from January 01, 2019 to June 30, 2023. Data collected was analyzed via Google Form (Google Inc., Mountainview, CA) and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 24, released 2016; IBM Corp., Armonk, New York, United States) and was sent to statistician for descriptive analysis. Categorical data was used for calculating frequency and percentage, while continuous data was computed as mean and standard deviation. Results Seventy-three patients with adenocarcinoma underwent pulmonary biopsy. The mean age of included patients was 64.88 ± 11.39 year with a male predominance of 61.64%. Upper lobe was commonly affected by adenocarcinoma lung in 57.53% patients and 58.90% cases involved the right lung. The most common subtype was acinar with 51.65% followed by solid with 17.58% cases. Computerized tomography-guided CNB showed a diagnostic yield of 75.34% and identified histological subtypes of lung adenocarcinoma in 55 cases. Conclusion Computerized tomography-guided CNB is a useful, yet minimally invasive diagnostic tool to identify the histological subtype of lung adenocarcinoma. It not only helps in planning the surgical and adjuvant management of the patients, but also guides the patient-prognosis.
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Broad dermal Wnt signaling is required for patterned induction of hair follicle placodes and subsequent Wnt signaling in placode stem cells is essential for induction of dermal condensates, cell clusters of precursors for the hair follicle dermal papilla (DP). Progression of hair follicle formation then requires coordinated signal exchange between dermal condensates and placode stem cells. However, it remains unknown whether continued Wnt signaling in DP precursor cells plays a role in this process, largely due to the long-standing inability to specifically target dermal condensates for gene ablation. Here we use the Tbx18(Cre) knockin mouse line to ablate the Wnt-responsive transcription factor ß-catenin specifically in these cells at E14.5 during the first wave of guard hair follicle formation. In the absence of ß-catenin, canonical Wnt signaling is effectively abolished in these cells. Sox2(+) dermal condensates initiate normally; however by E16.5 guard hair follicle numbers are strongly reduced and by E18.5 most whiskers and guard hair follicles are absent, suggesting that active Wnt signaling in dermal condensates is important for hair follicle formation to proceed after induction. To explore the molecular mechanisms by which Wnt signaling in dermal condensates regulates hair follicle formation, we analyze genome-wide the gene expression changes in embryonic ß-catenin null DP precursor cells. We find altered expression of several signaling pathway genes, including Fgfs and Activin, both previously implicated in hair follicle formation. In summary, these data reveal a functional role of Wnt signaling in DP precursors for embryonic hair follicle formation and identify Fgf and Activin signaling as potential effectors of Wnt signaling-regulated events.
