Comparative outcome of induced labor by intracervical Foley catheter with misoprostol versus misoprostol alone.

AIM: To evaluate the comparative outcome of induced labor by intracervical Foley catheter with misoprostol versus misoprostol alone. MATERIALS & METHODS: A total of 1306 women were enrolled over 4 years, induced with either intracervical Foley with misoprostol or misoprostol alone and compared in terms of induction-delivery interval, mode of delivery, the presence of uterine tachysystole, postpartum hemorrhage and perinatal outcome. RESULTS: Induction to delivery interval, the duration between induction to active labor was significantly reduced, deliveries within 24 h were significantly higher and the number of misoprostol doses used was significantly less in Foley with misoprostol group. CONCLUSION: The outcome of combination of intracervical Foley catheter and misoprostol is superior for labor induction, without affecting maternal or perinatal outcome.

MicroRNA: a new and promising potential biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis of ovarian cancer.

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the leading cause of death among all gynecological malignancies. Despite the technological and medical advances over the past four decades, such as the development of several biological markers (mRNA and proteins biomarkers), the mortality rate of ovarian cancer remains a challenge because of its late diagnosis, which is specifically attributed to low specificities and sensitivities. Under this compulsive scenario, recent advances in expression biology have shifted in identifying and developing specific and sensitive biomarkers, such as microRNAs (miRNAs) for cancer diagnosis and prognosis. MiRNAs are a novel class of small non-coding RNAs that deregulate gene expression at the posttranscriptional level, either by translational repression or by mRNA degradation. These mechanisms may be involved in a complex cascade of cellular events associated with the pathophysiology of many types of cancer. MiRNAs are easily detectable in tissue and blood samples of cancer patients. Therefore, miRNAs hold good promise as potential biomarkers in ovarian cancer. In this review, we attempted to provide a comprehensive profile of key miRNAs involved in ovarian carcinoma to establish miRNAs as more reliable non-invasive clinical biomarkers for early detection of ovarian cancer compared with protein and DNA biomarkers.