The purpose of this study was to analyse the diagnostic value of cerebral CT angiography (CTA) and CT perfusion (CTP) examinations in the detection of acute stroke based on a systematic review of the current literature. The review was conducted based on searching of seven databases for articles published between 1993 and 2013. Diagnostic value in terms of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) and accuracy was analysed from 21 articles which were found to meet selection criteria. The mean sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and accuracy for CTA were significantly higher than those for CTP with 83.2% (95% CI: 57.9-100.0%), 95.0% (95% CI: 74.4-100%), 84.1% (95% CI: 50.0-100%), 97.1 (95% CI: 94.0-100%) and 94.0% (95% CI: 83.0-99.0) versus 69.9% (95% CI: 20.0-97.0%), 87.4 (95% CI: 61.0-100.0%), 76.4% (95% CI: 48.0-95.4%), 78.2% (95% CI: 55.8-93.9%) and 89.8% (95% CI: 75.7-97.1%), respectively. This analysis shows that CTA has high diagnostic value in detecting high degree of cerebral arterial stenosis (>70%) whereas CTP provides high specificity in the detection of ischemia and infarct tissue of brain.
The aim of the present study was to determine the genetic aberrations and novel transcripts, particularly the fusion transcripts, involved in the pathogenesis of low-grade and anaplastic oligodendroglioma. In the present study, tissue samples were obtained from patients with oligodendroglioma and additionally from archived tissue samples from the Brain Tumor Tissue Bank of the Brain Tumor Foundation of Canada. Six samples were obtained, three of which were low-grade oligodendroglioma and the other three anaplastic oligodendroglioma. DNA and RNA were extracted from each tissue sample. The resulting genomic DNA was then hybridized using the Agilent CytoSure 4×180K oligonucleotide array. Human reference DNA and samples were labeled using Cy3 cytidine 5'-triphosphate (CTP) and Cy5 CTP, respectively, while human Cot-1 DNA was used to reduce non-specific binding. Microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization data was then analyzed for genetic aberrations using the Agilent Cytosure Interpret software v3.4.2. The total RNA isolated from each sample was mixed with oligo dT magnetic beads to enrich for poly(A) mRNA. cDNAs were then synthesized and subjected to end-repair, poly(A) addition and connected using sequencing adapters using the Illumina TruSeq RNA Sample Preparation kit. The fragments were then purified and selected as templates for polymerase chain reaction amplification. The final library was constructed with fragments between 350-450 base pairs and sequenced using deep transcriptome sequencing on an Illumina HiSeq 2500 sequencer. The array comparative genomic hybridization revealed numerous amplifications and deletions on several chromosomes in all samples. However, the most interesting result was from the next generation sequencing, where one anaplastic oligodendroglioma sample was demonstrated to have five novel fusion genes that may potentially serve a critical role in tumor pathogenesis and progression.