Considering this heterogeneity, it may be possible that the patients undergoing disease progression could be clinically distinguishable from those in a stable condition.
FBXW7 gene lesion was identified in various T-ALL cell lines and in significant number (20%) of T-ALL patients, most of those undergoing disease relapse and resistance to treatment [ 1, 28].
Five polymorphisms were selected based on the frequency of mutant alleles (>10%) in the reference African Yoruba population following previous studies that have demonstrated that genes with mutant alleles having high frequencies are likely to be undergoing disease selective pressure [ 28, 29].
Rather than merely end-of-life care, palliative care is aimed at patients and their families at any age and at any stage of a serious illness, including those who are actively undergoing disease-targeted therapies [ 32].
Medication consumption was taken into account by asking whether medical treatment in relation with categories found in French national reports was undergone: disease of bones and joints, cardiovascular disease, respiratory and ear noise and throat disease, digestive disease, and mental illness [29 35].
In this context, it is of important interest to identify markers that are able to recognize patients prone to undergo disease progression, thereby helping to optimize therapy decisions for the individual patient.
The criterion of ΔAUC >0 has sensitivity 42%, specificity 96%, positive predictive value 87% and negative predictive value 71% in predicting the patients who will undergo disease progression.
At present, there are no observable microscopic features of metaplasia that can determine if BE is likely to undergo disease progression to cancer or remain stable.
Currently there are no measures to indicate why patients with similar clinically appearing disease have different responses to therapy, with some remaining disease free while others undergo disease relapse and ultimately succumb.
In patients who undergo disease progression on fulvestrant, the novel mode of action of this new endocrine therapy ensures a lack of crossresistance to other current endocrine agents (Howell, 2002; Vergote et al, 2003).
If it is known in advance that verification bias will be an issue, then a possible solution would be to design the study such that a random sample of test-negative subjects to undergo disease verification.
