Invited commentary

Our plain-English summary of Invited commentary, by J.S. Donington (The Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 2013).

The study

• Author: J.S. Donington
• Journal: The Annals of Thoracic Surgery
• Published: 2013;95(4):1188
• Type of article: Comment
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is a one-page invited commentary, not a new study. The author commented on a study by Kobayashi and colleagues, published in the same journal, about a protein called Snail in malignant pleural mesothelioma. The author described this as a rare, asbestos-induced cancer with a dismal prognosis. The author explained epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a process in which cells take on more mobile and invasive features, and suggested it may help explain these tumors' aggressiveness. According to the commentary, Kobayashi and colleagues found that nonepithelial mesothelioma tumors had higher Snail expression, lower e-cadherin expression and poor survival. They also found that Snail expression correlated with asbestos exposure and with tumor histology, and that stage was an independent predictor of survival. The commentary gave no numbers. The author noted that other investigators had reported similar patterns, with some inconsistencies the author attributed to small samples and varied study groups. The author concluded that the overall theme was consistent. The author asked whether EMT markers in biopsies could guide treatment, and whether EMT could be a treatment target in mesothelioma.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: invited commentary on another published study (Kobayashi et al., Ann Thorac Surg 2013;95:1181–8); no original data
• Who was studied: No population was studied by this author. The commentary discusses the malignant pleural mesothelioma study by Kobayashi and colleagues, and mentions other series by other investigators. No case numbers are given.
• Exposure: Asbestos, described as the cause of malignant pleural mesothelioma. The author states that elevations in TGF are associated with asbestos exposure. No fiber types, products, jobs or doses are named.
• Main results:
  • As reported by the author, Kobayashi and colleagues noted that nonepithelial malignant pleural mesothelioma tumors had higher Snail expression, an associated decrease in e-cadherin expression, and poor survival. No figures are given in the commentary.
  • As reported by the author, in the Kobayashi study Snail expression correlated with exposure to asbestos and with histology.
  • As reported by the author, in the Kobayashi study stage was an independent predictor of survival in multivariate analysis.
  • The author noted that other investigators found similar patterns in biphasic and sarcomatoid mesotheliomas. The author also noted some inconsistency across these series about which markers are elevated and prognostic, which the author attributed to small sample sizes and diverse study cohorts.
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the theme across studies is consistent: nonepithelial mesothelioma tumors have higher expression of mesenchymal markers, lower expression of epithelial markers, and a worse prognosis. The author raised two questions: whether EMT markers in biopsy specimens could guide treatment decisions, and whether mesothelioma is an ideal setting to target the EMT process.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma.

Related studies

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• Invited commentary — R.M. Flores (2014)
• Invited commentary — B.C. Tong (2014)
• Invited commentary — H.I. Pass (2012)
• Invited commentary — S.C. Murthy (2014)
• Invited commentary — C.P. Clarke (2011)

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