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Measurement of serum laminin and type-IV collagen levels Serum samples were drawn from patients and healthy controls selleck kinase inhibitor by venipuncture and clotted at room temperature on first admission prior to treatment. The sera were collected after centrifugation and immediately frozen at ?20��C until analysis. Laminin ELISA (USCN Life Science Inc., Wuhan, China) and Collagen Type IV ELISA (USCN Life Science Inc.), double-antibody sandwich ELISA, were used for determination of the serum levels of laminin and type-IV collagen. Statistical analysis Values are expressed as median values and their ranges, standard deviation or standard error as indicated. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare clinical and laboratory parameters to serum levels of laminin and type-IV collagen. The Kaplan-Meier test was used to estimate the survival and the differences in outcome Itraconazole were evaluated using the log-rank test. P��0.05 was considered to indicate a significant difference between values. SPSS 16.0 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for all statistical analyses. Results Patient characteristics A total of 60 cutaneous melanoma patients were enrolled in this study. Of these, 13 were classified as stage I�CII, 14 as stage III and 31 as stage IV, while the stage remained elusive for 2 patients (Table I). The median age of the patients was 53.5 years (range, 16�C88 years). Patient characteristics and pathological features are listed in Table I. Table I. Patient characteristics and pathology. Comparison of serum laminin and type-IV collagen between melanoma patients and healthy controls There was no statistically significant difference in the baseline serum levels of laminin between cutaneous melanoma patients and healthy controls (P=0.45) (Table II). However, the baseline Verteporfin molecular weight serum levels of type-IV collagen of the melanoma patients were significantly elevated compared with those in the control group (P0.05) (Table III). Table II. Serum concentrations of laminin and type-IV collagen in melanoma patients and healthy controls determined by ELISA. Table III. Association of laminin and type-IV collagen levels with patient characteristics. Survival analysis The median survival time of the patients was 26.0 months [95% confidence interval (CI): 21�C30]. The one- and three-year overall survival rates were 76.3% (95% CI: 64�C88) and 51.0% (95% CI: 33�C69), respectively. Survival was significantly decreased for patients with distant metastasis (M1) (P