Department of Medical Research, MacKay Memorial Hospital, Taipei 10449, Taiwan.
Institute of Oral Biology, School of Dentistry, National Yang-Ming University, Department of Stomatology, Medical Education and Research, Veterans General Hospital, Taipei 11217, Taiwan.
Int J Mol Sci. 2018 Oct 24;19(11):3303. doi: 10.3390/ijms19113303.
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a disease that affects patients worldwide. DNA of dead cells is released into the blood stream and may be isolated from plasma or serum samples. This DNA is termed cell-free DNA (cfDNA). cfDNA is increased in several types of malignancies. We investigated if there was a correlation between cfDNA levels and the progression of OSCC.
Using quantitative spectrometry, we measured plasma cfDNA in 121 patients with OSCC and 50 matched controls. Mann Whitney and Wilcoxon tests were used to compare differences among various clinical variants. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to obtain levels suitable for the separation of the clinical subsets. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to assess correlation with survival.
Plasma cfDNA was significantly elevated in patients with OSCC relative to controls. Plasma cfDNA levels correlated with larger tumor size, cervical lymph node metastasis and late stage. Higher plasma cfDNA levels were associated with a poor prognosis of OSCC, which is a new finding.
Plasma cfDNA could serve as a novel and easily accessible biomarker in OSCC, providing diagnostic and prognostic value.
口腔鳞状细胞癌（OSCC）是一种影响全球患者的疾病。死亡细胞的 DNA 会释放到血液中，并可从血浆或血清样本中分离出来。这种 DNA 被称为游离 DNA（cfDNA）。cfDNA 在几种恶性肿瘤中增加。我们研究了 cfDNA 水平与 OSCC 进展之间是否存在相关性。
使用定量光谱法，我们测量了 121 例 OSCC 患者和 50 例匹配对照者的血浆 cfDNA。Mann Whitney 和 Wilcoxon 检验用于比较各种临床变量之间的差异。接收者操作特征（ROC）分析用于获得适合分离临床亚组的水平。Kaplan-Meier 分析用于评估与生存的相关性。
与对照组相比，OSCC 患者的血浆 cfDNA 明显升高。血浆 cfDNA 水平与更大的肿瘤大小、颈部淋巴结转移和晚期相关。较高的血浆 cfDNA 水平与 OSCC 的不良预后相关，这是一个新发现。
血浆 cfDNA 可作为 OSCC 的一种新型且易于获取的生物标志物，提供诊断和预后价值。
