Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Zhujiang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510280, China.
Department of Otolaryngology, Jiangmen Central Hospital, Affiliated Jiangmen Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Jiangmen 529030, China.
Dis Markers. 2020 May 5;2020:7253531. doi: 10.1155/2020/7253531. eCollection 2020.
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is highly prevalent in Southeast Asia, and an unfavorable outcome is usually attributed to advanced stage NPC. Current methods for the early diagnosis of NPC have limitations in clinical practice. The aim of this study was to investigate the diagnostic ability of methylation for NPC. A quantitative methylation-sensitive PCR (qMS-PCR) assay was developed to measure the methylation status and levels of in nasopharyngeal tissues and paired swabs from patients with NPC, chronic nasopharyngitis, and healthy donors. Methylated was detected in 92% (23/25) of NPC tissues and 25% (4/16) of nasopharyngitis controls ( < 0.05). High-frequency hypermethylation with decreased mRNA expression of in NPC was also identified. Further, methylation was identified in 90.5% (19/21) of NPC biopsies and 71.4% (15/21) of paired swabs, indicating a good concordance between the two sample types. In addition, methylated was found in 16 (72.7%) nasal swabs from 22 NPC patients, 2 of 19 (10.5%) nasopharyngitis, but not in any of the healthy controls ( < 0.01). The methylation score in nasal swabs of the NPC group was also significantly higher than that of non-NPC controls ( < 0.001). Moreover, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.882 of methylation tests to discriminate NPC from non-NPC subjects. Our study demonstrated that frequent methylation of was present in NPC. Its detection in nasopharyngeal swabs may provide a minimally invasive and informative method for identifying early NPC cases.
鼻咽癌（NPC）在东南亚地区高发，不良预后通常归因于 NPC 晚期。目前 NPC 的早期诊断方法在临床实践中存在局限性。本研究旨在探讨 甲基化对 NPC 的诊断能力。开发了一种定量甲基化敏感 PCR（qMS-PCR）检测方法，用于测量 NPC 患者、慢性鼻咽炎患者和健康供体的鼻咽组织和配对拭子中的 甲基化状态和水平。在 92%（23/25）的 NPC 组织和 25%（4/16）的鼻咽炎对照中检测到 甲基化 （ < 0.05）。还鉴定出 NPC 中 高频率的异常甲基化和 mRNA 表达降低。此外，在 90.5%（19/21）的 NPC 活检和 71.4%（15/21）的配对拭子中鉴定到 甲基化 ，表明两种样本类型之间具有良好的一致性。此外，在 22 名 NPC 患者的 16 份（72.7%）鼻拭子、2 份（10.5%）鼻咽炎和任何健康对照中均未发现 甲基化 （ < 0.01）。NPC 组鼻拭子中的甲基化评分也明显高于非 NPC 对照组（ < 0.001）。此外，受试者工作特征（ROC）曲线分析显示，用于区分 NPC 与非 NPC 受试者的 甲基化检测的曲线下面积（AUC）为 0.882。我们的研究表明，NPC 中存在 甲基化频繁。其在鼻咽拭子中的检测可能为识别早期 NPC 病例提供一种微创且信息丰富的方法。
