BACKGROUND

Various studies reported that the prognosis of patients with cervical cancer (CC) was significantly associated with immunity, whereas limited studies have explored whether immune-associated genes could be classifiers for recurrence-free survival (RFS) of stage I CC. Thus, an improved immune-related gene signature for stage I CC patients' prognosis is urgently required.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We retrospectively analyzed the gene expression profiles of stage I CC patients in the GSE44001 set from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The stage I CC patients were randomly divided into the training group and the internal validation group. The training patients were adopted to develop a prognostic immune gene-based signature; meanwhile, the internal validation patients were used to validate the power of the selected immune gene-related signature using univariate Cox proportional hazard analysis, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), and multivariate Cox regression analysis. The accuracy and reliability of the immune gene-related signature were evaluated based on Kaplan-Meier analysis and time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.

RESULTS

High power of the 8-immune gene signature was found on the basis of ROC analysis (AUC at 1, 3, and 5 years were exhibited in the internal validation group (0.702, 0.715, and 0.728, respectively), external validation group (0.702, 0.825, and 0.842, respectively), and entire GEO dataset (0.840, 0.894, and 0.852, respectively)). Besides, -index, ROC, calibration plots, and decision curve analysis (DCA) also acted well in our nomogram, suggestive of a high ability of the nomogram to elevate the prognostic prediction of stage I CC patients.

CONCLUSIONS

In this study, we successfully constructed an integrated 8-immune gene-based signature which could accurately identify patients with low prognostic risk from those with high prognostic risk. In addition, we developed an immune-related nomogram which can elevate the prognostic prediction of stage I CC patients.