1、PurposeThe addition of concurrent chemotherapy to definitive radiation has improved the 5-year survival of women with locally advanced cervical cancer to 58%. To determine if plasma HPV DNA predates clinical recurrence and/or improves the accuracy of metabolic response on FDG-PET at 3 months post completion of radical chemo-radiation in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer. Post therapy FDG-PET can help predict progression free survival and overall survival. In addition plasma HPV can be used to monitor response and detect early recurrence. Prospective study will recruit 20 patients with locally advanced cervical cancer to determine if plasma HPV DNA predates clinical recurrence and/or improves the accuracy response on post-therapy FDG-PET scan at 3 months.
Serum miR-205 correlates with prognosis of cervical cancer patients
To further evaluate whether serum miR-205 levels were associated with cervical cancer prognosis, we performed survival analysis. The survival period of the patients was defined as the duration from the time of surgery to death, or to the last follow-up day. As shown in Figure 3, cervical cancer patients with higher miR-205 expression had significantly poorer survival than those with lower expression of miR-205 (log-rank test: P = 0.003). The 5-year overall survival rate in cervical cancer patients with lower serum miR-205 expression was 53.33%, whereas that of patients with higher miR-205 expression was 16.67%. To determine the possibility of serum miR-205 as an independent risk factor for poor prognosis, both clinicopathological factors and the level of serum miR-205 expression were evaluated by multivariate Cox regression analysis. The results showed that lymph node metastasis and high level of serum miR-205 were independent factors to predict the overall survival of cervical cancer patients (Table 2).