| ORIGINAL ARTICLE |
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| Year : 2018 | Volume
: 14
| Issue : 7 | Page : 1620-1626 |
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Folate-receptor-positive circulating tumor cells as an efficacious biomarker for the diagnosis of small pulmonary nodules
Yang Xue, Wei Cong, Shenglong Xie, Jun Shu, Gang Feng, Hong Gao
Department of Thoracic Surgery, Sichuan Academy of Medical Sciences and Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Correspondence Address:
Hong Gao
Department of Thoracic Surgery, Sichuan Academy of Medical Sciences and Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, No. 32 West Second First Ring Road, Chengdu, Sichuan 610072
China
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/jcrt.JCRT_905_17
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Objective: The objective of this study is to investigate the clinical significance of folate-receptor-positive circulating tumor cells (FR+CTC) for the diagnosis of lung cancer, especially in early-stage patients.
Materials and Methods: A total of 72 lung cancer patients, including 31 with stage I diseases and two with stage 0 diseases, were enrolled in this study. Twenty-four patients with benign lung diseases and two healthy volunteers served as the control group. Three milliliters of peripheral blood were collected from each participant for FR+CTC analysis on enrollment. FR+CTC enumeration was performed using immunomagnetic leukocyte depletion and ligand-targeted polymerase chain reaction techniques.
Results: The study results revealed that using a cutoff value of 8.7 CTC Units/3 mL, the sensitivity, and specificity of FR+CTC for diagnosis of lung cancer were 81.94% and 73.08%, respectively. Such high sensitivity (74.19%) and specificity (73.08%) persisted even if only stage I lung cancer patients were retained in the analysis. In receiver operating characteristic analysis, the performance of FR+CTC (area under the curve = 0.8153) was superior to other clinical biomarkers such as carcinoembryonic antigen, neuron-specific enolase, and cytokeratin 19 fragments. In a subgroup analysis, patients with nodule size of >3 cm showed an improved sensitivity (88.46%); although, the specificity appeared to decrease (40%). All five patients with benign diseases in this subgroup had inflammatory diseases, indicating that large inflammatory nodules may also release FR -expressing cells into the circulatory system.
Conclusion: FR+CTC is a reliable biomarker for the early diagnosis of small-sized lung cancer. Further study with larger sample size is required to assess the diagnostic efficiency of FR+CTC in patients with large nodule sizes.
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