| Objective To investigate the clinical significance of plasma cell free DNA (cf-DNA) content and integrity in the diagnosis and treatment of esophageal cancer.Methods Fifty patients with esophageal cancer, 50 patients with benign esophageal tumors,and 50 healthy controls admitted to the Suzhou Ninth People′s Hospital from June 2020 to May 2022 were selected as study subjectsfor the prospective study, and were included in the esophageal cancer group, the group with benign esophageal lesions, and the controlgroup, respectively. A micro blood genome extraction kit (Qiagen) was used to extract cf-DNA, and real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR was utilized to evaluate the plasma cf-DNA content. The postoperative plasma of 25 esophageal cancer patients was collected, and the cf-DNA content was quantified, as well as the variations in cf-DNA before and after surgery, which were dynamically identified. Atthe same time, the levels of tumor markers carbohydrate antigen 199 (CA199), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCC) were also examined in patients with esophageal cancer to compare the difference between the diagnostic significance of cf-DNA and tumor markers in esophageal cancer.Results Preoperative plasma ALU115 content in esophageal cancer [4.30(2.06, 8.36)μg/L, 1.98(1.38, 3.02)μg/L, 1.63(0.87, 2.66)μg/L]; ALU247 content [1.40(0.91, 4.10)μg/L, 0.63(0.37, 1.27)μg/L, and 0.26(0.15,0.43)μg/L]; and free DNA integrity [0.41(0.29,0.69), 0.33(0.25,0.50), 0.18(0.11, 0.28) ] in the esophageal cancer group,benign lesion group and healthy control group ,showed statistically significant differences among the three groups (P<0.05); The difference in ALU115 [preoperative 4.41 (2.04,8.87)μg/L, postoperative 1.05 (0.66,1.75)μg/L] as well as integrity [preoperative 0.49 (0.27, 0.77),postoperative 0.30 (0.17,0.37)] was statistically significant when compared before and after surgery (P<0.05); Additionally, there were statistical differences in plasma cf-DNA according to the stage, level of differentiation, and existence of distant metastases in esophageal cancer (P< 0.05). Compared with the conventional tumor markers, the diagnostic accuracy of plasma cf-DNA was greater, and the area under the ROC curve was the maximum at 0.95 when the ALU247 level was taken as 0.65μg/L.Conclusion Testing for plasma cf-DNA has certain clinical value for the diagnosis and therapy of esophageal cancer. |
