Xiuqin Li

Retrospective study of elderly patients with advanced ovarian cancer who did not undergo surgery

Abstract Objective To evaluate the clinical outcomes of elderly patients with advanced ovarian cancer who did not undergo surgery and received chemotherapy with or without maintenance therapy. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data of 15 patients with advanced high-grade serous ovarian cancer who were treated at our hospital between 2018 and 2023. These patients either had multiple comorbidities or refused surgery. Data collected included patient demographics, treatment regimens, chemotherapy cycles, clinical response, progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS). Results The median age of the patients was 73 years (range, 50-86 years). Fourteen patients received platinum-based chemotherapy combined with paclitaxel or liposomal doxorubicin, with or without bevacizumab, for 3 to 6 cycles. Twelve patients who achieved disease control received PARP inhibitor maintenance therapy. The overall response rate (ORR) was 80.0%, or 12/15 patients achieved partial response (PR); nobody achieved complete response. The disease control rate (DCR) was 100%. The median PFS1 was 19.0 months (95% CI, 11.85-26.15), and the median PFS2 was 10 months. The 3-year OS rate was 65.2%, with a median OS of 57.0 months (95% CI, 13.00-100.99). Conclusions Chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab, followed by PARP inhibitor maintenance therapy, is a viable alternative for elderly or surgically ineligible patients with advanced ovarian cancer. The findings of this study should be considered exploratory and require validation through large-scale studies.

A six‐CpG‐based methylation markers for the diagnosis of ovarian cancer in blood

Abstract DNA methylation markers in the peripheral blood are able to be applied to treat epithelial cancer. Nevertheless, the diagnostic potential value of it for ovarian cancer (OV) has not been studied. The study aimed to explore the difference of DNA methylation in peripheral blood between OV patients and healthy women. Firstly, the whole blood of DNA methylation data was provided by the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. The linear model was applied to the identification of significantly differentially expressed methylated CpG sites (differentially methylation sites [DMP]), and the further screen of co‐expression CpG sites (Co‐DMP). A total of 2812 DMPs were identified, and weighted gene co‐expression network analysis helped to obtain seven co‐expression modules. Among them, the yellow module was the most related to OV. Co‐DMPs (167) in the yellow module were mainly distributed near the transcription start sites. However, most of them were not in the CpG island. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis was applied to the identification of stable OV‐related blood biomarkers that six Co‐DMPs (cg00134539, cg00226923, cg25268718, cg25697314, cg25839227, cg26574610) with the highest frequency were found as potential biomarkers. Finally, the diagnostic classifier was established using the support vector machine (SVM) with the accuracy rate of 87.1% and 74.5% in training data set and validation data set, respectively. To sum up, a new feature was provided here for the diagnosis of OV, which is helpful for the diagnosis and individualized treatments of early OV.