Abstract
BACKGROUND: This study was conducted to investigate whether a panel of eight genetic polymorphisms can predict the prognosis of patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after surgical resection. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We selected eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which have been associated with the prognosis of lung cancer patients after surgery in our previous studies. A total of 814 patients with early stage NSCLC who underwent curative surgical resection were enrolled. The association of the eight SNPs with overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) was analyzed. RESULTS: The eight SNPs (CD3EAP rs967591, TNFRSF10B rs1047266, AKT1 rs3803300, C3 rs2287845, HOMER2 rs1256428, GNB2L1 rs3756585, ADAMTSL3 rs11259927, and CD3D rs3181259) were significantly associated with OS and/or DFS. Combining those eight SNPs, we designed a prognostic index to predict the prognosis of patients. According to relative risk of death, a score value was assigned to each genotype of the SNPs. A worse prognosis corresponded to a higher score value, and the sum of score values of eight SNPs defined the prognostic index of a patient. When we categorized the patients into two groups based on the prognostic index, high risk group was significantly associated with worse OS and DFS compared to low risk group (aHR for OS = 2.21, 95% CI = 1.69-2.88, P = 8.0 x 10-9, and aHR for DFS = 1.58, 95% CI = 1.29-1.94, P = 1.0 x 10-5). CONCLUSIONS: Prognostic index using eight genetic polymorphisms may be useful for the prognostication of patients with surgically resected NSCLC.