Oncotarget

Clinical Research Papers:

Old age at diagnosis increases risk of tumor progression in nasopharyngeal cancer

Jing-Dun Xie, Fu Chen, Yao-Xuan He, Xiao-Di Chen, Guo-Ye Zhang, Zhi-Kun Li, Jing Hong, Dan Xie and Mu-Yan Cai _

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Oncotarget. 2016; 7:66170-66181. https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.10818

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Abstract

Jing-Dun Xie1,*, Fu Chen2,*, Yao-Xuan He1, Xiao-Di Chen1, Guo-Ye Zhang1, Zhi-Kun Li1, Jing Hong1, Dan Xie3 and Mu-Yan Cai3

1 Department of Anesthesiology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzhou, China

2 Department of Clinical Laboratory, Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, China

3 Department of Pathology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzhou, China

* These authors have contributed equally to this work

Correspondence to:

Mu-Yan Cai, email:

Dan Xie, email:

Keywords: nasopharyngeal cancer, age, tumor progression, prognosis

Received: February 16, 2016 Accepted: July 09, 2016 Published: July 24, 2016

Abstract

Age at diagnosis has been found to be a prognostic factor of outcomes in various cancers. However, the effect of age at diagnosis on nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) progression has not been explored. We retrospectively evaluated the relationship between age and disease progression in 3,153 NPC patients who underwent radiotherapy, chemotherapy, or chemoradiotherapy between 2007 and 2009. Patients were randomly assigned to either a testing cohort or a validation cohort by computer-generated random assignment. X-tile plots determined the optimal cut-point of age based on survival status to be ≤61 vs. >61 years. Further correlation analysis showed that age >61 years was significantly correlated with the tumor progression and therapeutic regimen in both testing and validation cohorts (P <0.05). In the present study, we observed that older age (>61 years) was a strong and independent predictor of poor disease-free survival (DFS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS), in both univariate and multivariate analyses. Age was also found to be a significant prognostic predictor as well (P <0.05) when evaluating patients with the same disease stage. ROC analysis confirmed the predictive value of age on NPC-specific survival in both cohorts (P <0.001) and suggested that age may improve the ability to discriminate outcomes in NPCs, especially regarding tumor progression. In conclusion, our study suggests that older age at NPC diagnosis is associated with a higher incidence of tumor progression and cancer-specific mortality. Age is a strong and independent predictor of poor outcomes and may allow for more tailored therapeutic decision-making and individualized patient counseling.


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