Clinical Research Papers:
A largescale retrospective study of the overall survival outcome in nasopharyngeal carcinoma with hypertension in Chinese population
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Pei Yang1,2, Hesham Elhalawani2, Yingrui Shi1, Ying Tang3,1, Yaqian Han1, Yu Zhao1,2 , Fan Lou1 and Hekun Jin1
1 Department of Head and Neck Radiation Oncology, Hunan Cancer Hospital, Changsha, Hunan, China
2 Department of Radiation Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA
3 Department of Chinese Traditional Medicine, The Jishou Chinese Traditional Medicine Hospital, Jishou, Hunan, China
Correspondence to:
Hekun Jin, email:
Keywords: VEGF, NPC, hypertension, radiation theropy, hypoxia
Received: March 06, 2017 Accepted: April 15, 2017 Published: April 27, 2017
Abstract
Background: It is known that hypertension is associated with high levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression which is, in turn, highly connected to the prognosis of a wide array of cancers. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between hypertension and prognosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) with definitive radiotherapy in a Chinese population.
Patients and Methods: We retrospectively reviewed 4493 patients with NPC who received definitive radiotherapy from 1995 to 2006, with a minimum follow-up of 5 years. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox proportional hazard model were utilized to determine the association between hypertension and overall survival (OS).
Results: A total of 802 patients with NPC suffered from hypertension as compared to 3691 patients with no associated hypertension. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed median overall survival of 101.1 and 110.0 months, respectively (p<0.05). In univariate survival analysis, patients with hypertension had worse OS (p<0.05) than non-hypertension patients. Patients with higher grade hypertension also had worse OS (p<0.05) compare to patients with grade 1 hypertension. In multivariate survival analysis, patients with hypertension had significantly worse OS (p<0.05) than non-hypertension patients, as well as M stage (p<0.001), after adjustment for related clinical confounding factors.
Conclusion: Our findings provide evidence that hypertension is an independent factor and result in poorer survival outcomes in patients with NPC, the mechanism is still unclear, and it worth further research.