Predictive Value of Circulating Tumor Cells for Evaluating Short- and Long-Term Efficacy of Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer

BACKGROUND The present study investigated the role of circulating tumor cells(CTCs) countsin predicting the short- and long-term efficacy of chemotherapyfor breast cancer (BC). MATERIAL AND METHODS Peripheral venous blood was extracted from 187 BC patients. CTCs were measured by flow cytometry. Spearman's correlation analysis was performed to examine the correlation between the efficacy of chemotherapyand CTC counts. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was plotted to estimate the predictive value of CTC counts. The Kaplan-Meier method was employed to calculate disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). Cox regression analysis was used to determine risk factors for prognosis of BC. RESULTS Complete response (CR) + partial response (PR) was achieved by 65.8% of BC patients. After chemotherapy, CTC countswere decreased in both the CR + PR and SD + PD groups. Spearman's correlation analysis indicated that CTC countsbefore chemotherapywere positively correlated with clinical response to chemotherapy(r=0.45, P<0.05). For predicting clinical response to chemotherapy, CTC countsyielded an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.958, with sensitivity reaching 96.9% and specificity reaching 85.4%. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression analysis indicated that tumor node metastasis (TNM) staging, lymph node metastasis (LNM), ki-67, endocrine therapy, and CTC countswere risk factors for prognosis of BC. CONCLUSIONS These findings indicate that BC patients with CTCs ³8 exhibited poor response to chemotherapyand poor OS. CTC countscan serve as an indicator in predicting short- and long-term efficacy of chemotherapyfor BC.