In a nutshell
The authors evaluated whether fibrinogen could be used to determine cancer survival in prostate cancer.
Some background
Fibrinogen is a very important protein that clots blood inside the body. It has previously been used to determine the metastatic potential (likelihood that the cancer cells will spread) of lung cancers and melanoma. High fibrinogen levels found before treatment may act as a prognostic factor (indicating cancer outlook), as they have been associated with a poorer patient outcome.
Methods & findings
The aim of this article was to determine whether fibrinogen can be used as a predictor in prostate cancer survival outcomes.
268 patients were used in this study. All patients had undergone radiation therapy (some patients also underwent androgen deprivation therapy to reduce levels of testosterone) with an average follow-up time of 88 months. Patients were separated into three groups based on PSA level (protein in the blood used to determine stage of the cancer), Gleason score (scoring system comparing differences between normal and cancer cells) and cancer stage. Low risk (52 patients) had a PSA level < 10ng/ml, Gleason score < 6 and early stage cancer. Intermediate risk (62 patients) had a PSA level of 10-20ng/ml, Gleason score 7 and cancer in the whole prostate. High risk (154 patients) had a PSA level of > 20ng/ml, Gleason score 8-10 and cancer that had spread out from the prostate.
From the total group, 42 patients (15.7%) experienced recurrent prostate cancer and 15 patients (5.6%) died from metastatic prostate cancer (cancer spread from original site to other organs).
The presence of high fibrinogen levels in the blood was a poor prognostic factor (predicts the cancer outlook) for cancer-specific survival (not dying from prostate cancer). Using both simple and advanced analysis (includes age, risk group, prior treatment) high fibrinogen level was a significant prognostic factor in cancer-specific survival, where patients with high levels were 3.9 times more likely to die from prostate cancer.
Similar results were found in predicting overall survival (the time from prostate cancer diagnosis to death from any cause), where using both simple and advanced analysis, patients with high fibrinogen levels were over 3 times more likely to die than those with lower levels.
Fibrinogen was not significantly associated with disease-free survival (time from diagnosis to cancer recurrence or progression).
The bottom line
The authors concluded that fibrinogen may be used to predict cancer-specific and overall survival in prostate cancer patients.
The fine print
The fibrinogen cut off value was set at 530mg/nl-1 and will need further examination to be used as a predictor for patient outcome, therefore the results found here cannot be widely applied.
What’s next?
If you would like further information on the impact of fibrinogen in predicting prostate cancer outcomes, please consult your doctor.
Published By :
World Journal of Urology
Date :
Dec 05, 2014
