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Updated: Sep 20, 2025
Evaluation of Colorectal Cancer Risk and Prevalence by Stool DNA Integrity Detection
Published on: June 8, 2020
Plasma cfDNA for the Diagnosis and Prognosis of Colorectal Cancer
Zhiwei Wu1, Lijiang Yu1, Juan Hou1
1Department of Oncology, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Yangzhou University, Jingjiang People's Hospital, Taizhou, Jiangsu, China.
Objective:
To evaluate the value of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) for the diagnosis and prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC).
Methods:
Peripheral blood specimens of 120 CRC patients and 90 healthy volunteers (as a control cohort) were extracted. A quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was performed to determine the cfDNA expression. Following correlation analyses for cfDNA and clinical endpoints, a receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve was established to assess the sensitivity and specificity of cfDNA, CEA, VEGF, and CA125 and for evaluating the disease-free survival (DFS) of patients.
Results:
The plasma cfDNA level of colorectal cancer patients was significantly higher than that of healthy subjects (P < 0.05), and after chemotherapy, cfDNA level was significantly lower than that before chemotherapy (P < 0.05). CA125/CEA/VEGF expression significantly correlated with cfDNA level, but not with cfDNA integrity. There was also a significant correlation between tumor differentiation and the cfDNA level. cfDNA has a higher ROC value than the current tumor biomarkers. Survival analysis showed that the DFS of the low cfDNA expression group was longer (29.99 ± 0.78 months) than that of the high cfDNA expression group (27.66 ± 1.05 months, P=0.031).
Conclusion:
The blood cfDNA is associated with the pathological features of CRC clinical cases and represents a possible indicator for CRC diagnosis and prognosis.
