An integrated model of the gross tumor volume of cervical lymph nodes and pretreatment plasma Epstein-Barr virus DNA predicts survival of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in the intensity-modulated radiotherapy era: a big-data intelligence platform-based analysis

Jun-Yan Li; Cheng-Long Huang; Wei-Jie Luo; Yuan Zhang; Ling-Long Tang; Hao Peng; Ying Sun; Yu-Pei Chen; Jun Ma

doi:10.1177/1758835919877729

An integrated model of the gross tumor volume of cervical lymph nodes and pretreatment plasma Epstein-Barr virus DNA predicts survival of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in the intensity-modulated radiotherapy era: a big-data intelligence platform-based analysis

Ther Adv Med Oncol. 2019 Sep 25:11:1758835919877729. doi: 10.1177/1758835919877729. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Jun-Yan Li¹, Cheng-Long Huang¹, Wei-Jie Luo¹, Yuan Zhang¹, Ling-Long Tang¹, Hao Peng¹, Ying Sun¹, Yu-Pei Chen², Jun Ma²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Radiation Oncology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Diagnosis and Therapy, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Radiation Oncology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center of Cancer Medicine, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou 510060, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Background: Few studies have evaluated the prognostic value of the integrated model consisting of gross tumor volume of lymph nodes (GTVnd) and pretreatment plasma Epstein-Barr virus DNA (pre-EBV DNA) in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients.

Methods: A well-established big-data intelligence platform with 10,126 NPC patients was used for a retrospective review. A total of 1500 cases with cervical nodal metastases but without distant metastases were randomly assigned to a training (n = 503) or test condition (n = 997) for analyses. The cut-off point for the GTVnd derived from the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was combined with the published cut-off point for pre-EBV DNA to develop an integrated model by which patients were classified into four groups.

Results: Both GTVnd and pre-EBV DNA were independent prognostic factors. Regardless of whether patients received induction chemotherapy (IC), the 5-year distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) (69.5%) and overall survival (OS) (68.4%) were significantly worse in those with both a GTVnd >20 ml and pre-EBV DNA >2000 copies/ml (all p-values < 0.001). In patients with IC, all others had better 5-year DMFS and OS; in patients without IC, those with either a GTVnd >20 ml or pre-EBV DNA >2000 copies/ml had the medium 5-year DMFS and OS, while patients with neither of them had the best.

Conclusions: The integrated GTVnd and pre-EBV DNA model not only predicted DMFS and OS in NPC patients effectively, but was an indicator of timely adjustment of therapeutic strategies for NPC patients, especially those completing IC.

Keywords: distant metastasis-free survival; gross tumor volume of lymph nodes; nasopharyngeal carcinoma; overall survival; pretreatment plasma Epstein–Barr virus DNA; prognostic model.