Fig 1.
Identification of CTCs by imFISH.
(A) DAPI,blue; (B) CEP8,orange; (C) CD45, red; (D) merge. It shows CTCs as triploid CEP8+/ DAPI+/CD45- and WBC as diploid CEP8+/DAPI+/CD45+ (D).
Fig 2.
Comparison of the survival prediction of patients with cervical cancer by serum CTC or SCC expression levels alone and the combination of both.
(A) and (B) ROC curve analysis of the optimal cutoff value of serum CTC or SCC level for distinguishing disease-free survival (DFS) from patients with cervical cancer. AUC was 0.694 for serum CTC (P = 0.001) and 0.702 for serum SCC (P = 0.001). (C) ROC analysis compares the survival prediction of patients with cervical cancer by serum CTC or SCC expression levels alone and the combination of both. The result shows that the area under the curve (AUC) of the combined serum CTC and SCC expression is the largest among the three predictors, which demonstrates that predictive accuracy of the combined risk model is better than those of FIGO stage and serum CTC or SCC alone. (D) ROC curve analysis of the predictive accuracy for DFS of patients with cervical cancer by FIGO staging system (AUC = 0.671, P = 0.004).
Table 1.
The clinicopathological parameters of patients with cervical cancer.
Table 2.
Correlation between CTC and clinicopathological parameters in cervical cancer patients.
Fig 3.
Survival prediction of patients with cervical cancer by FIGO staging system and the expression level of serum CTC or SCC.
(A) The disease-free survival (DFS) curves of patients with positive and negative expression level of serum CTC (P < 0.0001). (B) The DFS curves of patients with positive and negative expression level of serum SCC (P = 0.0004). (C) DFS outcomes of patients with cervical cancer were predicted by FIGO staging system (Stage I vs. II, P = 0.0542; Stage II vs. III, P = 0.0097). (D) DFS outcomes of patients with cervical cancer were predicted by the combined serum CTC and SCC expression levels, which show that the combined risk model significantly improves survival prediction of patients (Group I, II and III represent low-risk, intermediate-risk and high-risk group, respectively. Group I vs. II, P = 0.0119; Group II vs. III, P = 0.0019).
Table 3.
Univariate and multivariate analysis of the effects of CTC and clinicopathological characteristics on disease-free survival in patients with cervical cancer.
Table 4.
Univariate and multivariate analysis of the effects of CTC/SCC and disease-free survival in patients with cervical cancer.