THE EFFICACY OF PLASMA CIRCULATING TUMOR DNA CONTENT COMBINED WITH BRAF~(V600E) GENE DETECTION IN THE DIAGNOSIS OF THYROID CANCER

Sishuang Huang¹, Qin Xiong^{2, *}

¹Department of Laboratory, Hanchuan People's Hospital, Hanchuan, PR China - ²Department of Blood Transfusion, Hanchuan People's Hospital, Hanchuan, PR China

Objective: To study the efficacy of plasma circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) content combined with BRAF~(V600E) gene detection in the diagnosis of thyroid cancer.

Methods: From July 2018 to July 2019, 42 thyroid cancer patients admitted to our hospital for thyroid surgery were selected as the thyroid cancer group, and 60 patients with benign thyroid nodules were selected as the benign thyroid nodule group. The ctDNA and BRAF~(V600E) gene levels of the 2 groups of patients were detected and compared to explore the efficacy of ctDNA content combined with BRAF~(V600E) gene detection in the diagnosis of thyroid cancer.

Results: The content of ctDNA in patients with thyroid cancer was higher than that of patients with benign thyroid nodules, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.01). There were 9 BRAF~(V600E) gene mutations in the group of patients with thyroid cancer. The BRAF~(V600E) gene mutation rate was 40.91%. The patients with benign thyroid nodules had no BRAF~(V600E) gene mutations. The difference between the 2 groups was statistically significant (P<0.01). The BRAF~(V600E) gene mutations in patients with thyroid cancer had no statistical significance with the patients’ age, gender, and lymph node metastasis (P>0.05). The ROC curve analysis showed that the AUC for the ctDNA diagnosis of thyroid cancer was 0.892, the optimal cutoff was 71.12 ng/mL, the sensitivity was 88.36%, and the specificity was 81.12%. The sensitivity of the parallel combined detection of thyroid cancer (90.91%) was higher than that of the system combined detection (63.64%), and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). The specificity of the systemic detection of thyroid cancer (100.00%) and the specificity of the systemic parallel detection (91.67%) showed no significant difference (P>0.05).

Conclusion: Plasma ctDNA content combined with BRAF~(V600E) gene detection has a certain value in the diagnosis of thyroid cancer and can be widely used in clinical settings.