Prediction of ovarian malignancy using plasma cell-free DNA

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Objective Evaluation of cell-free DNA (cf-DNA) as a noninvasive tool to discriminate between malignant and benign ovarian growth. Patients and methods DNA was extracted from the plasma of 50 women with ovarian lesion. A total of 20 women with pathologically proven malignancy and 30 women with benign ovarian lesions were included. Quantification of cf-DNA was performed using real-time PCR. cf-DNA was correlated with the histopathology. Results The preoperative plasma cf-DNA level was statistically significantly higher (P<0.0001) in the malignant group (3.6±1.7 ng/μl) compared with the benign group (0.71±0.69 ng/μl) with 5.04-fold higher in the malignant group than in the benign counterpart. The mean level of cf-DNA in women with benign ovarian lesion (0.71±0.69 ng/μl) did not reach statistically significant difference (P=0.2) when compared with the mean level among women having endometriotic cysts (0.60±0.44 ng/μl). In addition, there was no correlation between the CA-125 and cf-DNA levels (r=0.127, P=0.07), with sensitivity of 96% and specificity of 84%, with a cutoff limit of 1.4 ng/μl in diagnosing malignancy. Conclusion Detection of cf-DNA holds promise as a diagnostic test for women with ovarian cancer. We recommend its incorporation into the workup investigations for women attending with adnexal mass.