Abstract
BackgroundDNA methylation (DNAm) age was found to be an indicator for all-cause mortality, cancer incidence, and longevity, but no study has involved in the associations of DNAm age with the prognosis of breast cancer.MethodsWe retrieved information of 1076 breast cancer patients from Genomic Data Commons (GDC) data portal on March 30, 2017, including breast cancer DNAm profiling, demographic features, clinicopathological parameters, recurrence, and all-cause fatality. Horvath’s method was applied to calculate the DNAm age. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to test the associations between DNAm age of the cancerous tissues and the prognosis (recurrence of breast cancer and all-cause fatality) with or without adjusting for chronological age and clinicopathological parameters.ResultsThe DNAm age was markedly decelerated in the patients who were premenopausal, ER or PR negative, HER2-enriched or basal-like than their counterparts. In the first five-year follow-up dataset for survival, every ten-year increase in DNAm age was associated with a 15% decrease in fatality; subjects with DNAm age in the second (HR: 0.52; 95%CI: 0.29–0.92), the third (HR: 0.49; 95%CI: 0.27–0.87) and the fourth quartile (HR: 0.38; 95%CI: 0.20–0.72) had significant longer survival time than those in the first quartile. In the first five-year follow-up dataset for recurrence, every ten-year increase in DNAm age was associated with a 14% decrease of the recurrence; in the categorical analysis, a clear dose-response was shown (P for trend =0.02) and the fourth quartile was associated with a longer recurrence free survival (HR: 0.32; 95%CI: 0.14–0.74). In the full follow-up dataset, similar results were obtained.ConclusionsDNAm age of breast cancer tissue, which associated with menopausal status and pathological features, was a strong independent predictor of the prognosis. It was suggested that the prognosis of breast cancer was related to intrinsic biological changes and specific molecular targets for treatment of breast cancer may be implicit.
Highlights
DNA methylation (DNAm) age was found to be an indicator for all-cause mortality, cancer incidence, and longevity, but no study has involved in the associations of DNAm age with the prognosis of breast cancer
We focused on breast cancer and comprehensively analyzed whether the DNAm age in tumor tissues was associated with the prognosis when taking the chronological age and the clinicopathological features into account, using the datasets from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data portal
Discussion younger DNAm age of normal tissues was widely showed to be associated with better health outcomes in previous studies [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17], the present study showed that younger DNAm age in the cancerous tissues of breast would predict a poorer prognosis
Summary
DNA methylation (DNAm) age was found to be an indicator for all-cause mortality, cancer incidence, and longevity, but no study has involved in the associations of DNAm age with the prognosis of breast cancer. The DNAm age was not able to estimate the chronological age of the host [6]. This may be because DNAm pattern in the clones of cancer origination is different from that of normal tissue and it only presents the state of ageing in the. We speculate that the DNAm age of cancer cells may present the capacity to differentiate into malignant clones and can predict the outcome of the disease. The role of DNAm age in tumor tissues in predicting the prognosis of cancer patients is far from being confirmed
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
