Abstract
Activated platelets promote cancer progression and metastasis. Nevertheless, the prognostic value of platelet indices in melanoma had been rarely reported. The aim of this study was to investigate the predictive significance of platelet indices in melanoma. A total of 220 consecutive patients with melanoma were retrospectively enrolled between January 2009 and December 2009. The relationship between PDW and clinicopathological characteristics were analyzed. Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression were used to evaluate the prognostic impact of PDW. Of the 220 patients, high platelet distribution width (PDW) levels were observed in 63 (28.6%) patients. Increased PDW was associated with tumor subtype (P < 0.001). Survival curves found that patients with increased PDW had significantly shorter survival time than those with normal PDW (P < 0.001). Cox regression analysis revealed that elevated PDW was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (hazard ratio, 2.480; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.386–4.436, P = 0.002). In conclusion, PDW is easily available in routine blood test. Our findings indicated that PDW is an independent predictor and that it may also be a potential parameter for targeted therapy in melanoma.
Highlights
Malignant melanoma is an aggressive form of cancer with an increasing incidence and mortality worldwide
A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for Overall survival (OS) prediction was plotted to verify the optimal cut-off value for Platelet distribution width (PDW), which was 17.2 (Fig. 1). It demonstrated that PDW predicts cancer prognosis with a sensitivity of 51.1% and a specificity of 68.3% (AUC = 0.683, 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.618–0.744, p < 0.0001)
This study showed that PDW is associated with patient’s survival and is an independent risk factor for prognosis in melanoma
Summary
Malignant melanoma is an aggressive form of cancer with an increasing incidence and mortality worldwide. Platelet actions trigger autocrine and paracrine activation processes that cause phenotypic changes in stromal cells which contribute to the development of cancer[2]. Increased platelets were associated with poor prognosis in patients with a wide spectrum of malignancies, such as pancreatic cancer, gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, endometrial cancer, and ovarian cancer[3,4,5,6,7]. Mean platelet volume (MPV), the most commonly used measure of platelet size, is an index of platelet activation and is available in clinical practice[9]. We aimed to evaluate the prognostic roles of MPV and PDW in patients with melanoma
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