The impact of bone marrow irradiation dose on acute haematologic toxicity in cervical cancer patients treated with concurrent chemoradiotherapy

Abstract Objective To evaluate the impact of bone marrow (BM) irradiation dose on acute haematologic toxicity (HT) in concurrent chemoradiotherapy for cervical cancer. Methods Sixty-nine patients with cervical cancer treated with curative or postoperative adjuvant therapy received weekly cisplatin concurrent chemotherapy (CCT) and intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). The whole pelvic bone marrow (PBM) was delineated and divided into three subsites: ilium (IL), lower pelvis (LP), and lumbosacral spine (LS). Associations between clinical variables, dose volume of BM, including PBM, IL, LP, and LS in the form of x-Vy (volume receiving y Gy for x), and blood cell count nadir were tested using linear regression models. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was further used to analyse the cutoff values of the variables with p < 0.05 in the multivariate analysis. Results In 69 patients, the haemoglobin nadir was positive correlated with baseline haemoglobin (p < 0.001), negative correlated with relative LP-V10 (p = 0.005), relative LP-V25 (p = 0.002), relative LP-V50 (p = 0.007), relative LP-mean (p = 0.003), absolute LP-V15 (p = 0.049), absolute LP-V25 (p = 0.004) and absolute LP-V30 (p = 0.009). The platelet nadir was positive correlated with baseline platelets (p = 0.048) and negative correlated with relative LP-V40 (p = 0.028), but there was no significant variable in absolute radiation volume by multivariate analysis. No variables related to the neutrophil nadir were found, and the 69 patients were divided into group A (43 cases) receiving 3–4 cycles of CCT and group B (26 cases) receiving 5–6 cycles of CCT. In group A, the relative IL-V15 (p = 0.014), the relative IL-V50 (p = 0.010) and the absolute LP-V50 (p = 0.011) were negative correlated with the neutrophil nadir. No significant variable was found in group B. No significant variables related to the lymphocyte nadir were found, and the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) was analysed. Age (p < 0.05), relative LP-V15 (p = 0.037) and absolute PBM-mean (p < 0.001) were found to be negative related to NLR. Conclusion The dosimetric parameters of relative irradiated volume of BM have more statistically significant datas on acute HT than absolute irradiated volume. The nadir of haemoglobin and platelets and the vertice of NLR were more affected by the irradiation dose to LP, while neutrophils were more affected by the dose to IL. Acute HT was negative related to both low-dose irradiation (V10-30) and high-dose irradiation (V40, V50). For more than 4 cycles of CCT, the effect of BM irradiation on the neutrophils nadir was masked by chemotherapy

The association between early-onset cardiac events caused by neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy in triple-negative breast cancer patients and some novel autophagy-related polymorphisms in their genomic DNA: a real-world study

Abstract Background An increasing number of cancer patients die of cardiovascular diseases. The cardiotoxicity of chemotherapy is particularly important in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) with limited therapeutic options. Cardiac autophagy is an important mechanism of cardiotoxicity. This research was aimed to investigate the cardiotoxicity of chemotherapy in TNBC, screen the susceptible population, and determine the relationship between cardiotoxicity and autophagy-related polymorphisms. Methods From a total of 2450 stage I-III TNBC patients, 147 met the inclusion criteria and finally recruited. Electrocardiography (ECG) was performed before most chemotherapy cycles, and echocardiography (UCG) was performed according to clinical needs. All ECG and UCG records were re-interpreted by cardiologists at the National Center for Cardiovascular Disease, Fuwai Hospital. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information and the Catalog of Somatic Mutations in Cancer database, we selected 25 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) related to autophagy and genotyped the 147 TNBC patients. Paired-sample T tests, Chi squared tests, and logistic regression models were employed for the analysis. Results Only 46 (31.3%) patients had normal ECG records after every chemotherapy cycle. Among the 16 patients who underwent UCG, 2 (12.5%) had a reversible decrease of left ventricular ejection fraction. The use of anthracyclines and excessive alcohol consumption were risk factors of ECG abnormalities. With the continuation of chemotherapy, heart rate gradually increased. Anthracyclines were associated with QRS duration abnormalities (P = 0.043). After genotyping for 25 autophagy-related SNPs, we found that the G allele of autophagy-related 13 (ATG13) rs10838611 was significantly associated with ECG abnormalities (odds ratio = 2.258, 95% confidence interval = 1.318–3.869; P = 0.003). Conclusion ECG abnormalities caused by chemotherapy are common in the real world. Autophagy-related SNPs are associated with chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity, thereby providing new evidence for autophagy as a cause of chemotherapy-induced cardiac damage