ecancermedicalscience

Research

Potential clinical utility of plasma D-dimer levels among women with cervical cancer in Lagos, Nigeria

30 Jan 2023
Lucky E Tietie, Kehinde S Okunade, Adaiah P Soibl-Harry, Sarah O John-Olabode, Rose I Anorlu

The link between plasma D-dimer levels and underlying malignancy has been established. How this translates in clinical practice as a marker of detection and prognosis of cervical cancer (CC) is still unknown. This study compared the plasma D-dimer levels in women with and without CC and assessed the associations between plasma D-dimer levels and the stage and grade of CC. It was a comparative cross-sectional study of 65 women with histological diagnosis of CC and an equal number of age-matched cancer-free women enrolled at the University Teaching Hospital in Lagos, Nigeria. Participants’ sociodemographic and clinical data as well as venous blood samples for estimation of plasma D-dimer were collected for statistical analyses. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis is performed to select the cut-off value of plasma D-dimer for differentiating CC from non-cancer. There was a statistically significant difference in the median levels of plasma D-dimer of women with CC and their cancer-free comparison groups (3,120 (1,189–4,515) versus 210 (125–350) ng/mL; p = 0.001). A plasma D-dimer value of 543 ng/mL was chosen in a ROC analysis as the discriminatory cut-off to differentiate CC from non-cancer. There were significant associations between plasma D-dimer levels and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics stage (p = 0.001) or grade (p = 0.001) of CC. The study, therefore, demonstrated the potential clinical usefulness of plasma D-dimer as a diagnostic and prognostic marker of CC.

Related Articles

Mohammad Saad Salim Naviwala, Mirza Rameez Samar, Daania Shoaib, Fizza Akbar, Romana Idrees, Yasmin Abdul Rashid
Fatima Shaukat, Tayyab Siddiqui, Yumna Ahmed, Muneeba Khan, Mariam Fahim, Asna Noor, Agha Muhammad Hammad Khan, Ahmed Nadeem Abbasi
Johannes Matthias Weimer, Eva Kuhn, Michael Ludwig, Goodluck Lincoln Malle, Godfrid Kapipi, Valentin Sebastian Schäfer, Adnan Sadiq, Oliver Henke