TUESDAY, March 27 (HealthDay News) — For patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), quality of life (QOL) assessments at the time of diagnosis are associated with overall survival (OS); and genetic variations are linked to QOL measures, according to two studies published online March 26 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Jeff A. Sloan, Ph.D., from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and colleagues investigated the prognostic value of QOL assessments with regard to OS in 2,442 patients with NSCLC, observed between 1997 and 2007. The researchers found that QOL deficits at the time of diagnosis correlated significantly with OS (hazard ratio [HR], 1.55). The indication of a clinically deficient baseline QOL contributed significantly to prediction of survival, even after controlling for confounders (HR, 0.67).
In a second study, Sloan and colleagues explored the association between baseline QOL assessments and 470 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 56 genes of three biologic pathways for 1,299 patients with NSCLC, observed between 1997 and 2007. The researchers found that three SNPs in the MGMT gene from a DNA repair pathway were associated with overall QOL. In unadjusted analysis, two SNPs from glutathione metabolic pathway genes were associated with fatigue, and in an adjusted analysis, two SNPS from this pathway correlated with pain.
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“We identified three SNPs in three glutathione metabolic pathway genes and three SNPs in two DNA repair pathway genes associated with QOL measures in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer,” the authors of the second study write.
Abstract 1
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Abstract 2
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