Aim: Circulating tumor DNA is promising for routine monitoring of breast cancer. Noninvasive testing allows regular probing using plasma and urine samples. Methods: Peripheral blood and simultaneous urine collection from patients were quantified. Concordance between methods were made. Serial time-point measurements were correlated to disease outcome. Results: Index measurements demonstrate over 90% concordance with biopsy. Receiver operating characteristics curves showed over 0.95 for both plasma and urine results comparing with controls. Patients with lower risk of relapse experienced greater declines in detected DNA levels. Maximal declines were registered at 4.0- and 6.8-fold for plasma and urine results, respectively. Conclusion: Measuring and monitoring DNA levels complement existing testing regimes and provides better risk profiling of patients for possible relapse.

Keywords:

Papers of special note have been highlighted as: • of interest; •• of considerable interest

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Vol. 16, No. 13

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History

Received 1 February 2019

Accepted 24 March 2020

Published online 9 April 2020

Published in print May 2020

Information

Keywords

Author contributions

J Zhang and S Shen designed the study. J Zhang and X Zhang collected and processed the samples. X Zhang and S Shen analyzed the results. J Zhang, X Zhang and S Shen wrote the manuscript.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This study was supported by grants from Jingzhou Central Hospital (JZ2014006). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Ethical conduct of research

The authors state that they have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval or have followed the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki for all human or animal experimental investigations. In addition, for investigations involving human subjects, informed consent has been obtained from the participants involved.

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