Discovery of candidate gene expression signatures in peripheral blood for the screening of cervical cancer.

Aim: To investigate whether cervical cancer (CC) and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) can be screened by analyzing gene expression profiling of peripheral blood.

Methods

RNA-sequencing analysis of blood was performed on 11 CC patients, 21 CIN patients and 19 healthy controls (H). Fifty-nine genes were validated by quantitative real-time PCR using blood samples from 46 H, 83 CC and 32 CIN patients.

Results

There were significant differences in the expression levels of six genes between CC and H, five genes between CIN and H and four genes between CC and CIN (p < 0.05). Four genes discriminated cervical lesions from H with a sensitivity of 82.61%, a specificity of 87.83% and an area under the curve of 0.8981. Three genes discriminated CC from CIN with a sensitivity of 53.13%, a specificity of 96.39% and an area under the curve of 0.7786.

Conclusion

Our findings provided a promising noninvasive quantitative real-time PCR diagnostic assay of CC and CIN.