engleski

Microphtalmia-associated transcription factor as marker for detection of melanoma cells in peripheral blood of patients with melanoma: association with clinical stage and prognostic factors

In this study, microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF) was investigated as a marker for detection of circulating melanoma cells by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The aim of this study was to investigate if there is an association between the distribution of MITF value and stage of the disease and other prognostic factors in melanoma patients. Blood samples from 201 melanoma patients in all stages of the disease and 40 healthy volunteers were analyzed by RT-PCR for the expression of MITF. The threshold for detection of MITF was set low enough to detect 50 melanoma cells in 10 mL of peripheral blood. All samples from healthy volunteers were negative for MITF. Out of 201 melanoma patients, 32 (15.9%) were positive for MITF. Positive value of MITF was found in 8 out of 77 (10.4%) stage I ; 11 out of 66 (16.7%) stage II ; 6 out of 36 (16.7%) stage III ; and 5 out of 14 (35.7%) stage IV patients. A statistically significant trend of increase in the proportion of patients with positive values of MITF with increasing stage of disease has been shown (p=0.03). Primary tumors were statistically significantly thicker in patients with positive values of MITF than in patients with negative values of MITF (p=0.02). No statistically significant association was found between the distribution of MITF values and other prognostic factors investigated. A trend of increase in the proportion of patients with positive value of MITF with increasing stage of the disease shown in this study indicates potential prognostic value of MITF in melanoma patients.

MITF; Circulating tumor cells; Melanoma; Clinical Stage

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