Original Article


Use of peripheral lymphocytes and support vector machine for survival prediction in breast cancer patients

Fang Bai, Chuanchao Wei, Peng Zhang, Dexi Bi, Meixin Ge, Qing Chen, Yijun Jia, Yunshu Lu, Kejin Wu

Abstract

Background: This study aimed to identify the influence of peripheral lymphocytes on prognosis and find prognostic markers for breast cancer patients.
Methods: This study enrolled invasive breast cancer patients and they were followed-up for median 4-years over telephone. Distributions of disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) between different levels of lymphocytes were estimated with the Kaplan-Meier (K-M) method. Support vector machine (SVM) methods were used to develop a prognostic classifier for breast cancer.
Results: A total of 190 patients were enrolled. Patients with low level of cluster of differentiation (CD)3+ lymphocytes had worse DFS and OS (P<0.05). Strong association was reported between SVM-DFS model and DFS (sensitivity, 97%; specificity, 75%); whereas the SVM-OS model was strongly associated with OS (sensitivity, 67%; specificity, 100%).
Conclusions: Patients with low level of CD3+ lymphocytes could have a poorer survival and the SVM method could predict prognosis in breast cancer patients.

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