Clinical Impact Of Brca1 And Brca2 Mrna Expression In Ovarian Cancer.

e17533Background: Mutations in cancer susceptibility genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 are associated with better survival in ovarian cancer (OC) patients due to a better response to platinum-based chemotherapy and PARP inhibitors. However, the impact of the expression of these genes is not well characterized in OC. Methods: We investigated BRCA1 and 2 mRNA expression in 12 non-neoplastic fallopian tubes and 201 fresh frozen epithelial OCs using real-time PCR. BRCA mutations detection was performed by next generation sequencing. The association between BRCA expression and clinical characteristics (age, FIGO stage, tumor grading, residual tumor) were evaluated using Mann-Whitney-U and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Overall and relapse free survival rates were estimated using Kaplan-Meier plots and Cox-Regression. Optimal cut off points were defined using Youden index. Results: We found higher BRCA1 and 2 mRNA expression in OCs in comparison to controls (p = 0.011, p u003c 0.001, respectively), and in type II compared to type I tum...