Plasma thioredoxin reductase as a potential diagnostic biomarker for breast cancer

Background Early diagnosis of breast cancer is critical to the treatment and prognosis of breast cancer patients. Our aim is to explore more practical and effective diagnostic methods to facilitate early treatment and improve prognosis for breast cancer patients. Methods The Mann-Whitney U test, receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC), Youden index, Chi-square test, and Fisher's exact test were used to determine whether plasma TrxR could be used for the clinical diagnosis of breast cancer. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to validate the prognostic potential of plasma TrxR activity assessment. Results A total of 761 patients were included, including 537 cases of breast cancer and 224 cases of benign breast diseases. Plasma TrxR activity in the breast cancer group [8.0 (6.0, 9.45) U/mL] was significantly higher than that in the benign group [3.05 (1.20, 6.275) U/mL]. The diagnostic efficiency of TrxR for breast cancer was higher than that of other conventional breast cancer biomarkers, with an AUC of 0.821 (95% CI= 0.791-0.852). In addition, TrxR can be used in combination with conventional tumor markers to further improve the diagnostic efficiency. The optimal TrxR threshold for identifying benign and malignant diseases is 7.45 U/ml. We detected plasma TrxR activity and serum tumor markers before and after anti-tumor therapies in 333 breast cancer patients and found that their trends were basically the same, with a significant decrease in plasma TrxR activity after treatment. Conclusions Plasma TrxR activity can be used as a suitable biomarker for breast cancer diagnosis and efficacy assessment.Micro Abstract:To explore more practical and efficient diagnostic methods to facilitate early treatment and improve prognosis for breast cancer patients, we enrolled a total of 761 patients, including 537 cases of breast cancer and 224 cases of benign breast diseases. We found that plasma TrxR activity could be a suitable biomarker for the diagnosis and efficacy assessment of breast cancer.