A Prognostic Nomogram Based on Immune Scores Predicts Postoperative Survival for Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Wang, Jukun Zhang, Chao Li, Ang Cao, Feng Liu, Dongbin Li, Fei Luo, Tao
Copyright Year	2020
Abstract	Background Increasing research attention has focused on tumor-infiltrating immune cells. However, the threshold of an immune score for use in predicting overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is not defined. This study aims at exploring the association between immune scores with prognosis and building a clinical nomogram for predicting the survival of HCC patients. Material and Methods. A total of 299 patients were enrolled in this study. Their clinical pathological characteristics and immune scores downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database were analyzed. Survival differences between different immune score subgroups were compared, and a final nomogram was built using the Cox proportional hazards regression model. The predictive performance of the nomogram was assessed using the concordance index (C-index) and a calibration plot. Results All the patients were divided into three subgroups based on immune scores. Patients with medium and high immune scores had significantly better OS (HR and 95% CI: 0.417 [0.186-0.937] and 0.299 [0.146-0.616]) and DFS (HR and 95% CI: 0.575 [0.329-1.004] and 0.451 [0.278-0.733], respectively, compared with those with low immune scores. The C indices for OS and DFS were 0.748 (95% CI, 0.687-0.809) and 0.675 (95% CI, 0.630-0.720), respectively. A calibration plot used to determine the probability of survival at 3 or 5 years (OS and DFS) showed a significant agreement between nomogram predictions and actual observations. Conclusions Medium and high immune scores are significantly associated with prolonged OS and DFS in HCC patients. Nomograms built in this study can help doctors and patients assess prognosis and guide treatment.
ISSN	23146133
Journal	Biomed Research International
Volume Number	2020
PubMed Central reference number	PMC7366168
PubMed reference number	32724794
e-ISSN	23146141
DOI	10.1155/2020/1542394
Language	English
Publisher	Hindawi
Publisher Date	2020-07-07
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Copyright © 2020 Jukun Wang et al.
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Immunology and Microbiology Medicine Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology