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Epigenetic Alteration of DNA in Mucosal Wash Fluid Predicts Invasiveness of Colorectal Tumors

Although conventional colonoscopy is considered the gold standard for detecting colorectal tumors, accurate staging is often difficult because advanced histology may be present in small colorectal lesions. We collected DNA present in mucosal wash fluid from patients undergoing colonoscopy and then assessed the methylation levels of four genes frequently methylated in colorectal cancers to detect invasive tumors. We found that methylation levels in wash fluid were significantly higher in patients with invasive than those with noninvasive tumors. Cytologic and K-ras mutation analyses suggested that mucosal wash fluid from invasive tumors contained greater numbers of tumor cells than wash fluid from noninvasive tumors. Among the four genes, levels of mir-34b/c methylation had the greatest correlation with the invasion and showed the largest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC = 0.796). Using cutoff points of mir-34b/c methylation determined by efficiency considerations, the sensitivity/specificity were 0.861/0.657 for the 13.0% (high sensitivity) and 0.765/0.833 for the 17.8% (well-balanced) cutoffs. In the validation test set, the AUC was also very high (0.915), the sensitivity/specificity were 0.870/0.875 for 13.0% and 0.565/0.958 for 17.8%. Using the diagnostic tree constructed by an objective algorithm, the diagnostic accuracy of the invasiveness of colorectal cancer was 91.3% for the training set and 85.1% for the test set. Our results suggest that analysis of the methylation of DNA in mucosal wash fluid may be a good molecular marker for predicting the invasiveness of colorectal tumors. Cancer Prev Res; 4(5); 674–83. ©2011 AACR.