Salivary Glycopatterns as Potential Biomarkers for Screening of Early-Stage Breast Cancer

OBJECTIVE: We systematically investigated and assessed the alterations of salivary glycopatterns and possibility as biomarkers for diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer. DESIGN: Alterations of salivary glycopatterns were probed using lectin microarrays and blotting analysis from 337 patients with breast benign cyst or tumor (BB) or breast cancer (I/II stage) and 110 healthy humans. Their diagnostic models were constructed by a logistic stepwise regression in the retrospective cohort. Then, the performance of the diagnostic models were assessed by ROC analysis in the validation cohort. Finally, a double-blind cohort was tested to confirm the application potential of the diagnostic models. RESULTS: The diagnostic models were constructed based on 9 candidate lectins (e.g., PHA-E + L, BS-I, and NPA) that exhibited significant alterations of salivary glycopatterns, which achieved better diagnostic powers with an AUC value > 0.750 (p < 0.001) for the diagnosis of BB (AUC: 0.752, sensitivity: 0.600, and specificity: 0.835) and I stage breast cancer (AUC: 0.755, sensitivity: 0.733, and specificity: 0.742) in the validation cohort. The diagnostic model of I stage breast cancer exhibited a high accuracy of 0.902 in double-blind cohort. CONCLUSIONS: This study could contribute to the screening for patients with early-stage breast cancer based on precise alterations of salivary glycopatterns.