Detection of recurrences using serum miR-371a-3p during active surveillance in men with stage I testicular germ cell tumours

Oncological Follow-up Strategies for Testicular Germ Cell Tumours: A Narrative Review

“…However, in a cohort of 151 men, postorchiectomy miR-371a-3p levels were not associated with disease relapse during follow-up [51] . The accuracy of a real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction protocol without preamplification in this setting was confirmed, with disease recurrence identified at a median of 2 mo (range 0–5) earlier than via standard investigations [15] .…”

“…However, the question of whether the pelvis should be included in scans may become less relevant if MRI is used instead of CT because of the recently published TRISST data. In addition, if previous results for the novel biomarker miR-371a-3p are confirmed in large prospective cohorts, the number of scans may decrease even further [15] .…”

“…Although no randomised controlled trial has compared MRI and CT in stage I nonseminoma, similar diagnostic accuracy can be assumed on the basis of retrospective study from Denmark describing the use of abdominal MRI in 235 men with nonseminoma and promising sensitivity and specificity of >93% [19] . As a next step, the number of scans may be further decreased if previous results for the novel biomarker miRNA-371 are confirmed in large prospective cohorts [15] .…”

Impact of differing methodologies for serum miRNA-371a-3p assessment in stage I testicular germ cell cancer recurrence

“…Whole blood was collected and processed as previously described ( 14 ). In brief, we prospectively collected 143 serum samples from 33 men with stage I testicular GCT undergoing active surveillance after orchiectomy without adjuvant chemotherapy who provided written informed consent and were registered in the Swiss Austrian German Testicular Cancer Cohort Study (SAG TCCS; NCT02229916) ( 15 ).…”

“…Most studies have focused on miR-371a-3p determination using RT-qPCR that includes pre-amplification steps in the protocol, with the aim of detecting low burden microscopic disease with the necessary sensitivity ( 12 ). In our previous study ( 14 ), focused on stage I samples, we have omitted this pre-amplification step, achieving high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of relapse. In this current work we aim to compare our previously obtained data without pre-amplification with the same RT-qPCR protocol plus an additional pre-amplification step, performed on the same clinical samples.…”