Adherence to Adjuvant Imatinib Therapy in Patients with Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor in Clinical Practice: A Cross-Sectional Study

Imatinib adherence prediction using machine learning approach in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumor

BACKGROUND

Nonadherence to imatinib is common in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), which is associated with poor prognosis and financial burden. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the adherence rate in patients with GIST and subsequently develop a model based on machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) techniques to identify the associated factors and predict the risk of imatinib nonadherence.

METHODS

All eligible patients completed four sections of questionnaires. After the data set was preprocessed, statistically significance variables were identified and further processed to modeling. Six ML and four DL algorithms were applied for modeling, including eXtreme gradient boosting, light gradient boosting machine (LGBM), categorical boosting, random forest, support vector machine, artificial neural network, multilayer perceptron, NaiveBayes, TabNet, and Wide&Deep. The optimal ML model was used to identify potential factors for predicting adherence.

RESULTS

A total of 397 GIST patients were recruited. Nonadherence was observed in 185 patients (53.4%). LGBM exhibited superior performance, achieving a mean f1_score of 0.65 and standard deviation of 0.12. The predominant indicators for nonadherent prediction of imatinib were cognitive functioning, whether to perform therapeutic drug monitoring (if_TDM), global health status score, social support, and gender.

CONCLUSIONS

This study represents the first real-world investigation using ML techniques to predict risk factors associated with imatinib nonadherence in patients with GIST. By highlighting the potential factors and identifying high-risk patients, the multidisciplinary medical team can devise targeted strategies to effectively address the daily challenges of treatment adherence.

A comprehensive review on the composition, biogenesis, purification, and multifunctional role of exosome as delivery vehicles for cancer therapy

All forms of life produce nanosized extracellular vesicles called exosomes, which are enclosed in lipid bilayer membranes. Exosomes engage in cell-to-cell communication and participate in a variety of physiological and pathological processes. Exosomes function via their bioactive components, which are delivered to target cells in the form of proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids. Exosomes function as drug delivery vehicles due to their unique properties of innate stability, low immunogenicity, biocompatibility, biodistribution, accumulation in desired tissues, low toxicity in normal tissues, and the stimulation of anti-cancer immune responses, and penetration capacity into distance organs. Exosomes mediate cellular communications by delivering various bioactive molecules including oncogenes, oncomiRs, proteins, specific DNA, messenger RNA (mRNA), microRNA (miRNA), small interfering RNA (siRNA), and circular RNA (circRNA). These bioactive substances can be transferred to change the transcriptome of target cells and influence tumor-related signaling pathways. After considering all of the available literature, in this review we discuss the biogenesis, composition, production, and purification of exosomes. We briefly review exosome isolation and purification techniques. We explore great-length exosomes as a mechanism for delivering a variety of substances, including proteins, nucleic acids, small chemicals, and chemotherapeutic drugs. We also talk about the benefits and drawbacks of exosomes. This review concludes with a discussion future perspective and challenges. We hope that this review will provide us a better understanding of the current state of nanomedicine and exosome applications in biomedicine.

Health-Related Quality of Life and Side Effects in Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor (GIST) Patients Treated with Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors: A Systematic Review of the Literature

BACKGROUND

The introduction of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) has revolutionized the treatment of gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs), resulting in a substantial gain in median overall survival. Subsequently, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) has become more relevant. Here, we systematically review the available literature on HRQoL issues and side effects of different TKIs registered for the treatment of GIST.

METHODS

A search through five databases was performed. Full reports in English describing HRQoL outcomes and/or side effects in GIST patients on TKI therapy were included.

RESULTS

A total of 104 papers were included; 13 studies addressed HRQoL, and 96 studies investigated adverse events. HRQoL in patients treated with imatinib, regorafenib, and ripretinib remained stable, whereas most sunitinib-treated patients reported a decrease in HRQoL. Severe fatigue and fear of recurrence or progression were specifically assessed as HRQoL issues and had a negative impact on overall HRQoL as well as psychological and physical well-being. The majority of studies focused on physician-reported side effects. Nearly all GIST patients treated with a TKI experienced at least one adverse event, mostly mild to moderate.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite the fact that almost all patients treated with a TKI experienced side effects, this did not seem to affect overall HRQoL during TKI therapy. In daily practice, it are the side effects that hamper a patient's HRQoL resulting in treatment adjustments, suggesting that the reported side effects were underestimated by physicians, or the measures used to assess HRQoL do not capture all relevant issues that determine a GIST patient's HRQoL.

Primary Localized Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors: Medication Adherence and Prognosis According to Gender

OBJECTIVE

Gender is associated with medication adherence for imatinib, but whether it is related to the prognosis of primary localized gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) is unclear. The goal of this study was to clarify the relationship between gender and prognosis in GIST patients, with differences in medication adherence considered.

METHODS

The data of 320 GIST patients were retrospectively collected from the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University. Survival analysis was performed using the Kaplan-Meier method (Log rank test) and the risk factors of recurrence were determined using Cox multivariate analysis. Medication adherence-stratified analyses were performed to control for confounding factors.

RESULTS

Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that among patients who received postoperative adjuvant imatinib therapy, men had a higher recurrence rate than women (P<0.01). Pearson's chi-square test revealed better medication adherence in women than in men (P<0.01). Cox regression analysis revealed that gender was not an independent risk factor for recurrence-free survival (RFS; P=0.25), but medication adherence was (P<0.01). Among GIST patients with a medication possession ratio (MPR) of less than 90%, 62.86% of male patients took imatinib irregularly or not at all due to limited understanding of the disease, whereas 55.74% of female patients' took imatinib irregularly because they could not tolerate adverse drug reactions.

CONCLUSION

Adherence was poorer in male than in female patients, which might explain the worse prognoses of the former among patients who received adjuvant treatment with imatinib. The gender difference in the degree of adherence should be considered in postoperative pharmacotherapy for patients with primary localized GISTs.

Study on Adjuvant Medication for Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment Based on VR Technology and Health Education

In order to improve the efficiency of auxiliary medication for patients with mild cognitive impairment, this paper proposes a method based on VR technology and health education. Sixty elderly patients with COPD and MCI admitted to a hospital from January 2019 to February 2020 were randomly divided into a control group and study group, with 50 cases in each group. On the basis of conventional drug therapy, health education, and respiratory muscle training, patients in the control group received routine lung rehabilitation training, while patients in the study group received lung rehabilitation training using the BioMaster virtual scene interactive rehabilitation training system. Both groups continued training for 12 weeks. Lung function indexes, 6-minute walking distance, COPD assessment test (CAT) score, and Montreal Cognitive Function Assessment Scale (MoCA) score were compared between the 2 groups before training and 4, 8, and 12 weeks after training. The experimental results show that, in the study group, the percentage of FEV₁ in the predicted value at 8 weeks after training, the percentage of FEV₁ in the predicted value at 12 weeks after training, and FEV₁/FVC were higher than those in the control group (P < 0.05). There was no significant difference in 6-minute walking distance, CAT score, and MoCA score between the two groups before training (P > 0.05). Twelve weeks after training, patients in the study group had a longer 6-minute walking distance, a lower CAT score, and a higher MoCA score than those in the control group (P < 0.05). It is proved that the application of virtual reality technology in lung rehabilitation training of elderly COPD patients with MCI is effective, which can effectively improve the lung function, cognitive function, and exercise tolerance of the patients and reduce the symptoms of dyspnea and the efficiency of medication.

Association between adherence to oral therapies in cancer patients and clinical outcome: A systematic review of the literature

AIMS

Adherence to therapy is a key factor in successful treatment. The aim of this systematic review is to assess the extent to which patients with better adherence to oral therapy have better clinical outcomes among cancer patients.

METHODS

All studies published in PubMed up to 20 October 2020, which considered the use of oral anticancer drugs for cancer patients and which correlated treatment adherence with a clinical outcome, were considered.

RESULTS

From the 42 studies considered in the systematic review, 14 were for oncological indications and 28 for haematological indications. There was considerable variance in calculation methods, outcomes considered, and in the definitions of adherence. However, it emerged that most studies reported a significant correlation between adherence to therapy and clinical outcome.

CONCLUSION

As adherence to therapy is a key factor in achieving a better clinical outcome, future studies with large samples, robust endpoints and the use of at least two methods of assessing adherence would be desirable in order to produce more robust evidence.

CT Image Examination Based on Virtual Reality Analysis in Clinical Diagnosis of Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

With the advancement and development of medical equipment, CT images have become a common lung examination tool. This article mainly studies the application of CT imaging examination based on virtual reality analysis in the clinical diagnosis of gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Before extracting suspected lymph nodes from a CT image of the stomach, the CT image sequence is preprocessed first, which can reduce the cumbersomeness of subsequent extraction of suspected lymph nodes and speed up the subsequent processing. According to medical knowledge, CT images of the stomach show that lymph nodes mainly exist in the adipose tissue around the gastric wall, but there are no lymph nodes in the subcutaneous fat outside the chest. The most basic gray value in the image and the neighborhood average difference feature related to gray level are used as the primary features of visual attention detection. When extracting the neighborhood average difference feature, we use a 3 ∗ 3 sliding window method to traverse each point of the pixel matrix in the image, thereby calculating the feature value of each pixel in the image. After the feature extraction is completed, it is necessary to calibrate the data and make a training data set. The SP immunohistochemical staining method was used. The specimens were fixed with 10% formaldehyde, routinely embedded in paraffin, sectioned, and stained with HE. The tumor tissue was determined by immunohistochemistry, and the reagents were products of Maixin Company. All patients were followed up by regular outpatient review, letters, and visits or phone calls. The data showed that immunohistochemical tumor cells showed positive staining for CD117 (14/15, 93.3%) and CD34 (10/15, 66.7%). The results show that the application of virtual reality technology to CT imaging examination can significantly improve the diagnostic accuracy of gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

Gastrointestinal stromal tumours

Gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST) have an incidence of ~1.2 per 10⁵ individuals per year in most countries. Around 80% of GIST have varying molecular changes, predominantly mutually exclusive activating KIT or PDGFRA mutations, but other, rare subtypes also exist. Localized GIST are curable, and surgery is their standard treatment. Risk factors for relapse are tumour size, mitotic index, non-gastric site and tumour rupture. Patients with GIST with KIT or PDGFRA mutations sensitive to the tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) imatinib that are at high risk of relapse have improved survival with adjuvant imatinib treatment. In advanced disease, median overall survival has improved from 18 months to >70 months since the introduction of TKIs. The role of surgery in the advanced setting remains unclear. Resistance to TKIs arise mainly from subclonal selection of cells with resistance mutations in KIT or PDGFRA when they are the primary drivers. Advanced resistant GIST respond to second-line sunitinib and third-line regorafenib, as well as to the new broad-spectrum TKI ripretinib. Rare molecular forms of GIST with alterations involving NF1, SDH genes, BRAF or NTRK genes generally show primary resistance to standard TKIs, but some respond to specific inhibitors of the activated genes. Despite major advances, many questions in both advanced and localized disease remain unanswered.

The prognostic factors of primary colorectal sarcoma and the clinical outcomes of negative lymph node dissection

Background

Primary colorectal sarcoma is an extremely rare malignancy that is associated with poor patient outcomes. The aim of this study was to identify the prognostic factors of primary colorectal sarcoma and evaluate the clinical outcomes associated with these prognostic factors.

Methods

Between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2016, the clinical data of 315 patients with primary colorectal sarcoma were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Cancer-specific survival (CSS) was analyzed by the Kaplan-Meier method and by log-rank test. The prognostic factors were identified by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis and hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of covariates were also estimated. The optimal cutoff value for NLN count at dissection was identified using X-tile software and validated by univariate Cox regression analysis.

Results

Of the 315 patients with primary colorectal sarcoma identified, 88.6% received surgery. The median follow-up time was 34 months with an interquartile range (IQR) of 9-79 months. The 5-year rate of CSS was 76.73% and 27.8% for the surgery group and the non-surgery group, respectively (P<0.0001). Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis performed on the data of nonmetastatic patients demonstrated that sex, race, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy had no effect on patient CSS, with age, tumor site, tumor grade, and NLN dissection being independent prognostic factors. A significant correlation was found between advanced age (>80 years old) and poor CSS (HR 1.964; 95% CI: 1.005-3.839; P=0.048). There were also significant correlations between colonic tumors and poor CSS (HR 2.903; 95% CI: 1.348-6.250; P=0.006) and grade IV tumors and poor CSS (HR 3.431; 95% CI: 1.725-6.823; P<0.001), while NLN dissection was associated with improved CSS (HR 0.946; 95% CI: 0.911-0.983; P=0.004). X-tile software analysis was used to determine that the optimal cutoff value for NLN count was 13. Patients who received NLN dissection with a cutoff value of 13 or more displayed better CSS than those who did not (P=0.016).

Conclusions

Primary colorectal sarcoma patients can benefit significantly from primary tumor surgery. Age, tumor site, grade and NLN dissection are independent prognostic factors for CSS in nonmetastatic patients. Importantly, nonmetastatic patients treated with NLN dissection with an NLN count of 13 or more have significantly better CSS.

Individualized Management of Blood Concentration in Patients with Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors

Gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) is the most common mesenchymal tumor, and surgical resection is the first choice for the treatment of the disease, but since the advent of tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) such as imatinib (IM), the prognosis of the disease has undergone revolutionary changes. According to the current version of the guidelines, most GIST patients receive a fixed dose without taking into account their own individual differences, resulting in a wide difference in blood concentration, adverse reactions and prognosis. With more studies on the relationship between blood drug concentrations and prognosis, the concept of individualized therapy has been paid more attention by researchers. Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) has also been made available for the research field of GIST targeted therapy. How to reduce the incidence of drug resistance and adverse reactions in patients with GISTs has become the focus of the current research. This article reviews the common monitoring methods and timing of TKIs blood concentration, the reasonable range of blood drug concentration, the toxic or adverse effects caused by high blood drug concentration, some possible factors affecting blood drug concentration and recent research progress, in order to discuss and summarize the treatment strategy of individual blood drug concentration, improve the prognosis of patients and reduce the adverse effects as much as possible.

Assessment of Adherence to Imatinib and Health-Related Quality of Life Among Patients with Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor: A Cross-Sectional Study in an Oncology Clinic in Malaysia

PURPOSE

To evaluate the rate and predictors of non-adherence to imatinib in gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) patients, as well as to compare the difference in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) between adherent and non-adherent patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

A cross-sectional study at the Oncology Clinic, Hospital Kuala Lumpur was conducted from March to August 2018. All patients with metastatic and/or unresectable GIST aged ≥18 years old and on at least 3 months of imatinib were included. Adherence to imatinib was assessed using the 10-item validated Medication Compliance Questionnaire, with a score of <100% indicating non-adherence. Non-adherence predictors were determined by multiple logistic regressions. HRQOL was evaluated by the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30). The difference in the mean HRQOL scores between adherent and non-adherent groups was determined by multivariate analysis of variance.

RESULTS

A total of 89 patients were enrolled, of which 49 (55.1%) were considered non-adherent. The significant predictors of non-adherence were age (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 0.93; CI 0.89-0.98; P = 0.007), presence of nausea and vomiting (OR 5.63; CI 1.25-25.27; P = 0.024), and presence of comorbidities (OR 4.56; CI 1.44-14.40; P = 0.010). Patients who were in the adherent group showed significantly better score in overall HRQOL, F (15, 73) = 2.09, P < 0.02; Pillai's trace = 0.3, partial eta squared = 0.30.

CONCLUSION

Non-adherence to long-term treatment with imatinib among patients with GIST should not be underestimated. Significant predictors of non-adherence among this population are younger age, presence of nausea and vomiting, as well as comorbidities. Patients with good adherence portrayed better HRQOL.