Abstract: The Relationship between Aberrant PromoterMethylation in Plasma/Serum Circulating DNAand Gynecological CarcinomaRui BAN, Pengpeng QUCorrespondence to: Pengpeng QU, E-mail: qu.pengpeng@yahoo.comTianjin Central Hospital of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Tianjin 300100, ChinaThis work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (No.08JCYBJC08200)Abstract Circulating DNA was assessed in plasma/serum from gynecological carcinoma patients, and it was found that the con-centration of circulating DNA in these patients is higher than in healthy controls. Similar genetic abnormalities occur in the primary tu-mors of these cancer patients. Promoter methylation is an important epigenetic change. Hypermethylation of multiple genes has beendetected in circulating DNA from gynecological cancer patients. Aberrant promoter methylation is a fundamental molecular abnormali-ty leading to transcriptional silencing of tumor suppressor genes, DNA repair genes and metastasis inhibitor genes. The abnormal meth-ylation of multiple genes in the peripheral blood of gynecological tumor patients has been described in recent years. To varying degrees,hypermethylation and abnormal methylation both have a relationship with the clinical characteristics of gynecological carcinoma. Aber-rant promoter methylation seen in circulating DNA may prove valuable for cancer detection, evaluating the prognosis, and monitoring.Keywords Circulating DNA; Methylation; Gynecological carcinoma; Diagnosis; Prognosis