Abstract:
Objective To evaluate the clinical application potentiality of PCR-single strand conformation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP)used to screen EGFR mutations in non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC).
Methods Certain NSCLC specimens were tested with PCR-SSCP analysis and DNA sequencing respectively, and then some related indices were calculated, such as sensitivity, false negative rate, specificity, false positive rate, Youden index, crude agreement rate, likelihood ratio, and predictive value, taking the results of DNA sequencing as the "gold standard".At the same time, 20%of the tested specimens were randomly sampled for a second PCR-SSCP analysis, and the value of Kappa index was calculated by comparing the results from two PCR-SSCP analyses.
Results Of PCR-SSCP analysis, sensitivity was 97.2%, false negative rate was 2.8%, specificity was 94.3%, false positive rate was 5.7%, Youden index was 0.915, crude agreement rate was 94.8%, positive likelihood ratio was 17.1, negative likelihood ratio was 0.5, positive predictive value was 77.8%, negative predictive value was 99.4%, and Kappa index was 0.81(P < 0.05).
Conclusion PCR-SSCP analysis has high validity, reliability and practicability in screening EGFR mutations in NSCLC.