%0 Journal Article
%T Survival According to BRAF-V600 Tumor Mutations ¨C An Analysis of 437 Patients with Primary Melanoma
%A Diana Meckbach
%A J¨¹rgen Bauer
%A Annette Pflugfelder
%A Friedegund Meier
%A Christian Busch
%A Thomas K. Eigentler
%A David Capper
%A Andreas von Deimling
%A Michel Mittelbronn
%A Sven Perner
%A Kristian Ikenberg
%A Markus Hantschke
%A Petra B¨¹ttner
%A Claus Garbe
%A Benjamin Weide
%J PLOS ONE
%D 2014
%I Public Library of Science (PLoS)
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0086194
%X The prognostic impact of BRAF-V600 tumor mutations in stage I/II melanoma patients has not yet been analyzed in detail. We investigated primary tumors of 437 patients diagnosed between 1989 and 2006 by Sanger sequencing. Mutations were detected in 38.7% of patients and were associated with age, histological subtype as well as mitotic rate. The mutational rate was 36.7% in patients with disease-free course and 51.7% in those with subsequent distant metastasis (p = 0.031). No difference in overall survival (p = 0.119) but a trend for worse distant-metastasis-free survival (p = 0.061) was observed in BRAF mutant compared to BRAF wild-type patients. Independent prognostic factors for overall survival were tumor thickness, mitotic rate and ulceration. An interesting significant prognostic impact was observed in patients with tumor thickness of 1 mm or less, with the mutation present in 6 of 7 patients dying from melanoma. In conclusion, no significant survival differences were found according to BRAF-V600 tumor mutations in patients with primary melanoma but an increasing impact of the mutational status was observed in the subgroup of patients with tumor thickness of 1 mm or less. A potential role of the mutational status as a prognostic factor especially in this subgroup needs to be investigated in larger studies.
%U http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0086194