Construction and Assessment of a Prognostic Risk Model for Cervical Cancer Based on Lactate Metabolism-Related lncRNAs

Ya Gao; Hongyang Liu; Junhu Wan; Fenghua Chang; Lindong Zhang; Wenjuan Wang; Qinshan Zhang; Quanling Feng

doi:10.2147/IJGM.S411511

Construction and Assessment of a Prognostic Risk Model for Cervical Cancer Based on Lactate Metabolism-Related lncRNAs

Int J Gen Med. 2023 Jul 11:16:2943-2960. doi: 10.2147/IJGM.S411511. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Ya Gao^#¹, Hongyang Liu^#¹, Junhu Wan², Fenghua Chang¹, Lindong Zhang¹, Wenjuan Wang¹, Qinshan Zhang¹, Quanling Feng¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Clinical Laboratory, Key Clinical Laboratory of Henan Province, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: Cervical cancer (CC) has the fourth highest incidence and mortality rate among female cancers. Lactate is a key regulator promoting tumor progression. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are closely associated with cervical cancer (CC). The study was aimed to develop a prognostic risk model for cervical cancer based on lactate metabolism-associated lncRNAs and to determine their clinical prognostic value.

Patients and methods: In this study, CESC transcriptome data were obtained from the TCGA database. 262 lactate metabolism-associated genes were extracted from MsigDB (Molecular Characterization Database). Then, correlation analysis was used to identify LRLs. Univariate Cox regression analysis was performed afterwards, followed by least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis and multiple Cox regression analysis. 10 lncRNAs were finally identified to construct a risk score model. They were divided into two groups of high risk and low risk according to the median of risk scores. The predictive performance of the models was assessed by Kaplan-Meier (K-M) analysis, subject work characteristics (ROC) analysis, and univariate and multivariate Cox analyses. To assess the clinical utility of the prognostic model, we performed functional enrichment analysis, immune microenvironment analysis, mutation analysis, and column line graph generation.

Results: We constructed a prognostic model consisting of 10 LRLs at CC. We observed that high-risk populations were strongly associated with poor survival outcomes. Risk score was an independent risk factor for CC prognosis and was strongly associated with immune microenvironment analysis and tumor mutational load.

Conclusion: We developed a risk model of lncRNAs associated with lactate metabolism and used it to predict prognosis of CC, which could guide and facilitate the progress of new treatment strategies and disease monitoring in CC patients.

Keywords: bioinformatics; cervical cancer; lactate metabolism; long non-coding RNA; prognostic model.

Grants and funding

There is no funding to report.