Hypermethylation of TMEM240 predicts poor hormone therapy response and disease progression in breast cancer

Table 5 TMEM240 promoter hypermethylation in relation to prognosis and drug treatment response in plasma of Taiwanese breast cancer patients^a

Characteristics	Total^b	Non-progression N (%)	Progressive^c disease N (%)	P value
Overall	61	29 (47.5)	32 (52.5)
TMEM240 in plasma
No methylation	31	27 (87.1)	4 (12.9)	< 0.001
High methylation	30	2 (6.7)	28 (93.3)	< 0.001
CA-153 in serum
Normal	55	29 (52.7)	26 (47.3)	0.237
Abnormal (> 25 units/mL)	2	0 (33.3)	2 (100.0)	0.237
CEA in serum
Normal	49	26 (53.1)	23 (46.9)	0.470
Abnormal (> 5 ng/mL)	9	3 (33.3)	6 (66.7)	0.470
Underwent hormone therapy	36	23 (63.9)	13 (36.1)
TMEM240 in plasma
Low methylation	25	22 (88.0)	3 (12.0)	< 0.001
High methylation	11	1 (9.1)	10 (90.9)	< 0.001
Ki-67 in breast tumors
Low expression	16	10 (62.5)	6 (37.5)	1.000
High expression (> 15%)	20	13 (65.0)	7 (35.0)	1.000

^aThese results were analyzed by the Fisher’s exact test. The patients with a treatment and monitoring duration of greater than one year were included in this analysis. When the circulating methylated TMEM240 levels normalized by circulating ACTB in plasma of breast cancer patients was higher than 0.002 was defined as abnormal
^bFor concentration of CA-153, CEA and Ki-67 expression, the number of samples (n) was lower than the overall number analyzed because clinical data were unavailable for those samples
^cNon-progression: patients without progression, recurrence, metastasis
Progressive disease: patients with progression, recurrence, metastasis

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