Impact of IDH Mutation and Adjuvant Chemo(radio)therapy on Survival Outcome in Grade II/III Astrocytoma

This study looked at a type of brain tumor called astrocytoma and how specific genetic changes like IDH mutations affect patients outcomes. Recent studies found that people with IDH-mutated astrocytomas tend to live longer and have better survival rates compared to those without these mutations. One reason for this is that IDH-mutated tumors usually grow more slowly and are less aggressive. These findings suggest that testing for IDH mutations could help doctors make more personalized treatment plans for patients, which may lead to better results. However, larger studies are needed to confirm these observations. the investigators used the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database to obtain the data of 811 patients with grade II/III astrocytoma. The data are publicly available and no consent or ethical approval is needed for this study. The clinicopathological data of patients, including the age, gender, race, IDH status (mutant/wild), astrocytoma type (diffuse/anaplastic), surgery (tumor destruction, Local excision, partial, radical, total gross resection, Surgery), radiation (Beam radiation, Radioactive implants including brachytherapy, Radioisotopes, Combination of beam with implants or isotopes, Radiation, method or source not specified), chemotherapy, vital status, and survival months, were extracted. Patients were sub-grouped according to the IDH type into IDH mutant-type and wild-type. with further stratification according to the treatment modality into three groups: adjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant radiotherapy, and combined adjuvant chemoradiotherapy. The Observed survival and cause-specific survival were calculated using SEER*stat software version 8.4.3 and SPSS version 25 was used for survival analysis. Significance was achieved at 0.05.