The potential clinical value of platelet aggregation in colorectal tumor progression

Objective: The present study is to examine whether platelet aggregation function, platelet count and mean platelet volume are indicators that related to clinicopathological characteristics of colorectal cancer.

Methods: A total of 546 patients with colorectal tumors and 118 healthy controls were enrolled, and patients with colorectal tumors were grouped according to malignancy, prognosis, recurrence and metastasis. The parameters of platelet aggregation function included max aggregation ratio, average aggregation ratio and max aggregation time were detected. 546 patients were induced by arachidonic acid, meanwhile, 415 of which were additionally induced by adenosine diphosphate. Of 118 healthy controls, 60 cases were induced by arachidonic acid and 58 cases were induced by adenosine diphosphate. We evaluated the intergroup significance of these indexes by receiver operating characteristic analysis.

Results: The levels of max aggregation ratio, average aggregation ratio and platelet count were related to progression including cancerization, radical operation and recurrence and metastasis (P < 0.05). Notably, max aggregation ratio-arachidonic acid is the best indicator for predicting these three progressions with the areas under receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.685, 0.652, and 0.649, respectively.

Conclusion: Correlations between max aggregation ratio, average aggregation ratio and colorectal tumor progression were observed with a certain clinical value.