Reduced cancer-free time in FA patients with CMEs compared with patients without CMEs. (A) We calculated cancer-free time (years) for 124 FA patients (incomplete information for the remaining 6 cases), 16 with CMEs and 108 without CMEs, from the time of blood collection until the first cancer diagnosis or the last follow-up (if cancer-free); correction by exitus year was done when required. A significantly abridged cancer-free time was observed in FA patients with CMEs using Kaplan-Meier statistical analysis (HR = 5.1, 95% CI = 2.5-10.3, P = 6.78 × 10−6). The age-adjusted HR of having cancer was 4.2 times higher in CME carriers than noncarriers (age-adjusted HR = 4.2, 95% CI = 2.0-8.7, P = 1.2 × 10−4). (B) In order to consider the incident cancer after blood sample collection, we performed a Kaplan-Meier reanalysis discarding 14 cases with cancer diagnosis at the same time of sample collection and 1 case of exitus at the same year of sampling out of the 124 FA patients included in the initial analysis. A significantly shortened cancer-free time was detected again in FA patients with CMEs compared with those without CMEs (HR = 5.8, 95% CI = 2.3-14.5, P = 1.8 × 10−4). As shown in the figure, we obtained the same results when adjusting by age (age-adjusted HR = 4.9, 95% CI = 1.9-12.7; P = 1.1 × 10−3).
