Evaluation of biomarkers of fatigue in patients with breast cancer undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy by means of transcriptome analysis

Abstract

Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is defined as a persistent and subjective symptoms of physical fatigue, emotional or mental exhaustion related to cancer or its treatment that may interfere with their functional capacity and is not proportional to the activities performed by the patient. Pharmacological treatment for moderate to severe fatigue may cause various side effects that preclude its use for long periods, which makes it very important to search for new pharmacological possibilities for the treatment of CRF. Our group pioneered the study of Guarana (Paullinia cupana ) in the treatment of fatigue: we observed a significant decrease in fatigue assessed by BFI, FACIT-F, FACIT-ES questionnaires when compared with placebo (p < 0.001) . The techniques based on molecular markers have greatly increased our understanding of the genetic basis associated with different phenotypes. Our group in previous work funded by FAPESP (process no. 10/52036-4) identified TGF-² as a putative biomarker of fatigue in patients with breast cancer undergoing cancer chemotherapy (p = 0.0343). But with the advent of Genomics, it has been possible to analyse transcriptomes in large scale for the identification of new biomarkers. Thus, the aim of this study is the identification of molecular markers of fatigue induced by chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer through RNA -seq. (AU)