Serum miR-224 as a biomarker for detection of hepatocellular carcinoma at early stage

作者：Ling Lin, Baochun Lu, Jianhua Yu, Wenguang Liu, Aijin Zhou · 发表于：Clinics and Research in Hepatology and Gastroenterology · 年份：2015 · DOI：10.1016/j.clinre.2015.11.005 · 被引用次数：36 · 研究领域：MicroRNA in disease regulation、Circular RNAs in diseases、Extracellular vesicles in disease

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Circulating microRNAs (miRNAs) are known as potential noninvasive biomarkers for cancers. Overexpression of mircoRNA-224 (miR-224) has been reported in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), so the aim of this study was to determine the value of serum miR-224 in diagnosis of HCC at early stage. METHODS: Three hundred and thirty-five subjects including early-stage HCC, liver cirrhosis (LC), chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and healthy controls (HC) were enrolled in two cohorts. Association of miR-224 expression with HCC was analyzed. The area under curves (AUC) was calculated for miR-224 and compared with that for AFP in detection of HCC at early stage. RESULTS: Our results demonstrated that serum miR-224 was significantly higher in early-stage HCC than that in LC, CHB and HC, respectively. Besides, it decreased significantly after surgery in early-stage HCC, and there was a positive correlation between miR-224 in sera and that in paired tumor tissues. Serum miR-224 levels also showed a significant correlation with BCLC stages of HCC. Expression of miR-224 was significantly higher in tumorous tissues than that in adjacent non-tumorous tissues of HCC, pathologic liver tissues of LC and CHB. Further, ROC analysis demonstrated that AUC were 0.880 (95% CI: 0.838-0.923; sensitivity: 86.5%, specificity: 76.7%) for serum miR-224 in discriminating early-stage HCC from all three controls (LC, CHB and healthy subjects), higher than that for AFP (AUC: 0.700, 95% CI: 0.633-0.7...