Affiliations: [a] Department of Medical Laboratory, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China | [b] Henan Key Laboratory of Medical Laboratory, Zhengzhou, Henan, China | [c] Department of Blood Transfusion, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan, China
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Fucheng He, Department of Medical Laboratory, The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, Henan, China. Tel.: +86 371 67966307; Fax: +86 371 66913528; E-mail:hefucheng@126.com
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Increasing evidence demonstrated that
circulating miRNAs could serve as meaningfully non-invasive and reliable
biomarkers for the detection of various cancers. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the expression level of plasma miRNA-718
in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) patients and its diagnostic
value. METHODS: Quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR)
method was performed to examine the expression levels of plasma miRNA-718 in
120 consecutive ESCC patients and 51 healthy controls. The difference of
plasma miRNA-718 expression level between the paired pre- and postoperative
patients was compared. The correlation between plasma miRNA-718 expression
levels and clinicopathological characteristics was further analyzed and the
receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was performed to
evaluate the diagnostic power of plasma miRNA-718 for ESCC. RESULTS: Plasma miRNA-718 expression level of ESCC patients was
significantly lower than that of healthy controls. Compared with
preoperative patients, the plasma miRNA-718 expression level of
postoperative patients was significantly upregulated. Plasma miRNA-718
expression level was inversely correlated with the lymph node metastasis and
TNM stage. The ROC curve analysis showed that plasma miRNA-718 yielded AUCs
of 0.715, 0.689 and 0.620 for the detection of ESCC patients, early patients
with Tis-T1 or early patients with TNM 0-I, respectively. CONCLUSION: Plasma miRNA-718 is downregulated in ESCC patients and
might serve as a potential diagnostic marker for ESCC.
