Affiliations: [a] Department of Laboratory Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, Sichuan, China | [b] Department of Laboratory Medicine, Sichuan Cancer Hospital, Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Jinbo Liu, Department of Laboratory Medicine, The Affiliated Hospital of Luzhou Medical College, 25# Taiping Rd, Jiangyang District, Luzhou 646000, Sichuan, China. Tel.: +86 08303165730; E-mail:liujb7203@163.com
Note: [1] These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) H19 has been well studied
playing an important role in breast cancer (BC) progress and the expression
of H19 may service as a diagnostic target for BC. However, it is unclear if
circulating lncRNA H19 could as a potential biomarker for BC diagnosis and
monitor. OBJECTIVE: The objective of our study was to determine whether
plasma lncRNA H19 could be used as biomarkers for the screening and early
diagnosis of breast cancer. METHODS: In this study, we carried out a quantitative real-time PCR
(qRT-PCR) method to examine the expression levels of lncRNA H19 in 24 pairs
of BC tissues and 20 pairs of BC plasma. The differentially expressed of
plasma H19 was further validated in another 102 BC patients and 96 healthy
controls. The potential correlations between plasma H19 levels and
clinicopathological characteristics were analyzed. Receiver operating
characteristic (ROC) curve was performed to evaluate the diagnostic values
of plasma H19 between 30 early stage BC patients and 30 healthy controls. 24
paired pre- and postoperative plasma samples were detected to assess the
tumor monitoring values. RESULTS: The results revealed that the expression of H19 was
significantly increased in BC tissues and plasma compared with healthy
controls (P< 0.05), and plasma H19 levels were significantly correlated with
estrogen receptor (ER) (P= 0.008), progesterone receptor (PR) (P= 0.025),
c-erbB-2 (P= 0.043) and lymph node metastasis (P= 0.006). The area under the ROC
curve (AUC) of plasma H19 was 0.81(sensitivity, 56.7%; specificity,
86.7%; P< 0.0001), which was higher than the values of carcinoembryonic
antigen (CEA) and carbohydrate antigen 153 (CA153). Furthermore, plasma H19
levels were significantly decreased in postoperative samples than
preoperative samples (P= 0.0006). CONCLUSION: Plasma H19 may serve as a potential biomarker for BC
early screening and prognosis monitor.
Keywords: Breast cancer, lncRNA H19, plasma biomarker
