Expression changes of miR-148a in hepatic carcinoma tissues and its relationships with clinicopathological parameters and early post-operative recurrence

ZHOU Xingqin; CHEN Zhong; CHANG Ren'an

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1002-266X.2017.36.003

Abstract：To observe the expression changes of microRNA-148a (miR-148a) in the primary hepatic carcinoma (HCC) tissues,and further to analyze its relationships with the clinicopathological parameters of patients and their early post-operative recurrence.Methods Quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) were used to detect the relative expression of miR-148a in 142 cases of HCC tissues and 142 cases of paired adjacent normal tissues.The relationships between miR-148a expression and the clinicopathological parameters as well as early post-operative recurrence in HCC patients were analyzed.Results The relative expression of miR-148a was significantly lower in HCC tissues than in the adjacent normal tissues (P ＜ 0.05).The mean of the relative expression of miR-148a in HCC tissues from 142 patients was set as cut-off value,thereafter,patients were categorized into the high-expression group (n =65) and low-expression group (n =77).The expression of miR-148a was significantly associated with tumor size,microvascular invasion,and TNM stages (P ＜ 0.05),while was not statistically associated with age,gender,cirrhosis,serum level of AFP,HBV infection,histological differentiation,or tumor numbers (P ＞ 0.05).In the 142 HCC patients,88 of them suffered from early post-operative recurrence,while the other 54 patients did not.The expression of miR-148a was significantly lower in patients with early post-operative recurrence than that of those without recurrence (P ＜ 0.05).In the 88 patients with early post-operative recurrence,there were 55 cases of patients with low expression of miR-148a and 33 patients with high expression of miR-148a.The early recurrence rate was significantly higher in patients with low expression of miR-148a than that of those with high expression of miR-148a (P ＜ 0.05).Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to evaluate the predictive value of miR-148a in early post-operative recurrence.Consequently,area under the curve was 0.710 (95％ CI:0.660-0.769,P ＜ 0.01),and the cut-off value of relative mRNA expression of miR-148a was 0.31.Therefore,the sensitivity and specificity of miR-148a expression in predicting early post-operative recurrence of HCC was 77.1％ and 71.8％,respectively.Conclusion The miR-148a is low expressed in HCC tissues,and the expression change is associated with tumor progression.Moreover,miR-148a can be taken as an effective predictive indicator for early post-operative recurrence of HCC.