Abstract:
Objective To detect the expression of long non-coding (lnc) RNA PURPL in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) tissues and investigate its significance in the progression of ovarian cancer.
Methods The lncRNASNP2, GEPIA, and Kaplan–Meier Plotter, which are publicly available databases, were used to explore the expression of PURPL in EOC and its relationship with the prognosis of EOC. The expression of PURPL in 105 samples of different ovarian tissues was detected using real-time PCR, and its correlations to the clinicopathological characteristics of EOC were analyzed. The 105 samples included 20 normal ovarian tissue, 20 benign epithelial ovarian tumor, and 65 EOC tissue samples. They were collected at The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University between October 2012 and October 2015. The relationship between the expression of PURPL and the survival of EOC patients was measured using Kaplan–Meier analysis.
Results The expression of PURPL in EOC tissues was higher than that in normal ovarian tissues. The upregulated expression of PURPL was related to worse overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS). Real-time PCR revealed that PURPL expression in advanced EOC tissues (0.530±0.004) was higher than that in normal ovarian tissues (0.029±0.001), benign ovarian tumors (0.135±0.001), and early EOC tissues (0.488±0.006) (P<0.0001). Higher expression of PURPL in EOC samples was associated with a more advanced FIGO stage (χ2=10.785, P=0.001) and lymph node metastasis (χ2=4.481, P=0.034). The OS and RFS of patients with EOC with higher expression of PURPL were significantly shorter than those with lower expression of PURPL (P<0.05).
Conclusions Upregulation of PURPL indicated poor prognosis of patients with EOC and could be a candidate biomarker for the prognosis of EOC.