Abstract:
Objective To investigate the serum level of miR-224 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients and its clinical diagnostic significance.
Methods The serum level of miR-224 was detected by real-time quantitative PCR. This study included 42 cases of patients with HCC, 36 patients with liver cirrhosis (LC), 55 patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), and 40 healthy persons (NC). The relative expressions of miR-224 were calculated. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were analyzed to determine the sensitivity and specificity of miR-224 expression levels in HCC diagnosis.
Results Result shows that the relative miR-224 expression was higher in the serum of HCC patients than that in the CHB, LC, and NC groups. The difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05 or P < 0.01). The relative miR-224 expression in the serum of HCC patients and alpha fetoprotein (AFP) were positively correlated (P < 0.05). By comparison, the tumor size, TNM stage, tumor differentiation, and lymph node metastasis were not correlated with mirR-224 expression (P>0.05). ROC analysis shows that the best critical value of the relative expression levels of miR-224 was 3.47, with sensitivity of 82.2%, specificity of 92.8%, and area under the curve of 0.935.
Conclusion The serum level of miR-224 in HCC patients has high specificity, and miR-224 has great potential to become a new serological marker for the diagnosis of HCC.