Decreased expression of serum miR-424 correlates with poor prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.
BACKGROUND
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in many important cellular processes and deregulation of miRNAs is linked to many human diseases including cancer. Although miR-424 has been demonstrated to inhibit progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), its expression level in serum samples and the potential clinical values remain unknown.


MATERIALS AND METHODS
The expression level of miR-424 in the serum clinical samples from HCC patients and healthy volunteers were determined by qRT-PCR. Then the association of serum miR-424 expression level with various important clinicopathological parameters and survival rates was evaluated. Multivariate Cox regression analysis was used to identify the independent risk factors for HCC.


RESULTS
The expression level of serum miR-424 was significantly decreased in patients with HCC compared with the healthy volunteers (P<0.01). Reduced expression of serum miR-424 was associated with serum AFP (P=0.048), vein invasion (P=0.006) and TNM stage (P=0.003). In addition, survival analysis showed that HCC patients with lower serum miR-424 expression suffered poorer overall survival (P=0.018) and disease free survival (P=0.008). Moreover, serum miR-424 was demonstrated to be an independent risk factor for HCC.


CONCLUSIONS
Our findings provide the compelling evidence that the decreased expression of serum miR-424 may serve as a novel biomarker to predict the unfavorable prognosis of HCC patients.
['Yao|Huaiqi|H|', 'Liu|Xuanzhi|X|', 'Chen|Suzuan|S|', 'Xia|Wei|W|', 'Chen|Xiaojun|X|']
D000328:Adult D000368:Aged D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular D018572:Disease-Free Survival D005260:Female D006801:Humans D053208:Kaplan-Meier Estimate D008113:Liver Neoplasms D008297:Male D035683:MicroRNAs D008875:Middle Aged D011379:Prognosis D016016:Proportional Hazards Models D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
serum miR-424 prognosis Hepatocellular carcinoma