Background: MicroRNAs (miRNA) are promising biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and prognosis; miR-100 expression is decreased in cervical cancer tissues.
Objective: To determine whether miR-100 is a useful biomarker for early cervical cancer diagnosis.
Methods: Total RNA was extracted from the sera of 34 healthy controls (HC), 64 cervical intraepithelial neoplasia patients (CIN), and 46 cervical cancer patients (CC). miR-100 expression levels were measured with quantitative real-time PCR. Correlations between clinicopathological factors and miR-100 expression levels were also assessed. The cut-off value for miR-100 was calculated from the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve.
Results: Relative expression levels of miR-100 in serum were 1.84 ± 1.72, 3.93 ± 2.52, and 5.32 ± 3.39 in CC, CIN, and HC, respectively; it was significantly lower in CC (p< 0.001). The area under the ROC curve was 0.879 and the cut-off value was 2.451. miR-100 expression levels were significantly higher in metastasis cases that were lymph node negative than positive (p< 0.05). CC patients with miR-100 expression levels below the cut-off value tended to have a poor prognosis.
Conclusions: Serum miR-100 may be a useful diagnostic biomarker for CC, and for predicting lymph node metastasis and disease free survival in CC patients.
Keywords: Diagnosis; miRNA; prognosis; tumor marker.