Evaluation of microRNA-20, -21 and -143 expression in human papilloma virus induced premalignant and malignant cervical lesions

Abstract

Cervical cancer (CC) is the fourth most prevalent cancer worldwide. The deprivation of screenin gprogram implementation and inefficient conventional treatments of CC had led to diagnosis of disease in advanced stages and poor prognosis due to gradual increase in resistance to chemotherapy. Therefore, identification of CC molecular targets had become a primary task in order to improve detection, prognosis and development of cervical cancer targeted therapy. MicroRNAs (miRNA) have been validated as key players in cell physiology and alterations in miRNA expression were associated with cancer progression and therapy response. This study was designed to determine the expression of three microRNA molecules involved in human papilloma virus (HPV) induced cervical disease progression in Iraqi women for early detection of preneoplastic and neoplastic cervical lesions. A total of fifty cervical swab samples were collected from women who presented with cervical abnormalities and thirty samples from volunteers healthy women as a control group. Levels of miRNA expression were measured by two steps reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique. Results showed a significant increase in the expression levels of miRNA-21 and miRNA-20 (P = 0.0001 and 0.048, respectively) in HPV positive patients in comparison with HPV negative and healthy controls. Whereas, miRNA-143 showed a dichotomous expression pattern as being transiently upregulated (P = 0.0001) in preneoplastic lesions (CIN-II and CIN-III) and down regulated at cervical carcinoma. These data suggest that overexpression of cellular miRNA-21, -20 and -143 may be related to infection with high risk HPV and could be a biomarker and a useful therapeutic target.