Expression of serum microRNA-34 in papillary thyroid cancer and clinical significance

Abstract

Objective To investigate the relationship between serum microRNA (miRNA, miR)-34 level and clinical characteristics in patients with thyroid papillary carcinoma, and to analyze the value of serum miR-34 in the diagnosis and prognosis evaluation of thyroid papillary carcinoma. Methods The clinical data of 84 cases of papillary thyroid cancer, 45 cases of nodular goiter and 30 cases of normal thyroid in our department were analyzed. The serum levels of miR-34 in all subjects were detected by fluorescence quantitative PCR. The correlation between serum miR-34 level and clinical features of thyroid cancer patients was analyzed, and the diagnostic efficacy of serum miR-34 for thyroid cancer was also analyzed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve method. The correlation between the expression of serum miR-34 and overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with thyroid papillary cancer was analyzed, and the predictive value of serum miR-34 in prognosis of patients with thyroid papillary cancer was evaluated by Kaplan-Meier analysis. Results The relative expression level of serum miR-34 in patients with papillary thyroid cancer was significantly lower than that in patients with nodular goiter and normal persons (P 0.05). Spearman correlation coefficient test showed that the relative expression level of serum miR-34 was closely related to karnofsky performance status (KPS) score, World Health Organization (WHO) pathological grade and extraglandular infiltration (P<0.05). The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.912 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.831-0.973]; when the AUC <0.48 was used as the criterion for the diagnosis of papillary thyroid cancer, the sensitivity, specificity and Yoden index were 96.67%, 79.54% and 76.21%, respectively. The median PFS and median OS were 39.5 (95% CI: 37.916-41.655) months and 50.3 (95% CI: 43.143-56.651) months in the high-level group, 28.3 (95% CI: 24.146-32.618) months and 32.6 (95% CI: 28.781-37.765) months in the low-level group, respectively. PFS and OS in the low-level group were significantly longer than those in the high-level group (P<0.01). Conclusion Serum miR-34 level has good accuracy in the diagnosis of thyroid papillary carcinoma, and has a significant correlation with the prognosis of thyroid papillary carcinoma. Key words: Thyroid papillary carcinoma; MicroRNA-34; Diagnosis; Prognosis