Overexpression of LncRNA FER1L4 in endometrial carcinoma is associated with favorable survival outcome.

Abstract

Long noncoding RNA Fer-1-like protein 4 (FER1L4) is a novel cancer-related lncRNA and functions as a tumor suppressor in several cancers. However, the clinical significance of FER1L4 has not been investigated. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the increased expression of FER1L4 can be used as a prognostic biomarker in endometrial carcinoma (EC). Expression levels of FER1L4 in 191 pairs of EC and adjacent normal tissues were detected by TaqMan Real-time quantitative RT-PCR assay. The association between FER1L4 expression and clinicopathological parameters was subsequently determined. The clinical and prognostic significance of FER1L4 expression was analyzed statistically by Kaplan-Meier estimate and Cox regression model. We observed that FER1L4 in EC tissues was significantly down-regulated compared with adjacent non-tumor tissues (p<0.01). Low expression of FER1L4 was significantly correlated with distant metastasis (p=0.002), lymph node metastasis (p=0.010) and FIGO stages (p=0.006). Furthermore, Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that overall survival rate in patients with high FER1L4 expression level was markedly higher than those with low FER1L4 expression level (p=0.0071). Finally, multivariate analysis of the prognosis factors confirmed that low FER1L4 expression was a significant independent predictor of poor survival in EC (HR=2.782, 95% CI: 1.144-5.123, p=0.004). We provided the significant clinical relevance of FER1L4 in EC and suggested that FER1L4 may act as an independent prognostic indicator for EC patients.