The expression of microRNA in nasopharyngeal carcinoma and its clinical significance

Abstract

Objective To investigate the expressions of microRNA-21, microRNA-143, and microRNA-145 in the sera of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), and their assessment vales in the recurrence, metastasis, and prognosis of NPC patients. Methods From January 2012 to January 2014, 80 NPC patients in our hospital Department of Internal Medicine and Head and Neck Surgery was used as tumor group, 80 cases of healthy volunteers as control. The real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to detect the expression levels of microRNA-21, microRNA-143, and microRNA-145 in the sera. Results Expression of microRNA-21 in NPC patients was significantly higher than that in healthy control group with statistically significant difference (P<0.05). The expressions of microRNA-143 and microRNA-145 in NPC patients was significantly lower than those in healthy control group with significant difference (P<0.05). At the same time, those microRNAs were significantly associated with tissue differentiation, invasion, and metastasis. Conclusions Increased microRNA-21 expression level in NPC patients, and decreased expression of microRNA-143 and microRNA-145 in NPC patients play an important role in differentiation, invasion, and metastasis in the development process of NPC. microRNAs can be used as a new index in the auxiliary diagnosis of NPC and the evaluation of recurrence, metastasis, and prognosis evaluation. Key words: MicroRNAs/ME; Nasopharyngeal neoplasms/ME; Recurrence; Neoplasm metastasis; Prognosis