Urine miR-93-5p is a promising biomarker for early detection of HBV-related hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

IntroductionThe mortality rate of hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)continues to increase because sensitive, early and readily available diagnostic tools are lacking. To address this problem, we aimed to identify diagnosticbio markers to be used for early detection of HCC. Materials and methodsmiR-93–5p was selected as a candidate biomarker based on the analyses of relevant Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets; it was validated using qPCR to quantify its expression levels in tissue, plasma and saliva sample sets. ResultsmiR-93–5p was significantly upregulated in HBV-related HCC tissue. Notably, miR-93–5p in plasma and urine was also significantly increased in patients with early HBV-related HCC. The expression of miR-93–5p was significantly and positively correlated in pairwise comparisons of samples (tissue vs. plasma, tissue vs. urine, plasma vs. urine). Moreover, after curative hepatectomy,miR-93–5p in plasma and urine decreased significantly over one month after the curative hepatectomy and returned to normal levels. Furthermore, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis indicated that both plasma and urine miR-39–5p could detect be used to early, advanced and overall HBV-related HCC cases with more than 85% sensitivities and 93% of specificities. Finally, urine miR-93–5p could be used to predict progress-free survival for early HCC patients who received curative hepatectomy and overall survival for advanced HCC patients without curative treatments. ConclusionsPlasma and urine miR-93–5p show great promise as potential novel biomarkers for early detection of HBV-related HCC. Moreover, urine miR-93–5p could be used to predict the prognosis of patients with HBV-related HCC.