EXPRESSION OF MIRNA-148A IN ESOPHAGEAL CANCER AND ITS CORRELATION WITH CLINICOPATHOLOGICAL FEATURES AND PROGNOSIS

Mo Chen¹, Meiling Zhang², Xianping Cheng^{1, *}

¹AnHui No 2 Provincial People's Hospital, Hefei, PR China - ²Anhui HuoShan Courty Hospital, Huoshan, PR China

Objective: To analyse the expression of miRNA-148a in esophageal cancer and its correlation with clinicopathological features and prognosis. 

Methods: In this study, 67 cases of esophageal cancer and 28 cases of paracancerous tissues were included from our hospital from March 2015 to March 2016. The relative expression level of miRNA-148a in esophageal cancer and paracancerous tissues was detected by fluorescence quantitative PCR, and the relationship between miRNA-148a expression, clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of patients was analysed. 

Results: The relative expression of miR-148a in esophageal cancer (0.28 ± 0.13) was significantly lower than that in adjacent tissues (1.01±0.47) (P<0.01). There was a significant difference in the expression of miR-148a in esophageal cancer patients with different TNM stages (P<0.05), but there was no significant difference in the expression of miR-148a in esophageal cancer patients with different ages, genders, lymph node metastases and differentiation degrees (P>0.05). The 3-year survival rate of patients with relatively low expressions of miR-148a was 23.26% (10/43), which was significantly lower than the 3-year survival rate of patients with relatively high expressions of miR-148a (70.83%, 17/24). TNM stage and miR-148a expression can independently affect the prognosis of esophageal cancer patients. 

Conclusion: The expression of miRNA-148a in esophageal cancer is significantly lower than that in adjacent tissues, and its expression is closely related to the TNM stage. The low expression of miRNA-148a suggests that the prognosis of esophageal cancer patients is poor, which may be an important biomarker to evaluate the prognosis of esophageal cancer patients.